1) What’s Michael Rubin’s next billion dollar product?
He’s on the march towards Fanatics’ fourth, joining merchandise (currently sitting around $7 billion in revenue), collectibles and trading cards ($4 billion) and gaming ($2 billion) and is on record as saying it could be a new Fanatics credit card, which is in the works. Or it might it one day be Fanatics Studios, launched in a blaze of projects this week as part of a collaboration with Michael Ratner’s OBB Studios, including tie-ups with LA28, Tom Brady’s flag football tournament, the ESPY Awards, ESPN, WWE and MLB. Fanatics has long been tipped for a substantial move into the content-media space, so monitor this one closely.
2) What’s next on the table for Evangelos Marinakis?
The Nottingham Forest owner-cum-Greek shipping magnate is no stranger to a multi-sport model as his recent investment in a Netball Super League franchise testifies. At one stage he was also interested in investing in the Trent Rockets Hundred franchise, before ultimately electing not to make a bid. Not sure if tabletop warfare is up his street, but he could probably do worse than take a close look at how Nottingham has ended up as the Warhammer capital of the world.
3) How big can the Grand Slams get?
The Australian Open begins officially on Monday, but, frankly, it’s hard to tell. This week – a mix of qualifiers, exhibitions and fan-friendly activations – has been cannily (maybe a touch too cannily) branded as ‘Opening Week’ and attracted a remarkable 29,261 for the opening day on Monday (adults pay AUS$20, kids go free), significantly up from the previous qualifying day one attendance of just over 7,000. It’s the continuation of a trend that has seen Craig Tiley in Australia, the French Tennis Federation in Paris and USTA in New York push the boundaries and effectively turn Grand Slams into three-week affairs, driving more revenue and occupying yet more of the crowded tennis calendar. Wimbledon will surely follow suit when its expansion project is complete. James, by the way, will be adding to those attendance numbers when he arrives in Melbourne for the business end of the tournament in a couple of weeks, before springing over to Brisbane for our sports performance-meets-business mash-up on 4th and 5th February. Do send him a note if you’re in the vicinity and have any spare sunscreen.
4) What are you searching for this year (and more to the point, how are you doing it)?
A personal favourite trends report at this time of year is the Reuters Institute’s journalism, media and technology trends and predictions. It’s worth a read in full but AI’s the headline, inevitably, and, in related news, the views on ‘traditional’ search are stark. Over the next three years, publishers anticipate traffic from search engines – primarily Google - to fall by over 40%, upending the way we all distribute and access information and media, and how that information is monetised. The competition to be the internet’s front page is on.
5) Are we witnessing the end of the winter Olympic host city branding model?
The Winter Olympics is three weeks away in Milan-Cortina and for those on the ground in Italy it’s set to be a complicated event, with long distances between venues and a split set-up. Such is the future of the Winter Olympics, it seems. Indeed, a look at future hosts – and the way the Games will be branded – indicates the era of the single host city seems to be over. After Milan-Cortina, a region, the French Alps, will take centre stage in 2030. Four years later, organisers in Salt Lake City have decided the branding will be state-focused, Utah 2034, and this week the preferred bid for 2038 from the Swiss Olympic Committee revealed plans to stage what will effectively be a national Games, a $2.76 billion multi-city, multi-resort project – cleverly designed to spread the budgetary load and potentially avoid any pesky referenda along the way. City-region-state-country is the pattern, amid a diminishing group of potential winter hosts.
6) Whatever happened to Gianni Infantino’s call for every country in the world to name a stadium after Pele?
Nothing to link to here as nobody seems to have mentioned it again, after the Fifa President shared the idea in the aftermath of the Brazilian great’s death three years ago - I remembered it out of the blue on the train the other day and thought one of you there might know.
7) Does London need another indoor arena?
The NBA bunting is out on Oxford Street this week, ahead of Sunday’s game between the Grizzlies and the Magic at the O2 Arena, part of the Euro double-header that begins in Berlin on Thursday evening. The NBA top brass will be in town for the game and to share more details of the much-vaunted NBA Europe concept. London is one of the marquee cities targeted by the league and the AEG-operated O2 Arena would presumably be first choice to become the home of a new franchise. But the league will also be closely monitoring plans for a new 15,000 basketball-specific arena in the city – precise location so far unidentified – which is being spearheaded by the new Lithuanian owners of the London Lions, Tesonet. Trivandi and The Sports Consultancy are on the case with feasibility and viability studies, for a project being baked into the Mayor of London’s ‘Basketball Taskforce’.
