The 88 Marketing Blog

I attended the IMG World Congress of Sports for the first time this week held in Laguna Niguel.  This turned out to be a great networking opportunity and exceeded my expectations.  The impressive list of attendees included Presidents, CEO’s, CMO’s, senior executives and a number of sports industry legends.  IMG and the Sports Business Journal […]

March Madness Facts & Figures: All 67 games are available on TV, on-line and mobile 6.45 million brackets submitted on ESPN (8.9% increase over 2011) 35 million people taking part in office pools according to NCAA 8.4 million hours spent at work watching games (consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas) March Madness On Demand received […]

ESPN to stream conference basketball tournament games on Facebook – In the never ending pursuit of the highly coveted 18 to 35 year olds, ESPN will stream over 200 live conference tournament college basketball games on their Facebook page.  This is further evidence of the “TV everywhere” shift from content providers.  http://lat.ms/AxhDNz Along these lines, […]

Cristiano Ronaldo App Takes Soccer and Social Media Superstar Mobile – As apps continue to dominate the new media landscape, it makes sense the world’s most followed athlete will now have his own.  Ronaldo who plays for Real Madrid has over 40.4 million Facebook fans and 7.3 million followers on Twitter.  http://on.mash.to/w5sj0c The next two […]

Business of “Linsanity” – Jeremy Lin’s meteoric rise to stardom is not only impacting the Knicks record on the court. It is having a profound business effect in a variety of places. MSG stock reached a 52 week high and is up 7% since Feb 7th (Lin’s first start), TV ratings are up 70% on […]

Super Bowl post mortem – Here are some highlights from SB46. It was the #1 watched show of all time breaking last year’s record with 111.3 million viewers. It broke the record for live streaming of a sporting event with 2.1 million views although it appeared some browsers like Safari experienced difficulties in the beginning of the game.

Super ‘Social’ Bowl and battle of the Ads – Marketing executives and fans of the show within the show (e.g. Super Bowl ads) will not have to wait until Monday morning to find out who won the advertising battle.  Several sites and apps will allow fans to vote or rank the ads in real time.  […]

Super Bowl ads take on a life of their own – With an estimated 60% of the 100+ million Super Bowl viewers using some form of a second screen (e.g. tablet or mobile device) while watching the game, it is not surprising to see advertisers going to great lengths to leverage their media buy and […]

NHL Rinksters – Once again the NHL is aggressively marketing to the next generation of fans with new media.  They recently launched a new on-line game for kids called NHL Rinksters.  There are free and paid premium versions of this virtual world where kids can create their own avatars, win prizes and go on different […]

Mission Control: NJ Devils monetize social media efforts – One year after launching the Mission Control social media hub at the Prudential Center, New Jersey Devils officials say the team has begun to monetize the program, producing $500,000 in revenue from new and renewed marketing partnerships, according to Rich Krezwick, president of Devils Arena Entertainment.  “Mission Control […]