YouTube Sports Channels

Consumers of sports programming are seeking out online video for a number of reasons. Whether they’re looking for Web gems, using videos to find a community, or sharing tastes, these consumers are more likely to visit YouTube than any other online video-sharing site, as shown by the graph below. (YouTube accounts for more than 96% of all videos shown by Google.)

Among sports properties, there is no clear winner in the battle for online video supremacy. Last month, I wrote about Nike and adidas in the online video world, but these aren’t the major sports properties on YouTube. On the contrary, while the Nike Soccer channel boasts 286,000 views and adidas “It Takes 5ive” channel can claim 413,000 views, the NBA channel on YouTube leads the pack with 2.7 million views.

I’ve created a chart with a sampling of sports properties and their respective rankings on YouTube. Some sports properties have no official presence on YouTube, such as Major League Baseball and NASCAR, while some (like the NFL) have made a disappointing effort.

A YouTube channel is a centralized location where other users can see a user’s videos, favorites, bulletins, comments, subscribers and video log. In the case of these sports properties, a YouTube channel is similar to a Web site or a social networking profile page. The sports properties use these landing pages to direct viewers back to their official homepages (“Visit NBA.com for over 15,000 videos”) and to help promote a campaign (“Help decide which NFL player story should be made into a Super Bowl commercial”).

And while the skeptic might point out that none of the 2008 Super Bowl ads pointed to their social media presences on YouTube, the number of Americans viewing online video is encouraging (research indicates that 78.5 million viewers watched 3.25 billion videos on YouTube.com in January). In a market where grabbing a consumer’s attention seems ever more difficult, these numbers are worth a second look.

Economics of the Final Four

March Madness is starting soon, with Conference Championships ending on Saturday and Selection Sunday coming the day after. The post-season NCAA tournament is good news for fans, great news for the 65 teams that compete, and fantastic news for CBS. But is it a good deal for the host cities of the Final Four?

The answer seems like it would be an emphatic “Yes,” but in the book The Economics of Sports (2004), Robert Baade and Victor Matheson argue that promoters overstate the economic benefits of the Big Dance. Accordingly, they maintain that in only two of the 48 men’s and women’s tournament finals before 2004 did the host city experience significant positive income growth.

In the separate Handbook on the Economics of Sports (2006), Baade again argues that the NCAA Tournament (along with other “mega-events” such as the Olympics, World Cup, Super Bowl, etc.) fails to generate the expected income because of costly government subsidies (such as stadium financing and infrastructure), security expenses, operating costs, and the likelihood that a counterbalance to the gross spending of visitors occurs when residents not attending the event decrease spending because of local price increases and their desire to avoid venue congestion. On top of that, multiplier analysis can be used to estimate the amount of money retained locally. In Economics of Sport and Recreation (2000)Chris Gratton and Peter Taylor estimate that only 20 percent of additional visitor expenditure is retained as additional local income.

On the flip side, it’s easy to see why cities line up to host the Final Four. Besides the public relations benefits and the opportunity to attract visitors who may be coming to the city for the first time, host cities also make real money. In 2006, Indianapolis hosted the Final Four and reported an economic impact of $40 million, not including direct spending from media or corporate sponsors.

Maybe this year San Antonio, the host of the 2008 Final Four, will strike it rich. But my guess is that when the dust settles and they’re counting media and visitor spending revenues, it might be harder than they think to balance their checkbook.

Facebook Applications

Sports marketers use the popular networking site, Facebook, to promote events, market leagues, advertise media outlets, and generate excitement about sports properties. And while not all sports entities have created a presence on Facebook, those that have can claim real results for a minimal investment.

CBSSports.com has recently created the Official Tournament Brackets application. Roughly 500,000 users have uploaded this app, and most days nearly 5,000 of those users open the application to play around with it. This particular application lets users create a NCAA basketball tournament bracket, register themselves as fans of particular teams, and compare brackets against friends and other users for a chance to win $10,000.

Sports Illustrated has created a more modest application with roughly 10% as many users as the CBS sports app, which allows the user to choose favorite teams from the “Big Four” leagues plus NCAA basketball and football. It then spits out customized SI headlines for those teams.

A third, less-known company, Citizen Sports Network, has created dozens (possibly hundreds) of Facebook applications targeted uniquely to fans. Each page is a forum for fans of a team to congregate, discuss, and cheer with fellow supporters. Citizen Sports Network has highly-downloaded and viewed applications, with names like “Red Sox Nation” and “England Football.”

Many sports properties, such as Nike, haven’t necessarily created their own Facebook applications, yet still maintain a Facebook presence. A search for Nike applications, for example, yields a “Nike+ Running Monitor” app that lets users share Nike+ running progress with friends, and a few other applications designed independently from the company. Searches for “adidas” and “nfl” yield similar results.

Other sports properties have reserved the use of their name in the same way that someone might buy a domain name for future use. The difference with Facebook is that application names are free and must be at least 7 characters (thus “nike” would be unacceptable, but “niketennis” would work). Callaway Golf has reserved their name without actually creating an application, as have EA Sports and adidas. However, some companies have clearly failed to reserve the use of their names, as “IMGWorld” and “Daktronics” are still available for anyone to snatch up.

I reserved the use of some excellent application names that might someday have value just as domain names in the early 21st century came to be valuable. Perhaps years from now “icehockey,” “softball,” and “wrestling” will all be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And even if these names aren’t worth anything, it seems prudent for any corporation to grab up their own name. I just registered “NorthFace” and it didn’t cost me a penny.