Pending resolution to lockout keeps NFL from losing games

The four-month lockout of its players by the National Football League in 2011 will never go down in history as good times for the richest league in North American sport.
Yet the fact that a settlement is imminent after weeks of constructive, behind-the-scenes negotiations should shape the way we perceive the NFL, a $9 billion a year sport industry sector that has overtaken baseball as America’s pastime and is the single biggest sports marketing juggernaut on the continent.

It’s important because it appears that the NFL will once again avoid losing games to a work stoppage, something that cannot be said of the other three major North American leagues, especially over the past 24 years since football's last work stoppage in 1987.

The NBA is in its second lockout in 13 years and third in history, with the most recent one having cost pro basketball 32 regular season games in 1998-’99. The NHL has lost a season and a half in the past 17 years, including 2004-’05 when the full season and Stanley Cup playoffs were cancelled due to its second lockout in the span of a decade. Finally, Major League Baseball saw its World Series classic cancelled on account of the players strike of 1994, the last time two leagues were in concurrent work stoppages.

Yet the NFL appears to know better. Outside of 1987, in which it lost one game and played three others with replacement players , the NFL has a relatively unblemished record when it comes to losing games to labour crises and has never done so through a lockout. It is true it lost seven weeks on a player strike back in 1982, but that season was salvaged with a 16-team playoff tournament. In 1974, a players strike was resolved before training camps began.

In 2011, with television ratings and revenues at an all-time high, it was a risky proposition to chance the NFL's future growth, let alone its status as the biggest sport in North America.

Neither the NFL nor the NFLPA should feel proud of failing to get a deal done before the CBA expired in March. That represented a failure on both sides.

Yet kudos should go to both the owners and the players for understanding what kind of impact cancelled games could have had on the privileged position all parties involved hold in the fantasy world of professional sport. And it is exactly that - privileged.

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NHL Attendance: A Solid Bull Market

For all of the criticism directed at the National Hockey League on several fronts, we need to give it credit where credit is due: its performance in arena attendance.

Sure it still has its desert dogs and other problem childs, but the fact is, next to the NFL, the NHL has more franchises playing to full or near capacity than any other major league in North American sport.

Only two of Major League Baseball's 30 clubs sold out their games in 2009 (the Boston Red Sox of the American League and the Philadelphia Phillies of the National League). That's seven per cent. Sellouts are the norm at only two of Major League Soccer's 16 franchises (Toronto FC and Seattle Sounders FC) or 12.5%. In the NBA, it's 15% (five of 30 teams).

The NFL had 28 of 32 clubs -- or 87.5% -- selling enough tickets to avoid television blackouts throughout 2009.

In the NHL, a third of its teams (10 of 30) are selling out every night. It's over half (17 of 30) when you include those virtually selling out (98% capacity or more).

There are five-year plus consecutive home game sellout streaks at five of six franchises in Canada and multiple-year streaks in northern U.S. markets such as Minneapolis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Washington. Throw in near capacity sales at Boston, downtown New York (where the Rangers ended a 187-game sellout streak in February), Ottawa, Buffalo, Detroit, St. Louis and San Jose (where the Sharks have been virtually sold out all year).

Almost two-thirds of the league plays before sellouts or crowds of more than 18,000 fans. Less than half of its direct competitors in NBA arenas can say the same.

The NHL has more teams among the top-20 North American active home game sellout streaks (seven) than any league except the NFL (11). The NBA and Major League Baseball have only one team each in that top-20 club (the Dallas Mavericks and the Red Sox).

http://www.teamradio.ca/news/story/?id=2917

The NHL also has seven of the top-20 all-time sellout record holders, more than the NBA (six), NFL (five) and MLB (two).

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Stoking+coals+hockey+hotbed/2760498/story.html

What's more, the NHL can boast those sellout streaks despite the most stringent sellout standards in the industry. Top-selling NFL teams benefit from the league's rather liberal definition of a sellout: it does not require that all luxury suites or club seats in its respective stadiums are sold out. Selling out the non-premium tickets does the trick and lifts the NFL television blackout.

Heading into the last week of the regular season, average attendance of 17,475 is good news for the NHL (and outshines the NBA by about 500 tickets per game or 600,000 fans per season league-wide). Imagine the brand equity the league would carry, on both sides of the border, if only it could find solutions for the weak links it has in some of the NHL's southern markets.

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Could Michael Jordan become the next Mario Lemieux?

As he embarks on his tenure as a majority owner in the NBA, former basketball superstar Michael Jordan could do worse than to follow the ownership manual written by former NHL superstar Mario Lemieux.

In fact, it appears he may have already read the first few pages.

Lemieux, the only other living former North American superstar to serve as principal owner and governor of a major league franchise with his beloved Pittsburgh Penguins, was one of the people Jordan consulted with before closing his recent $275 million US acquisition of the Charlotte Bobcats.

The deal not only made Jordan the first former player to hold a controlling interest in an NBA franchise, it made him fourth on the all-time list of former athletes to serve as a majority owner in North American sport.  The other two are Papa Bear George Halas, Sr., who played, coached and owned the NFL's Chicago Bears over a period spanning seven decades last century and former Baltimore Colts player Jerry Richardson, who ironically is the founding owner of Charlotte's other big league team, the Carolina Panthers of the NFL.

The Lemieux ownership manual is a must read for Jordan because the former #66 is the only person to win the Stanley Cup as both player and owner. After winning two Cups in the early 1990s, Lemieux became co-majority owner of the Penguins in 1999, buying the franchise out of bankruptcy with Ron Burkle. Jordan would like nothing more than to become basketball's Lemieux and add a title with the Bobcats to the six he won as the most famous Chicago Bull in the 1990s.
 
The Super Mario playbook will show how you go from bankruptcy to supremacy in 10 years...from being precariously close to relocation to drafting next-generation superstars such as Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin to making back-to-back Stanley Cup appearances, culminating in a championship in 2009.

The playbook also outlines the approach behind selling out more than 100 consecutive home games (and counting) and gaining the kind of community and corporate support that allows you to build a new, $321 million US arena, the Consol Energy Center, which opens this fall and will help the Penguins make the most of the Crosby era.

Lemieux used his personna and profile to get that support in Pittsburgh. He used his experience playing under both the late Bob Johnson and Scotty Bowman to understand how important it was for him to surround himself with hockey operations talent, including respected general managers such as Craig Patrick and Dan Shero. He used his credibility as a former player selectively, stepping up on occasion to inspire the Pens' lockerroom with a few choice words of wisdom.

They're wired differently and are different people, but Jordan has many of the same qualities. The same profile. The same championship pedigree. The same credibility as a former MVP and winner.

Even though he has less of a hill to climb than Lemieux did in 1999 and despite already overseeing basketball operations since 2006, that doesn't mean Jordan cannot benefit from using the Lemieux playbook to make the Bobcats successful, both on and off the court.

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NFL and The Who cross-promote CSI for CBS

Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend wrap their set at

the Bridgestone Super Bowl XLIV Halftime Show

Sunday at Sun Life Stadium in Miami. (Photo: Bethie Curley)

When the National Football League began considering who should perform at this year's Super Bowl XLIV in Miami, The Who was suggested as a natural fit given the league's recent predisposition towards iconic rock acts for its halftime show.

Most would agree they'd belong in the conversation with Paul McCartney (Super Bowl XXXIX at Jacksonville, Fla. in 2005), the Rolling Stones (Super Bowl XL at Detroit in 2006), Prince (Super Bowl XLI at Miami in 2007), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Super Bowl XLII at Glendale, Arizona in 2008) and The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen (Super Bowl XLIII at Tampa in 2009).

Along with Aerosmith (Super Bowl XXXV at Tampa in 2001) and U2 (in their moving 9/11 tribute during Super Bowl XXXVI at New Orleans in 2002), The Who is among the legendary bands of the 1970s and 1980s still rocking after all these years. That makes raspy lead vocals by Roger Daltrey and windmill guitar work by Pete Townshend resonate as a blast from the past with the boomer generation while still being relevant to the core Generation X NFL demographic and at least intriguing as historic rock'n'roll curiousities to the young adults in Generation Y and the young teens making up Generation Z.

Yet make no mistake: The Who earned the nod mainly because Super Bowl XLIV U.S. television rightsholder CBS loved the idea.

Giving The Who the high-profile gig made CBS Entertainment a happy camper because it would effectively cross-promote three of its most valuable television properties in one flick of the guitar pick: CSI and the Crime Scene Investigation trio. That's because The Who licensed their music to all three shows produced by Jerry Bruckheimer Television and CBS Paramount Television.

The original CSI (created in 2000 by Anthony E. Zuiker and still running strong Thursday nights at 9 p.m. PT on CBS in the U.S. and CTV in Canada) opens with about 40 seconds of Who are You?, the 1978 classic considered among the top-100 (#97) on the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All-Time.

Its first spin-off CSI: Miami (launched in 2002 and running Mondays at 10 p.m. PT on CBS and CTV) begins with Won't Get Fooled Again, The Who's 1971 anthem that ranks #133 on the Rolling Stone Top 500. CSI: New York(which made its debut as the third in the trio of crime dramas and airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. PT on CBS and CTV) features Baba O'Reilly, another 1971 song (#340)by The Who.

We first raised The Who/CSI/CBS connection with Blake Price on The Blake Price Show on Vancouver sports radio TEAM 1040 on November 27th, the day after the NFL Network announced the selection of the 2010 halftime show headliners during a Thursday night showdown between the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys.

So when Townshend leaked the Super Bowl set list in an interview with Billboard two weeks before the February 7th game on CBS and CTV, it should have surprised no one that Baba O'Riley, Who Are You? and Won't Get Fooled Again were part of the plans for Miami.

The Who followed Townshend's Billboard promises to a tee. Before a capacity crowd of 74,059 at Sun Life Stadium and a record North American television audience of 114 million on CBS and CTV, they opened the Bridgestone Super Bowl XLIV Halftime Show with Pinball Wizard and did a short segment from the close of Tommy. Yet it was nothing but CSI theme music the rest of the way.

Baba O'Riley was first up among the CSI themes. Then came Who Are You? and the quick "See Me, Feel Me" from Tommy. The ending was perfectly-scripted. As the theme song for CSI: Miami, The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again was the natural finale as an ode to the host city.

The 12-minute set was solid, arguably strong enough to knock off Diana Ross and comfortably rank among the top-10 Super Bowl halftime shows of all time. Performed on a wildly-impressive stage that starred in its own right and provided a modern light show extravaganza, the set served the event and its television audience well.

More than anything, though, it stoked host broadcaster CBS and its Bruckheimer-produced CSI franchise -- not to mention CTV as the Canadian rightsholder to both the Super Bowl and CSI -- in a brilliant medley of cross-promotion and co-branding.

It's much more likely he'll be owning a National Hockey League franchise in Las Vegas sometime soon, but it almost makes you wonder how long before Pete Townshend's guitar windmill from Sunday's Super Bowl XLIV re-starts the rumour windmill about Bruckheimer getting himself involved in the return of the NFL to Los Angeles later this decade.

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Super Bowl makes Sun Life Stadium best-ever naming launch

Can anyone remember a more impressive launch for a new stadium naming rights deal than the debut of Sun Life Stadium two weeks ago?

To say the timing of the deal was fortuitous is an understatement. Canada's Sun Life Financial announced the reported 10-year, $40 million US naming rights agreement -- in which the first five years and the first $20 million US are guaranteed -- on January 19th, just 12 days before the NFL's 2010 Pro Bowl and less than three weeks before Super Bowl XLIV, which goes this Sunday at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Lakes, Fla.

In sheer North American television exposure alone, the one-two punch of the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl in Miami give the Sun Life corporate moniker the strongest media launch in stadium naming history. The Pro Bowl itself was a significant prime time coming out party for the Sun Life Stadium name, with ESPN scoring an average of 12.3 million viewers in the U.S. (38 per cent more than the afternoon audience for last year's NFL all-star game in Honolulu).

Sun Life Stadium basked in the glow of the largest Pro Bowl television audience in 10 years, despite being up against the 52nd Grammy Awards on CBS.

The television spotlight will increase at least tenfold this Sunday, when a U.S. audience of more than 100 million will tune in to CBS to watch NFL MVP Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts square off in Miami against Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints. As the world's second largest single-day annual sports event behind only the UEFA Champions League European club soccer final, the Super Bowl should draw a global television audience of more than 160 million in 230 countries to the action at Sun Life Stadium.

More than 80 per cent of that will come from the U.S., Mexico and Canada where the Super Bowl is king of North American sports properties.

Nonetheless, the Super Bowl television blitz this weekend will only underline how much of a bargain Sun Life struck in naming the 23-year-old stadium. With 30-second commercials on CBS sold out at an average of about $2.7 million US a pop, Sun Life will get more than its money's worth in one fell swoop.

Depending on the number of times Sun Life is mentioned and its new stadium graphics shown during the Super Bowl telecast and lead-in programming on CBS, ESPN and NFL Network, the case can be made that the Toronto-based insurance company will receive media value that is at least equal to the first five years of its naming rights deal. That does not include valuation of the billions of media impressions that Sun Life Stadium will receive this week in print and on the internet, along with radio.

Rarely does a stadium naming provide the kind of immediate return on investment that this one does for Sun Life. Never before could one argue that a long-term naming rights deal will almost pay for itself in the first month, let alone the first year.

The Super Bowl timing is only one example of how this deal is a winner for Sun Life. The low cost of the sponsorship is the headliner here. Sun Life paid about one-fifth the $20 million US per year that Citi Financial has invested in Citi Field ($400 million US over 20 years) for the new home of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball. It paid well less than the going rate for NFL stadiums, including the $7 million US per year that Bank of America did for the home of the Carolina Panthers.

For just more than half that, Sun Life locked up the home of the NFL's Miami Dolphins, the iconic Miami Hurricanes of college football and -- for at least another two seasons -- the Florida Marlins of MLB. The strong brand equity of the football teams playing at Sun Life Stadium is another positive, as is its annual role as host of the FedEx Orange Bowl in the BCS and the stadium's own history as the first of its kind in the NFL built entirely with private funds.

Another strength is the inclusion of a philanthropic component to the deal. Sun Life is donating $250,000 per year to the Miami Dolphins Foundation, a community investment play that gives the sponsorship deal more legs.

Yet perhaps the best part of this deal is the naming itself. Unlike awkward names such as Jobing.com Arena in Glendale, Arizona, or unwieldy titles like the former Network Associates Coliseum in Oakland (now re-named McAfee Coliseum, home of baseball's Athletics), Sun Life is a smooth, two-syllable stadium title. Mostly though, it works because it's such a natural fit for sunny South Florida. It's actually appropriate for the market and that will go a long way with fans of the Dolphins and the Hurricanes and the NFL and college football.

Given the economics and the aesthetics, along with the 145-year history of the Toronto-based company, this one has the makings of a good long-term relationship (at least for the 10 years of this deal). That's good news for a venue that's had seven names -- Joe Robbie Stadium, Pro Player Park, Pro Player Stadium, Dolphins Stadium, Dolphin Stadium, Landshark Stadium and now Sun Life Stadium -- since 1987.

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