NFL Global Marketing Roundup

The NFL's looking beyond its red white and blue borders, and whether there's been much success to their endeavors - well, I'll leave it up to you..

Story 1: American Style Olive Shaped Ball goes to China
Story 2: Europe doesn't seem to taking to NFL too well. I wonder why. Rugby anyone?

More WWE Slamming Over Benoit Episode

Two extremely gripping pieces of commentary about the fallout from the Benoit Murder-suicide.

The first one takes a hard look at the 'sports entertainment' industry and profession, whereas the second turns the issue on its head and takes a tougher stand on sports media coverage on the entire debacle.

Also, a curious cameo appearance by wikipedia that led to some short-lived but no-less-wild speculation

...While Cadbury schteppes on the Gas

Cadbury Schweppes' America Division launches 'Accelerade' as a direct competitor to Pepsico's sports drink behemoth Gatorade and Coke's Powerade. Powered by a furious media (new and old) advertising campaign courtesy Y&R San Fransisco, they look all set to take on the already-well-positioned and dominant players in the field.

Full story from NYT.

Gatorade goes to the Dogs

Money Quote:
"When you have science created by the team that created the most well-known and best-selling sports drink in the world, people become interested"

So Spike gets no say in this whatsoever?

What's in a Name?

A lot for sure - especially when it comes to American sports franchise marketing - and apparently not just limited to the major league squads.

Here's a funny story about recent attempts at nomenclature nomination for a Minor League Basketball team from the capital city of the Hawkeye State.

Can you really blame them when names like Iowa 'Barnstormers' and 'Lumberkings' were already taken?

Technorati Test

Technorati Profile

Benoit Murder spells Raw Deal for WWE

The world of "Sports Entertainment" has been thrown into a bit of a tizzy to say the least, what with another wrestler biting the dust - though this time it was no accident. Ironically, the wrestling entertainment giants were running a two-week feature called 'Death Angle', involving the 'fake' death of Board Chairman Vince McMahon.

The death of Chris Benoit (and his family) came as a shock to wrestling fans and colleagues alike, causing the producers at WWE to replace their Monday Night Raw edition of the Death Angle series with a three hour tribute to the 'Rabid Wolverine'. While more viewers than usual might have tuned in to pay their respects to the deceased ex-intercontinental champion, grief turned to anger over the next 24 hours as news unfolded of the case being dubbed a double-murder suicide. As police reports confirmed Chris Benoit's hand in taking the lives of his wife and child, before taking his own, critics lashed out at the organization for its part to play in celebrating a murderer on monday night.

It is indeed quite the spot of bother that the WWE is having to deal with, for if claims are true that they had no idea about the murder prior to the investigations, they had little choice but to air a tribute rather than an insensitive 3 hour episode faking their chairman's death. As more theories behind the tragedy come forward, including accusations of steroid abuse going unchecked in the profession, this has surely one Backlash that the WWE can't be too thrilled about having to deal with.

Full story unfolds here
See Also: WaPo's report on the fallout control

Sportstar On Net ... Not !!

India's not a particularly sporting country so its little surprise that their sports media is not yet big business on the lines of Politics, Bollywood, IT and even err.. Big Business!


Its a pity then that the only quality sports magazine in the country The Sportstar has little or no online presence. The weekly magazine, owned by The Hindu group of publications has some of the best sports writers in the country but apparently some of the worst web designers! The name - sportstaronnet.com is incredibly Web 0.5 (though in line with other group URLs like hinduonnet.com and flonnet.com).

Forget RSS feeds, there's no sign of any dynamic or 2.0-ish content. The least they could do is update the site daily with news items from the main paper. After all, the Sportstar team is a subset of The Hindu's sports desk. The only monetization seems to be from Google ads and all the content is classic 'shovelware' from the magazine - even down to the poster! They could easily offer the image in desktop wallpaper size - many an Indian sporting fan would download it just for nostalgia value!

With some talented new writers like Ram Mahesh and Vijay Parthasarathy and old hands like Nirmal Shekhar, a couple of blogs wouldn't hurt either. Right now, its just a stop-over for people too cheap to subscribe to the magazine!