Earlier this week the New York Times had an interesting article on sports broadcasting as viewed through the recent YouTube – IPL Season 3 experiment. While the financial winners and losers of the arrangement are not known, we do know that it was a win for many fans, including myself, who viewed matches and highlights. In fact, according to the article:

“About 50 million viewers tuned in to YouTube’s I.P.L. channel, 25 percent more than Google executives said they expected when they signed the deal in January. Approximately 40 percent of those viewers were outside India.”

Yesterday I wrote about Google’s Chrome ads and how there were more than just about speed. I think the Google has made another shrewd move with the [Google-owned] YouTube – IPL tie-up. Just as they are challenging Apple in the ‘creative’ space (again, see the Chrome ads), they are also positioning themselves to challenge the likes of ESPN (via their ESPN3 online sports channel).

By partnering with the IPL, YouTube not only has a direct plug in to the burgeoning Indian market, but also to the high end sponsors that come along with a property as massively popular as the IPL. Again from the NY Times article:

“Google signed on seven advertisers in India, including Coca-Cola and Hewlett-Packard, two in Britain and one in the United States, where YouTube showed matches 15 minutes after they finished.”

Now it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to see a vision of the future where fans from around the world are watching live sporting events via YouTube on their Nexus One Google phones. That really can’t be more than a couple years away at most. Just as Rupert Murdoch grabbed rights to English Premier League football to legitimize Sky Sports (and to some degree NFL rights to legitimize FOX in the U.S.), Google could tie up exclusive mobile rights as a trojan horse for the Nexus One.

Perhaps the biggest problem Google will face is that both the properties themselves as well as the current broadcast rights holders are organized or technologically savvy enough to make this work. They’re stuck in an out-dated system that often bundles mobile and television rights to the same outlets, regardless of their abilities to maximize the digital opportunities.

Ultimately Google, if they are indeed headed in this direction, may need to pay over the top for mobile or online rights. I’d reckon that’s a gamble worth taking, especially for a sport such as cricket which is on a global upswing right now

The traditions of sport are often a double-edged sword. They can be the foundation that carries a sport through times both good and bad, or they can be an albatross, dragging a sport down and preventing it from keeping up with the times. To paraphrase retail titan John Wanamaker, “Sport should keep half of its traditions, I just don’t know which half.”

Here’s a great case in point: This week marked the beginning of the English cricket season, which traditionally features a match between the previous season’s champion and the Marylebone Cricket Club played at Lord’s. This year, in an effort to re-invigorate the game the match was moved to Abu Dhabi. Better weather was cited as one of the key reasons for the change in venues. That alone is enough to ruffle the feathers of the English cricket traditionalist, but on top of that a new, pink ball was introduced for the match, as it was partly played at night under lights. At a time when cricket, with the exception of Twenty20, is seeing a decline in attendance these measures are being introduced to “keep up with the times.” Great story here from Abu Dhabi’s The National on the match and the controversy.

Now, while a pink ball may trouble the delicate sensibilities of some purists, it doesn’t fundamentally change the game (and I don’t want to get in an argument here about red v. white v. pink balls and the effects of play on the balls). But moving a official English match to a foreign country is a different matter. Let me give you two examples from U.S. sport to compare and contrast.

For just about as long as anyone could remember, the Cincinnati Reds played the first game of the Major League Baseball season. From Wikipedia:

In Cincinnati, Ohio, home of the sport’s first professional team, an annual parade marks an unofficial “city holiday” with young and old alike taking the day off to cheer on the Reds. For decades, the first pitch of every major league season officially took place in Cincinnati. Cincinnati remains the only team who always opens the season with a home game. The past decade has brought the introduction of a Sunday night opening game televised byESPN, as well as the staging of season-opening series in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Japan (with the current World Series champion as the “home” team against an opponent in the same league). The ensuing Monday brings Opening Day to numerous major league ballparks and the game that day in Cincinnati (the only team that always opens the season at home) is still observed throughout baseball as the “traditional opener.”

I think you can see the similarities here. It used to be easy. Season starts? Must be in Cincinnati on the first Monday. Now it’s on Sunday night, or in another country played by just about anybody. And nobody remembers or cares. Major League Baseball had a great tradition, one that meant something not just to the people of Cincinnati, but to any baseball fan. They threw that away for some quick bucks from ESPN. In a sport with a long season like baseball (April to October), you only have a couple of marquee moments: Opening Day, the All Star Game and the Playoffs and World Series. MLB has ceded one of those opportunities.

On the other end of the spectrum, the National Football League has also looked to play games in foreign markets, most recently they have established an annual game at Wembley Stadium. But rather than make this the season opener, they simply make it an early season game. So, rather than diminish an anchor event – the season opener – they have established a new anchor event. English cricket and Major League Baseball take note.

I think Twenty20 is a great addition to the sport of cricket, but it certainly shouldn’t replace proper test matches. I think playing real matches, not just exhibitions, on foreign soil is a great way to expand your fanbase, but it must be done strategically. It’s easy to mistake tradition for ‘being against progress,’ but tradition, especially in sport, has a very special place. Parents pass traditions down to their children who become the new generation of fans. Get rid of those traditions and soon sport just becomes another option alongside going to the movies or playing video games.

One of the finest traditions in sport takes place this weekend, but if you spend most of your time on Social Network sites you may not even know. The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, first held in 1829, will be contested this weekend. Yes, this is a classic sporting event that speaks to heritage and legacy, but in the year 2010, the lack of official Social Media engagement around The Boat Race is somewhat baffling, especially when one considers that there must be alumni from both those universities literally all around the globe who would be interested in following the event.

A look at The Boat Race website seems to indicate that they aren’t completely against modernity. The site looks nice enough, but there is a glaring lack of utilization of Social Networks. A quick scan shows no Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Flickr presence. Here’s how the organizers could be utilizing these platforms:

Twitter: Organize the existing conversations around The Boat Race by creating a Twitter account and the hashtag #theboatrace. This would be a great way to disseminate information about the race and provide an opportunity for sponsors to get engaged as well.

Facebook: There appears to be a fan created page for The Boat Race… that is in French. There is a page for The Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race that has more fans. This would be a great opportunity for both fans and former competitors to get together and share photos, comments and make connections.

YouTube: There actually is a YouTube channel for The Boat Race, but I couldn’t find mention of it on the official website. The official site has a section called Race Videos, but it doesn’t include or even mention the YouTube page. It’s difficult to tell on the YouTube channel how many videos there are, if there are comments, who other subscribers are and who else, if anyone, they are subscribed to. 

Flickr: Of course there are plenty of photos of The Boat Race, but no organized repository of official photos. Another huge opportunity missed as having an official group would not only be of great benefit to fans, but would also be a great way of driving traffic back to the official site.

Of course, other things such as a podcast and blog would be great additions as well. This is an event with an incredible history and with what I would imagine is a very highly sought after target audience (both spectators and former participants). I think the sponsors of this event are probably not getting maximum value for their pound and conversely, I’d wager that with an aggressive Social Media campaign The Boat Race could increase their sponsorship fees.

For those unable to attend the race this weekend, look for live coverage on BBC One and World Service

The signs have been there. From Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat to my own version: The (Sports Marketing) World Is Flat, it’s been clear that India was a country about to explode as a global leader from a sports perspective. Maybe not as participants – though that wouldn’t surprise me at all – but as viewers, and more importantly as consumers, the subcontinent (and the Indian diaspora) is poised to change the global face of sports marketing.

Anecdotal perhaps, but here are a couple of things to be aware of:

Earlier this year it was announced that YouTube would begin live streaming of select sports content. NFL football? English Premier League soccer? No, IPL cricket.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1dXehhLVl8[/youtube]

Yes, that’s a 4 hour 30 minute YouTube video. Cricket, more akin to religion than sport in India, is exploding all over the world. When ESPN bought the stellar cricket website, cricinfo, not many people here in the States took notice. Or rather, not many in the sports marketing world took notice. But ESPN saw what was happening. They saw that during the 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup cricinfo got it’s highest percentage of page views from India. No prizes for guessing that one, but which country came next? The United States. Shortly after the tournament ESPN announced the purchase, and even today the U.S. ranks fourth for audience percentage on cricinfo, trailing India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

As cricket’s popularity continues to grow internationally, India’s players, teams and sponsors figure to cash in and they’ll be able to thank YouTube for helping to spread the word. As of this writing, the IPL’s official YouTube page had more than 16 million channel views and more than 55,000 subscribers. By contrast, ESPN’s official YouTube channel has more than 33,000 subscribers.

Outside of soccer, cricket is perhaps the most popular sport in the world. If any other sport could make an argument it would be F1. Another sport in which India is poised to become a major player.

It started in 2005 when Narain Karthikeyan became the first Indian to secure a ride in F1. Leave it to consummate showman and legendary hustler Eddie Jordan to be the first to try to capitalize on India’s huge potential by giving Karthikeyan a chance. Ultimately, Karthikeyan may have been a pioneer, but he didn’t achieve breakout success. Since then an Indian-based team,Force India, fronted by billionaire Vijay Mallya, has joined the F1 circus and a new driver, Karun Chandhok, has also entered the F1 ranks (see this Forbes India post for more on Karun and F1 in India).

We know that Indians are fans of cricket, but what about F1? That’s not really their sport is it? Well, a good friend, Mansi Trivedi has recently been doing some research on the subject which she was kind enough to share with me. I was somewhat surprised after reading some interviews she did with F1 fans of Indian backgrounds. This certainly speaks to my ignorance, but they sounded like Italian, British or Brazilian F1 fans (what should they have sounded like?). They loved the drama, the speed and the technology. They watched with friends, had favorite drivers, and though most had never seen a race in-person, that was high on their ultimate wish lists. According to ESPN-Star Sports, there will be 22.6 million such fans for the entire 2010 F1 season in India. With the F1-branded iPhone mobile app seemingly an instant hit, the sport is well placed to take advantage of this new fan base and the technology they are using to stay connected to friends and family who are spread out across the globe.

Kunal Shah is calling 2010 The Year of Indian Motorsport and with a round of the 2011 F1 championships scheduled to take place in India at the Jaypee Group Circuit in Uttar Pradesh, expect F1, and sports in general, to continue to gain traction in India.

Last week Karl Lusbec wrote about the 20 Best Known European Football Brands. The article referenced a Sport+Markt 2009-2010 study of brand recognition among football fans in the top five markets (UK, Germany, Spain, France & Italy).  You can read the report yourself here.

I thought it might be interesting to look at this data and try to extrapolate from it which club brands were the most powerful.  Unscientific of course, but I wanted to see to what degree being aligned with a specific club (or clubs) is a factor, in addition to sponsoring tournaments like the FIFA World Cup, UEFA Champions League or UEFA European Championships.  So, let’s take a look.  Here’s the 2009 Delloitte & Touche Money League of clubs* along with the brands listed in the Sport+Markt survey (and the brands ranking in that survey) associated with them:

1. Real Madrid – adidas (1), Coca-Cola (5), Audi (8), bwin (9)

2. Manchester United – Nike (2), AIG (6), Audi (8),

3. FC Barcelona – Nike (2), Audi (8), Unicef (15)

4. Bayern Munich – adidas (1), Coca-Cola (5), Audi (8)

5. Chelsea – adidas (1), Samsung (10), Heineken (20)

6. Arsenal – Nike (2), Emirates (5)

7. Liverpool – adidas (1), Carlsberg (7)

8. AC Milan – adidas (1), bwin (9)

9. AS Roma -

10. Inter Milan – Nike (2)

11. Juventus – Nike (2)

12. Olympique Lyonnais – Umbro (16), Orange (18)

13. Schalke 04 – adidas (1)

14. Tottenham Hotspur – Puma (3), Carlsberg (7)

15. Hamburger SV – adidas (1), Emirates (5)

16. Olympique Marseille – adidas (1), Orange (18)

17. Newcastle United – adidas (1)

18. VfB Stuttgart – Puma (3), Coca-Cola (4)

19. Fenerbahce – adidas (1), Audi (8)

20. Manchester City – Umbro (16)

*I looked for the list of official club sponsors on official team websites as of February 2010.

Who from the Sport+Markt list weren’t represented by a club from the Delloitte & Touche Money League clubs?

11. Reebok

12. Opel (Read this Sport Business story from 2001 calling them the ‘most successful shirt sponsor’)

13. Vodafone

14. Ford – Champions League

17. MasterCard – Champions League

19. Sony – Champions League

So, the two odd men out appear to be Reebok and Vodafone.  Now, Vodafone is a massive sponsor of sport and had a run with Man Utd a while back from which they may still be seeing a halo effect.  Reebok sponsors Ryan Giggs (Man Utd), Thierry Henry (Barca) and formally kitted out Liverpool and Man City.  AS Roma are the only club in the top 20 not aligned with a big sponsor.

I think a big winner here may be Audi.  Not a name I immediately associated with big time European football, I was surprised to see them so high.  But they have a variety of partnerships with leading clubs, allowing them to also create the Audi Cup in July 2009, which featured ManU, Bayern Munich and AC Milan along with Boca Juniors of Argentina.  I don’t think they’ve spent the same type of money as some of the other top 10 brands, bet I suspect they are reaping rewards from their associations.  Look too for Umbro to move up the charts if the English National Team can make a run in the 2010 FIFA World Cup this summer.