CYNOPSISSPORTS
04.11.16
Good morning. It’s Monday April 11, 2016, and this is your first early morning Sports briefing.
Now over a year old, Premier Boxing Champions is embracing year two with a buffet of video content designed to reintroduce and connect fans to the sport. Recently, PBC revealed that by leveraging Facebook and Facebook Live, television’s top boxing series saw spikes via dedicated content on the platform designed to offer a “fan-first, behind-the-scenes home” that served up highlight and training videos, interviews, and last month featured an exclusive 12 round exhibition match on the PBC page. The result saw growth among both millennial and Boomer audiences, reaching a weekly audience of up to 10 million in 2015. In the final quarter of the year, PBC began to post regular highlights with over 8 million complete views of its 30-second view highlight video clips, which are posted immediately following the broadcast.
Ahead of the promotion’s upcoming slate, which includes April 18 on NBC, April 29 on Spike and April 30 on FOX/FOX Deportes, Cynopsis Sports asked Alex Balfour, Chief Digital Officer, Haymon Boxing, about its growth, the reasoning behind strategic shifts and what we can expect moving forward.
Balfour on PBC’s launch: I was the first hire, so that probably speaks priorities on the importance of digital here and we set out initially to build a website as an anchor so people could find out about us and when fights were taking place. We also worked with some fights to help build their presence and voice on social. We took the view that the number one goal we had on the web was to be the official voice and we felt that we had the opportunity to help fighters make the most of their presence socially. So we build a small team in Vegas and we assigned social analysts to about 30 of our key fighters to support them in making content and to have a clearer and more coherent voice.
On boxing and the Internet: We knew that if anybody wanted to find anything about boxing at all, they would go to the Internet. One of the things we’ve spent a lot of time doing was some rigorous search engine optimization work around all the terms the we knew that people looked for in boxing that were relevant to us as well and we built the site around those terms. Now, we believe that we are the number one or two site in traffic based on the amount of search volume that we’ve managed to capture because of the positioning that we’ve done. We discovered that amongst the top 30 or 40 boxers that people had been searching for, at least half of them are either retired or no longer alive. So, that gave us concrete evidence that since boxing moved exclusively to PPV in most markets in the mid-90s, it had fallen in visibility and most of the known names in boxing were no longer fighting. So, that was one challenge for us.
On Facebook Live: We’ve been pretty active across all the social networks and there were some things from that that caused us to change direction and gave us pause for thought. We ran comparative numbers across all of the active networks, for both paid and unpaid, and we found that Facebook has some of the most detailed data for us to dive into. What’s been really impressive has been the ability to reach a really big audience, and the ability to test different types of content with that audience. What emerged over that span was the video has become the most important content type. So, we moved more and more to promoting our fights using video and then, as of the last quarter of last year, we started cutting highlights across all of our fights and then cutting highlights specifically for all of our networks. We discovered that while boxing has a lower visibility than it did because of the paywalls, and that there was still an appetite for the sport. We discovered that there was a high propensity and higher interest in boxing amongst African-American and Hispanic male audiences and that while there was an affinity for boxing amongst the 55+ generation, there was also an interest in boxing in the under-24s. That is significant, because they are the most enthusiastic fans. There is a need to the audience to be reintroduced to the sport and the best way to do that was to show them fighting so we’ve been shifting away from static content to video to push fighters fighting.
On the future: We’ve done six or seven live workout videos, along with live interviews and press conferences on Facebook Live. In mid-March, we debuted a live fight on the platform, which brought in around 150,000 unique viewers and we think there is more opportunity to do stuff live. In addition, packaging clips and highlights has been working really well. We also realize that, except for the really big fights, to ask people sit down in front of a large screen and commit an hour or two of their time on a Saturday night to watch you sport is asking a lot. So we realize that some people would rather watch it later, or on Sunday morning or even on Monday when they are at work, and we want to make sure that they have the opportunity to watch it if they can’t watch it live. Clearly, however, there is an opportunity to deliver live more often, or even exclusively live, to deepen the range of what we can offer.
ON THE AIR
With the spotlight on Jordan Spieth, ESPN’s ratings for the Masters on Friday drew a 2.2 household score, averaging 3.060 million viewers, according to fast national data from Nielsen. That marks growth among both rating and viewership, up from a 2.1 rating and an average of 2.952 million viewers in 2015 and a 1.8 rating and an average of 2.465 million viewers in 2014. Greenville-Spartanburg ranked as the top metered market with a 3.9 rating for Friday’s telecast, followed by Louisville, Ky., at 3.7 and Columbus, Ohio, at 3.6. Fort Myers-Naples, Fla., Knoxville, Tenn., and Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla., tied at 3.5.
MotoAmerica locked in an exclusive multi-year contract with beIN Sports, beginning with the 2016 MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North American Road Racing Championship that ran over the weekend. Fans can now access exclusive content every race on the channel and streaming service beIN Sports Connect on Saturday mornings, including Superbike, Supersport, Superstock 600, and the KTM RC Cup. "We’ve been working on this for a long time," MotoAmerica President and three-time 500cc World Champion Wayne Rainey said. "Our fans, teams, riders and the motorcycle industry have wanted live television and we’ve been able to put this deal together with beIN SPORTS. The commitment beIN SPORTS is bringing to the MotoAmerica Series will be second to none.
ESPN plays host to two historical games on Wednesday, lining up the Grizzlies/Warriors at 10:30p as the host team chases the all-time wins record. In addition, Kobe Bryant’s final game will run on ESPN2 at 10:30p as the Lakers host the Jazz.
Showtime is serving up a welterweight marathon, lining up three world title fights on May 21 in a tripleheader featuring five of the top-six super welterweights. The main event features Erislandy “The American Dream” Lara defending against Vanes “The Nightmare” Martirosyan. In addition, Jermall and Jermell Charlo will look to make history in co-featured bouts as the first twins to hold world titles in the same division as Jermall faces Austin “No Doubt” Trout while Jermell takes on John Jackson. The event is being promoted by Mayweather Promotions and TGB Promotions.
The Cynopsis Sports Awards are next week and the room as almost full! Click here now to claim your spot.
Major League Baseball renewed tied with beIN Sports for the 2016 season via a one season, deal that will see BeIN carry the league in France across its group of channels.
Root Sports debuted its new AT&T Sports Networks moniker over the weekend, when viewers spotted a new bug in the right hand corner of the TV screen instead of the traditional Root Sports logo, according to Awful Announcing. Root Sports Pittsburgh tweeted that “The corporate parent company has been rebranded from DIRECTV Sports Networks to AT&T Sports Networks. We’ll use the Root Sports brand as it is used today in marketing except that we will also communicate to viewers that Root Sports is now part of AT&T Sports Networks and this will be done via the bug and Network IDs.”
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE
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SPONSORSHIP & PROMOTION
Leading up to Kobe’s final game, the retiring star appeared in a new Apple commercial yesterday, dubbed Father Time, which featured Michael B. Jordan, who was “portraying” the future Hall of Famer by playing him in a fictional movie about Bryant’s life. The duo tap Apple TV to show career highlights and a film scene and can be found here.
10 communities are among the finalists for Kraft Hockeyville USA 2016. The Kraft Heinz search, in partnership with the NHL and NHLPA, saw more than a thousand local rink nominations across the country, with the first round of finalist voting beginning tomorrow. “We’re thrilled to see so many U.S. communities rally behind their local rinks and love of hockey, once again nominating more than 1,000 rinks across the country,” said Nina Barton, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Kraft Heinz. “The personal and passionate stories shared throughout the nomination process were truly inspiring, and demonstrate what Kraft Hockeyville™ USA is all about. We’re looking forward to watching hockey fans across America unite around these 10 finalists to select this year’s winner.”
DIGITAL & STREAMING
Round 1 of the Masters saw ESPN record the most-viewed Masters Round 1 ever on WatchESPN, with an average minute audience of 40,100 and 10.8 million total minutes viewed, both up 3% over 2015. Friday’s digital coverage, meanwhile, continued the trend to become the most-watched Masters Round 2 ever on WatchESPN with an average minute audience of 49,000 and 13.2 total minutes viewed, both up 76% over 2015.
Yahoo is launching Yahoo Finance Sportsbook, covering “the biggest business stories in sports, from athlete endorsement deals to brand scandals to product launches, as well as the increasing role of tech in sports, from streaming video to in-stadium apps to sports betting companies.” Daniel Roberts will bring in expert guests including sports marketing experts, player agents, and athletes to discuss the news of the moment.
ESPORTS/GAMING
Ahead of the Summer Olympics in Rio, eSports is marking its own territory at the event, with eGames launching a medal-only competition, with no prize money, for gamers. Each country will have the chance to enter their own eTeam with Britain, Canada, Brazil and USA already on board. According to the release, the first planned event will be a two-day pop up in Rio during the Olympics to showcase the eGames to the world of competitive gaming and attract partners.“We plan to take the very best practice from the sports world and bring it to competitive gaming. Our ambition is to bring credibly to the sector, dignity to the players and inspiration to the spectators.” – Chester King, Chief Marketing Officer, International eGames Group.
Newzoo released updated numbers for Twitch’s eSports viewership from July to December 2015, led by League of Legends, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Hearthstone and StarCraft II. Overall, 475.5 million hours of esports content was consumed across all game titles on the platform.
eSports is coming to SiriusXM, which announced a partnership with IGN to launch a new daily eSports satellite radio show dedicated to sports. IGN Esports Today debuts today at 7p and will air live every weekday on the SiriusXM Bleacher Report Radio channel with host Kevin Knocke.
ROSTER MOVES
Advantage International is shoring up its LA office with three new hires that Jared Blitz as Creative Director, Ryan Bemis as Account Manager and Annie Kineavy as Account Executive. “Our Los Angeles team expanding is a reflection of the hard and smart work that the entire team has put forth in developing award winning programs for our clients,” said Ann Bash, Vice President. “While the agency has grown 25% in headcount since 2014, we still maintain the small agency persona with hands-on leadership and accessibility.”
THE MAIN EVENT
Marlins/Mets on ESPN at 7p.
A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE
What Programmers & Marketers Need to Know About Snapchat
Cynopsis and our panel of industry experts from Innovid, Huge, MTV/Viacom and National Geographic Partners will be on-hand to advise you on the latest tools you need to engage young viewers and drive tune-in. In 90 minutes, learn to take advantage of the special marketing opportunities provided by Discover and Stories, and determine how and when to use them.
Register now:
http://www.cynopsis.com/?p=57172.
ON THIS DAY in 1921: The first live sports event on radio takes place via KDKA Radio, featuring a boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee.
In The Know:
Which New York Ranger has the record for all-time goals for the franchise? (Email Chris-Sports@cynopsis.com with your answer and be sure to include your name, company and city.)
Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: With which club did Hank Aaron end his MLB playing career? Answer: Milwaukee Brewers. Kudos: Jay Goldstein-AdMore/NY; Hector Calix-MEC/NY; Phyllis McQuillan-MSG Media/NY; Michael Dittelman-Dedicated Sports Marketing/NY; Tim Overmyer-20th TV/Atlanta; Peter Lasser-Lasser Productions/Atlanta; Michael G. Hawkins-Francis Marion University/Florence; Mark Altabe-Citibank, NA/Jersey City; Barb Throm- True Media/St. Louis; Kevin Micklo-Pinnacle Advertising/Chicago; Gretchen Brady-KTVT/Dallas; Jason Morrow/Houston; David Hauptman/Denver; Rick Pike-InterMedia Advertising/Woodland Hills; Jack Simmons-Fox Sports/LA; Alex Petrilli, Jr.-TiVo/San Jose; Rich Greene-FOX/LA; Mike Bridges-New West Broadcasting/Hilo.
Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | Sports @VegasandVine
04.11.16
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