Sports Biz

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I’ve received plenty of e-mail and tweets over the last couple days asking me about the Super Bowl ticket market that’s currently seeing tickets listed and sold in the $4,000 range.

So let’s address some of the myths and facts.

Myth: It’s All About The Teams

This is not true. Team and tradition play a big part but it’s not the only factor. Over the last five years, the highest average Super Bowl ticket was for Super Bowl XLI (Colts-Bears). The average price was $3,495 thanks in part to the Bears contingent. But the Packers-Steelers ticket last year was $500 less. Sure, the Steelers had been just two years before, but the Packers fanbase isn’t too shabby.

Fact: Corporate America Matters

Fans often forget that corporate America can significantly affect Super Bowl ticket prices. If teams come from wealthy areas (Read: New York & Boston), executives with corporate expense accounts could drive up prices for Joe Fan. It’s not just about businesspeople who are fans. It’s that they can do business at the game as well with clients who are fans.

Myth: The City Doesn’t Matter  » Read More

When I’ve gotten a trainer in my life, I’ve done it for two reasons. The first reason is obvious. They get me to work out harder. The second reason always sounds a little strange to people: I’m paying someone a lot of money, so I have to show up.

Yifang Zhang studied Behavioral Economics and found out that my second thought is actually quite rational and common. So instead of having people pay a trainer at all, Zhang decided to have people fine themselves if they didn’t show up at the gym. The result? An app called Gym-Pact.

Source: gym-pact.com Get your App to the gym! Gym-Pact is an  App that fines you for missing the gym and rewards you for showing up.

Here’s how it works. You determine your weekly gym schedule and an amount of money you’re willing to pay if you don’t meet your commitment. A locator device makes sure you check in, so you’re not cheating. And if you don’t show up, and stay there for 30 minutes, your credit card that you provided gets debited.  » Read More

1. Weekly Activity Email

An automated email that captures weekly activity, such as tweets, retweets, @ mentions, new followers, new follows and more. It would allow for users to get a weekly snapshot of their interaction with the social media site.

2. Free Bird

Twitter must make inactive handles available for those people interested in using them.

Acknowledging that Twitter is only as valuable as its users, the social media company should set a date when all accounts that have not been logged into in the last 12 months (not since the last Tweet since some people consume content and do not create content) are made available to the general public.

A handle that fits set criteria can be claimed by visiting the profile and clicking "claim username," which will kick an email to the current owner to give them 72 hours to login and verify that the user still exists. If they fail to respond within 72 hours, the person that claimed the user name is awarded it.

3. URL-Shortener with Basic Metrics

We all measure our social media success by the amount of people who view / consume the content we create and curate. Twitter needs to incorporate a URL shortener (which allows users to customize the after-slash URL component) and provide users with a simple dashboard to view the number of clicks and a list of those users who clicked on each link.

4. Member-Since-Date

Here’s a simple addition to a user profile – how long has the person been using Twitter? This tiny piece of information puts all other relevant Twitter numbers – followers, following, number of tweets – in perspective. Remember, we all started out with 0 tweets and 0 followers. We realize this is on Twitter for Blackberry, but we want to see this on Twitter.com.

5. Photo Sharing

Twitter content is largely driven by sharing images and it's about time that experience is enhanced. Here are three suggestions:

• It’s a social experience – allow users to tag other users via their Twitter handles.
• The life experiences we share on Twitter aren’t always captured by sharing one photo – give us the ability to create photo galleries for easy sharing.
• Light photo editing tools (rotate, re-size, crop, etc.).

6. Hide and Seek

Your tweets ARE your bio. Twitter users can either feature their “bio” openly or interact with replies (and, in turn, “clog” their timeline). When considering adding a new follow to our timeline, we often visit a prospect’s profile to get a feel for their most recent activity and to view their original content (which is the only real way to see if someone is follow-worthy). So, we need the ability to hide someone’s @replies when viewing a profile to seamlessly view their original content. I think people also want the ability to hide @replies from their main timeline too when they follow the people having the conversation, but don’t want to see it.

7. Access to Archives

Twitter only gives users access to their most recent 3,000 tweets. Want to make a book out of all your tweets? Most of you can’t. It’s time we have searchable access to all of our posted tweets. The URLs to all posted tweets exist – we should have the ability to find and see them.

8. [Comment] RT:

Twitter encourages you to share other’s content, but isn’t interested in your comments. Having the one-click ability to RT with a comment only enhances the sharing experience. (Bonus: seamless ability to email a tweet would be nice too.)

9. Group DMs

From time to time, a “conversation” on Twitter turns private (and there are a myriad of reasons why messages aren’t worthy or appropriate for public consumption). If the private conversation is between more than two users, the option to DM is null and void. Being limited in the amount of characters we have in DMs is one thing; not being able to “group chat” via DMs is another.

10. Better Notifications

When users receive a DM or @reply they should be notified of this no matter what page they're viewing while browsing Twitter. Using a Facebook-esque notification system would improve the user experience and ensure that all interaction is known.

11. Better Search

Twitter's search engine is woefully inefficient. Twitter has to understand that people curate the site for content. An advanced search that allows Tweets to sort by Tweets and topics is needed. Just as important is the ability to sort people by topics identified in their bio. When people ask me how to find good follows on a particular topic, I tell them to type in the topic and Twitter in Google. That shouldn't be.

12. Proprietary Ranking System

Sure, there's Klout.com to tell you how effective of a Tweeter someone is and you can put Klout in Tweetdeck, but Twitter should really have its own ranking system to show its followers who is best at using Twitter.

What shouldn’t change? The people who I love bouncing social media ideas off of. Much thanks to @nickbegley, @burnSTYLEr, @merkenyon and @EliFromBrooklyn.

As many of you know, I’ve been a strong advocate of letting student-athletes tweet and post to Facebook.

Forget about the freedom part , it’s simply a part of living life these days. So I’ve blasted coaches who tell their players that they are no longer allowed to tweet or use Facebook.

I understand why the coach does this: There are more problems that could occur. So instead of teaching kids how to use social media and learning to trust their athletes, they just say no. But it is taking away an educational experience and an important mode of communication for the athletes now and for the future.  » Read More

In the past couple years, the folks at adidas have done an incredible job bringing the Reebok brand back from the dead following a lack of producing anything special after the $3.8 billion acquisition was approved in January 2006.

Its ZigTech and RealFlex lines have been successful and it got as much as it could out of the toning space before the FTC fined the company for $25 million for unsubstantiated claims related to its EasyTone shoes.

Source: Reebok.com Reebok has aligned itself with an already established workout brand, CrossFit, and hopes to ride the tremendous momentum of the strength and conditioning workout.

The next step for Reebok is clearly aligning its brand with groundbreaking workout programs. In 2009, the brand launched a workout program called JUKARI with Cirque du Soleil. It failed to garner mass following. For a second attempt, Reebok has aligned itself with an already established workout brand, CrossFit, and hopes to ride the tremendous momentum of the strength and conditioning workout.

“This is the single biggest initiative we’ve focused on,” said Matt O’Toole, Reebok’s chief marketing officer. “This is consistent with our brand point of view. Just like we were part of women’s fitness decades ago, fitness is where we want to be.”  » Read More

Tom Brady and Tim Tebow are plenty marketable. But the two quarterbacks have two prominent deals that aren't exactly in slam-dunk endorsement categories: men's shoes and underwear.

Getty Images Tom Brady

For Brady, his biggest deal right now is with Australian boot brand UGG. The company has been doing men's boots for decades, but Brady's endorsement last year started drawing attention to that fact. While UGG parent company, Deckers

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[DECK  Loading...      ()   ], said its 2011 revenue would rise 33 percent over 2010 levels and UGG's third quarter sales rose 47 percent, Sterne Agee analyst Sam Poser downgraded the stock last month speculating that Fall sales have been disappointing.

But it's not clear how much that has to do with sales of men's shoes. There are plenty of mixed messages.

 » Read More

Source: Amazon.com Tim Tebow's, “Through My Eyes,”was the best-selling sports book of the year. Nielsen Bookscan says that 185,000 books were sold in 2011.

Nathan Whitaker stood in the back at a book signing in Gainesville and watched his co-author, and subject, Tim Tebow sign books for fans.

“I’ve sat next to Tony Dungy and one in every 20 come through in tears,” said Whitaker, a former capologist for Jacksonville Jaguars and Tampa Bay Buccaneers who went on to write three best-selling books with Dungy. “With Tim, it was like every other person. People would literally come up to touch him while he was signing their book and some kids would be unable to move.”

Over the past year, Tim Tebow has grabbed the attention of the sports world. So much so, that his book “Through My Eyes,” written with Whitaker, was the best-selling sports book of the year.

Nielsen Bookscan says that 185,000 books were sold, besting "ESPN: The Uncensored History, which sold 115,000 books in hardcover in 2011. But Lisa Sharkey, Harper Collins’ senior vice president and creative director, who acquired the book says sales are much higher than that number reflects.  » Read More

Getty Images

There's a lot at stake in Monday night's BCS National Championship game.

Especially for Les Miles.

The LSU coach will get a $5,880,000 bump in salary should his Tigers prevail over Nick Saban's Alabama Crimson Tide.

It's a tremendous bonus that is more lucrative because of Saban himself and it's the second time Miles would benefit from Saban's high salary. When LSU won the BCS National Championship after the 2007 season, its head coach Les Miles received one of the biggest bonuses in coaching history: $11,586,000.

Why did he make so much?  » Read More

Buffalo Wild Wing

As many of you know, I'm quite the foodie. I also love the business aspect of reporting. So when public businesses report earnings, I always page through line items & quarterly call transcripts to see what interesting nuggets I can find.

Buffalo Wild Wings

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[BWLD  Loading...      ()   ] is a favorite establishment of sports fans and I had previously gleaned some interesting information about its business. Thanks to the fact that the threat of the NFL and NBA lockouts are over, the 800 restaurant chain hit all time stock highs in late December. Wanting to delve a little bit deeper, I asked the company's marketing team if they could answer questions I was always curious about.  » Read More

The last week of the calendar year is traditionally the Super Bowl for car dealers. And Bill Doraty, who owns a single Kia dealership in Medina, 30 miles south of Cleveland, is doing his part to try to make it even bigger.

Photo by: jab2980 Bill Doraty, who owns a single Kia dealership in Medina, 30 miles south of Cleveland, says if the Browns shut out the Pittsburgh Steelers this Sunday, everyone who bought a Kia at his dealership this week gets their car for free.

If the Cleveland Browns shut out the Pittsburgh Steelers this Sunday, everyone who bought a Kia at his dealership this week gets their car for free.

“I’ve done a lot of marketing and I’m great at copying others,” Doraty told CNBC. “I’ve seen these promotions in the past and I know they get attention.”

They’re also pretty reasonable from an insurance standpoint. Doraty has to pay about 1.7 percent of the total sales for the week to the insurance company. Estimating that he hopes to sell about 75 to 100 cars, and with an average price of roughly $22,000, he says he’ll probably be paying about $30,000 in insurance for the promotion.

It’s admittedly a longshot.  » Read More

Brendon Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images Although technology and energy make up 57 percent of the deals this year, the most successful IPO, based on price appreciation, is GNC that went public back in April for $16 a share and is up nearly 75 percent since then.

When GNC

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[GNC  Loading...      ()   ] hit the market in April, it had its fair share of critics. Apollo, its former owner, unsuccessfully tried to take it public twice. Even more recently, the company failed to complete a prospective merger deal with Chinese buyer Bright Food.

The company had $1 billion in debt and it was competing in the tremendously competitive vitamin and supplement space, which seemingly had shrinking margins.

But GNC has emerged as the top IPO in a year where six percent less money was raised than 2010. Of the 125 deals priced in the US in 2011, GNC is the top performer through the close on December 27, gaining almost 83% from its IPO filing price of $16 on April 1.

GNC narrowly edged data security company Imperva

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[IMPV  Loading...      ()   ], who was up 82 percent on the year. More well-known names like LinkedIn

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[LNKD  Loading...      ()   ] (up 39.7%), Dunkin Brands

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[DNKN  Loading...      ()   ] (up 31%), Zillow

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[Z  Loading...      ()   ] (up 17.2%) and Groupon

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[GRPN  Loading...      ()   ] (up 15.3%).

So why did GNC do so well?  » Read More

In November, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Manny Harris got into a Cryon-X machine on Nike’s

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[NKE  Loading...      ()   ] campus in Beaverton, Ore. When he came out, he had a nasty freezer burn on the side of his right foot.

“I saw the pictures of it and I said, ‘Oh, my god,’” Cavs coach Byron Scott told the News-Herald.

Unable to be seen by team physicians because the lockout was still in place, Harris reportedly tried to let it heal on its own. The burn set him back so much, he couldn’t compete for his job and was waived by the team last week when the Cavs decided to pick undrafted rookie Mychel Thompson over the former University of Michigan star.  » Read More