BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Did our partnership assets reach the target audience or demographic? What is the broadcast media value of a jersey sponsorship? What is the impact on customer retention and acquisition? Those were the questions FlyQuest Sports was thinking about as the team headed into the 2018 North American League Championship Series (LCS) for League of Legends (LOL).
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Even though we have Block in our name, Block Six Analytics is not a blockchain company. However, we do see blockchain technology impacting our business in ways that are likely to surprise many in the sports industry. More specifically, blockchain could alter sports media and sponsorship in counterintuitive ways.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Famed management consultant and professor Peter Drucker is arguably most well-known for the axiom, “What gets measured gets managed.” That is one reason why the results of a recent study of sports partnerships by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) are so surprising. The ANA found that only “37% of respondents reported having a standardized process for measuring their return on sponsorship.” So why are so few sponsorships being measured?
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Last week, FC Barcelona signed a “collaboration agreement” with Georgetown University to “explore possible avenues of cooperation within the framework of the Barça Innovation Hub.” Barcelona’s decision to explore this partnership provides an interesting new dynamic to a sports industry focused on innovation.
BY ROSS CHUMSKY AND ADAM GROSSMAN
Over-the-top distribution of sports content has dominated industry news over the past few weeks. Amazon’s new NFL deal to stream Thursday Night Football, Twitter’s new agreements to stream live content from various leagues, and ESPN’s decision to lay off approximately 100 employees all have arguably been focused on the changing consumption patterns of sports fans.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Twitter recently announced new or expanded content distribution deals with the NFL, WNBA, MLB, PGA Tour, and The Players Tribune. This includes having live games, highlights, pre / post game analysis, and Ask Me Anythings (AMAs) with athletes.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN AND ROSS CHUMSKY
For virtually every player not named Myles Garrett, tomorrow’s NFL Draft will be filled with uncertainty. It is not clear what number draft pick he will be or which team will select him. There is one thing, however, that these future NFL players do have virtual certainty about – they will know exactly how much they will be getting paid once they are drafted.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
The captain of a basketball team took a look at the game video and saw his squad getting dominated on the boards. He also saw his backup point guard turn over the ball too frequently for his team to win games consistently. The team decided to both add a new frontcourt player to help with the glass and to reduce the point guard’s minutes.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
“A tradition unlike any other” is now literally the trademark phrase of the Masters golf tournament teeing off this weekend in Augusta, Georgia. Fans from around the world enjoy seeing staples like Amen Corner, the azaleas that bloom around the greens, and the green jacket presentation at Butler Cabin during the unofficial start of spring at the Masters.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Could your glasses pay for themselves? In a manner of speaking, the World Surf League (WSL) and Visa would say yes. As part of the credit card company’s new official partnership with WSL’s Quiksilver and Roxy Pro Gold Coast (the first stop on the WSL Championship Tour), Visa is piloting payment-enabled sun glasses that “feature contactless payment capability and [eliminate] the need to carry cash or cards on the beach.”
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
The fact that the National Football League (NFL) generated $1.25 billion in sponsorship revenue this year is both impressive and surprising. The NFL’s revenue was 4.3% higher during the 2016 season than it was during the 2015 season even though the year-over-year regular season television ratings dropped by 9%, while the playoff ratings by 6%.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
In Monday’s episode of National Public Radio’s (NPR) Fresh Air Joseph Turow, Professor of Communications and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, ominously “Warns That Brick-And-Mortar Stores Are Watching You.”
PRESS RELEASE
Block Six Analytics (B6A) CEO Adam Grossman will be a speaker at the 2017 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston happening on March 3-4. Adam will be featuring B6A's work with Pepsi and the company's Media Analysis Platform (MAP) during his presentation.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
The Super Bowl is not just the most important game of each NFL season; it is typically considered the championship for advertising with the culmination of campaigns that have been months in the making. The fact that companies will pay at least $5 million for 30-second television advertising spots shows just how important the Super Bowl is to advertisers.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN / ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE SPONSORSHIP SPACE
How do you teach a computer to see? This idea still may seem far-fetched to many in the sports industry. Computer Vision, however, is a field of machine learning that already exists where programmers can train computers to recognize images, logos, and people in videos or images.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN AND ALBERTO RIOS
How do you teach a computer to see? For a large part of the twentieth century, leading scientists and mathematicians thought this was impossible. In late 1980s, however, the first neural network was created that programmers could train computers to recognize images, logos, and people in videos or images.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
On a recent episode of his “Waking Up” podcast, Sam Harris engages in a conversation with mathematical biologist David Krakauer on the evolution of math, information, and complex systems. One of the issues is the idea of numbers as cultural artifacts.
PRESS RELEASE
CEO Adam Grossman has published a new book chapter detailing the inner workings of sports sponsorships in the book Sport Business Analytics: Using Data to Increase Revenue and Improve Operational Efficiency. For more information about Adam's new book chapter (Chapter 10), check out CRC Press or Amazon.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
Major League Baseball (MLB) Winter Meetings are currently taking place and will last through December 8th in National Harbor, Maryland. MLB news will be focused on player transactions, including star pitcher Chris Sale being traded from the White Sox to the Red Sox. Numerous big free agent signings and player trades should occur throughout the course of the week.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN / ORIGINALLY POSTED ON FORBES
One of the most commented-on stories this year in sports business is that NFL year-over-year ratings have declined during the 2016 season. Some have wondered if this a long-term problem or a short-term issue caused by one-time events, including the 2016 presidential election the and the Chicago Cubs run to a World Series championship.
BY ADAM GROSSMAN
“Pollsters are turrible.” Most people today are sharing Charles Barkley’s stance on analytics given the results of the Presidential elections. More specifically, people are asking how experts in predicative analytics and mathematical modeling could have been so wrong about the outcome of the election. This seems to be a big problem with big data.
