Take A Peck

American Express does a great job with its golf sponsorships, using them to obtain benefits for Cardmembers and reward them for paying an annual fee. Though they may not have Tiger Woods as a spokesperson anymore, I don’t think this has hurt them much due to the wide variety of valuable offers they have for golfers. Here are a couple things they have going right now.

Friend of a Cardmember program

• Book a lesson with a PGA professional and bring a friend free.

US Open Golf Tickets and Travel Packages (visit this site for more details)
2008 US Open

• Stay at a nice hotel for 3 nights and get 2 weekend grounds passes as well as access to the American Express Hospitality tent. $2,699 per couple

2009 US Open

• Presale now through June 15 for daily trophy club tickets, which are ONLY available to AmEx Cardmembers.

2009 PGA Championship

• Cardmembers have access to a presale (now through May 31) to purchase Wanamaker Club and Season tickets

As you can see, these are tangible, valuable benefits that American Express offers its Cardmembers. You can see more benefits at http://www.americanexpress.com/golf.

If you’re an avid golfer and have an American Express Card, are you taking advantage of these benefits?

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March Madness is here. Time to watch some basketball, avoid work, family, friends, girlfriends, wives and sig. others (who don’t want to watch). Tomorrow is a first for me–I’ll be watching the four first round NCAA games in Raleigh, and I’ll get to see my Tar Heels play, too. Doesn’t get much better.

SportsBusiness Daily reported that tickets to these games in Raleigh were selling for an average of $209 each on StubHub. I just checked and it looks like StubHub is sold out for now. If you’re going to these games though, I bet you can get tickets from a scalper just before game time.

If you’re stuck at work you can still watch the games via CBS’s March Madness on Demand, where you can watch every game online for free. But you probably already knew that.

In case you’re curious about March Madness presence on social networking sites, there are currently four March Madness-related groups on Facebook with over 500 members each (the top two each have 1,400+ members). I’ve already discussed the March Madness Brackets Facebook application, which is one of the few FB apps that is actually useful (in my humble opinion).

There is a lot less March Madness presence on MySpace–only 3 groups (public), with the largest group having a whopping six members.

On YouTube there is a Men’s NCAA Tourney Channel, which has over 5,700 subscribers.

I hope you all stay glued to your TV/laptop/work computer and enjoy these games. Go Heels!

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This was a HUGE week for MMA. The UFC gained a blue-chip corporate sponsor in Anheuser-Busch, making Bud Light the league’s exclusive beer sponsor for 3 years. ProElite and CBS announced a multi-year partnership to put EliteXC events on broadcast TV (though it reportedly was a time buy and not a rights-fee based deal), a huge breakthrough for the sport.

Both of these developments signify that marketers are starting to see MMA as a legitimate sport and platform for promotion. I think we’ll definitely see more networks and sponsors get involved in the next year or so.

You can read more about the UFC-Bud Light deal here and the ProElite-CBS deal here.

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The number 10 is many things.

• 9+1
• Number of fingers most people have
• The number of heads Ravana has in Ramayana (yes, you can only see 9 heads in the picture, but this doesn’t matter)

You’re probably wondering where I’m going with all this “10 stuff.” This is the 10th edition of the Sports Business Carnival (if you’re new here, this carnival is a bi-weekly roundup of articles from the best sports business bloggers out there). Check out the links below for some great reads.

Kenji Summers at Sports Agent Blog writes that entertainment guru Jay-Z will start a new advertising agency with long-time friend Steve Stoute. Translation Advertising will help connect brands with multicultural audience, which represents about $2 trillion in buying power, according to the article.

At Biz of Basketball, Maury Brown has an interview with Celtics President Rich Gotham, who discusses the the pressure to have a good team in Boston, finding a presenting sponsor and future plans to focus on content and programming. Very interesting article.

We’ve heard a lot (ok, more than just a lot) about the Roger Clemens saga recently. At The Word on Employment Law, John Phillips offers his take on the situation in a post titled, “Rocket Man.”

CNBC’s Darren Rovell writes that NASCAR needs Dale Jr. to win–for the sake of its TV ratings and sponsors such as adidas and Amp energy drink.

At MMA Payout, Adam Swift presents “Cuban’s HDNet Fights Enters the UFC-Couture War.” For those of you who don’t know the background, Randy Couture (UFC heavyweight champion) doesn’t want to fight with UFC anymore. UFC says he is still under contract and doesn’t want him to fight elsewhere. HDNet Fights wants the court to decide when Couture’s contract expires, so they can potentially plan to set up what could be one of the biggest fights in MMA history - Couture vs. Fedor Emelianenko.

Emmett Jones at Sports Business Digest writes about the NBA’s potential expansion into Europe.

Lastly, I put together a few notes/thoughts from the Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit.

That’s all for the 10th edition of the carnival. Thanks for participating.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates so you don’t miss anything.

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I’m going to go ahead and warn you that this post doesn’t really have a theme or singular focus.

Forbes has a great piece on Nike that discusses its evolution from mass marketing and organizing the company by products (shoes, shirts, hats, etc) to micromarketing, focusing on the consumer and organizing the company by sports. The article also talks about how Nike really focuses on testing and getting the details right, in addition to touching on its expansion into China (Nike is outfitting 22 of 28 Chinese Olympic teams for the Beijing Games). Definitely check out the article if you’re interested in sports business and one of the most popular brands in the industry.

Another thing the article briefly mentions is Nike+. From both a technology and community perspective, Nike+ is a great idea. The Nike+ system requires an iPod Nano and shoes with a special chip that allows runners to track their times, distance, and calories burned. Runners can upload their stats to the Nike+ website and compare them with other runners. The website takes advantage of runners’ competitive natures and allows people to join or issue challenges to their friends or other Nike+ runners. It’s also got a link to the Nike Running Blog, which features interviews, reasons to run, and other running content. Best of all, it’s regularly updated (though it’s not exactly a true “blog” because it doesn’t allow people to comment or discuss posts).

It still amazes me how ingrained Nike is in our sports culture–and just about every sport. Just a few years ago they didn’t have any presence in golf. Now they design shoes for Tiger Woods and sell them for $220. Spending $2 billion a year on marketing helps…

It will be interesting to see how Nike handles the Under Armour challenge. It seems they are both competing intensely for high school sports athletes–especially football players. Under Armour has Click-Clack and Nike has its Leave Nothing commercials. See the links below for a comparison.

Nike

vs.

Under Armor

Which commercial do you prefer?

Things should get even more interesting later this year when Under Armour releases its Prototype shoes, which I’m sure will be heavily promoted. Will UA’s new shoes be a hit with athletes? What do you think?

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The biggest game so far in college basketball’s regular season takes place tonight - UNC vs. Duke in Chapel Hill. The game will be the first of two matchups between two of the NCAA’s most storied basketball programs. It’s a big game just because it’s Duke-Carolina, but tonight will be even bigger because both teams are highly ranked (The AP has Duke at #2 and UNC at #3). Both teams are also vying for a top seed in the East and the ability to play close to home (Charlotte) for the East Regionals of the NCAA Tournament.

Tickets to this game are always in high demand and almost impossible to find. There aren’t even any tickets listed for sale on RazorGator.

Besides generating a huge amount of interest among college hoops fans, this game is big because it pits two of the most valuable teams (from a business perspective) against each other. According to Forbes, the Tar Heels basketball team is the most valuable in the country. Forbes estimates that the Heels are worth $26 million, with a profit of about $16.9 million. Duke’s team is ranked fifth and is valued at $22.6 million with about $11.1 million in profit.

I’m hoping my Tar Heels can pull it off tonight, but it’s going to be tough with UNC PG Ty Lawson out or limited with a high-ankle sprain. If Lawson doesn’t play, look for backup Quentin Thomas to play a major role. We might just have to say “In Q we trust” and cross our fingers…

GO HEELS!

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