The Meaning of Adam Scott's Winning for Uniqlo

As you know, sports jersey is one of the great mediums for advertising company name and logo. Also it is a big income for sports teams. Therefore, many sports teams are selling advertising spaces on their jerseys and racing cars. If you are interested in how much sponsors spend to put their logos on sports jerseys, please check this previous post.

However, not only putting ads on sports jerseys, but also being the manufacture of the jersey is a great opportunity for exposing the brand.

On weekend, an Australian golfer, Adam Scott won the 2013 Masters Golf Tournament. He played sudden-death with Angel Cabrera. Some of you might be excited to watch this match.

Adam Scot  (Forbes.com)

Anyway, how many people noticed that Adam Scott was wearing a Japanese brand cloth? Last week, a Japanese clothing company, Uniqlo just made a multi-year contract with Adam Scott. As Forbes said, this Scott’s winning will draw more public attention to Uniqlo.

Uniqlo brand is a part of the Japan based company, Fast Retailing Co., Ltd. It can be said that Uniqlo is in the same category with H&M and Zara. Uniqlo aims at growing their market globally, and 292 stores out of 1,137 stores are located outside Japan (by the end of Aug, 2012). However, most of them are located in Asia. Only 12 stores in Europe and 3 stores in US. The annual sales in 2012 was $9 billion.

Basketball in Japan

Last week, I read an article on an online Japanese newspaper that titled “6 Works Teams Will Not Join the New Basketball League”. This article disappointed me because I had strongly believed that we would have a new basketball league in order to encourage the basketball industry in Japan.

As discussed on the previous blog post, two professional basketball leagues exist in Japan. One league is named Japan Basketball League (JBL) that is formed by 8 works teams. Another league is Basketball Japan League (bj League) that includes 19 teams. Usually, each country has one top league, but Japan has two top leagues. As the result, there are a lot of arguments that this strange situation in Japan has made obstacles to develop basketball in Japan.

What We Can See from the MLB's Opening Games in Japan

Photo From: Nikkei.com

Prior to the regular season of the Major League Baseball (MLB) starts in the United States tonight, the opening games of the Oakland Athletics and the Seattle Mariners were taken place in Japan on March 28^th and 29^th (in Japan Time).  A lot of Japanese baseball fans enjoyed watching the playing of Ichiro Suzuki, the most popular Japanese MLB player.

Angel Investors for the Sports Industry vol.2

As discussed on the previous blog post, Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca can be the investors for a venture company in the sports industry. Both of them have been angel investors and helped new businesses. Mark Cuban owns an NBA team, Dallas Mavericks. Chris Sacca is helping younger ages by supporting Tony Hawk Foundation.

On my master’s degree program, I have developed a business plan that is a travel agency specialized in voluntourism for Japanese young ages. Participants of tours will visit local schools in Asian countries and teach sports to local children in order to help educational developments by sports education.

Angel Investors for the Sports Industry vol.1

If you are planning to start up a new business in the sports industry, pitching angel investors is a great option to kick-start your business. Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca can be considered as great angel investors for the sports industry.

Why are they appropriate angel investors for the sports industry?

Mark Cuban

Photo from Forbes

Mark Cuban is the owner of an NBA team: Dallas Mavericks as well as the founder of Broadcast.com, HDNet, and some other companies. Additionally, he has been an angel investor, and he had invested for Goowy, Boxnet.com, etc.  Therefore, he is actually working in the sports industry, and he has knowledge and experiences in the sports industry.

Photo from Lowercase Capital

Chris Sacca

On the other hand, Chris Sacca does not own any sports team, but he is helping Tony Hawk Foundation to help younger ages’ development through skateboarding.  Therefore, he is not alien to the sports industry. He used to be Head of Special Initiatives at Google, Inc. And then, He established an investment firm, Lowercase Capital. Their significant investment is Twitter, Inc. Chris has consulted business plans about web and mobile technologies by himself as well as consulted other fields’ business plan through Lowercase Capital.

"Lin-Sanity" Can Change the World

Video from YouTube

Since the emergence of “Lin-Sanity” on February 4, the New York Knicks has not lost any game. Now, the winning streak of the New York Knick is 7. Along with his incredible performance, the “Lin-Sanity” brand has skyrocketed all over the world in these 10 days.

Economic Impacts of 2012 London Olympics

Image from Wikipedia

Forbes.com listed the 2012 London Olympics as one of the 10 sports business stories to watch in 2012.

The cost projection of the London Olympics had been grown from $3.6 billion in 2005 to $14.4 billion in 2007. Forbes.com expects the total cost of the London Olympics would be between $15 to 18 billion. This number is the second most expensive Olympics below the 2010 Beijing Olympics with the cost of $40 billion.

As discussed before, hosting the Olympics can bring positive economic impacts to the hosting country and the city even it costs a great amount of money.

3D Technology in Sports

3D technology is a new technology for the sports industry. The world’s first live broadcasted sports game in 3D was come out in February 2010 in UK. In the US, a New York Rangers hockey game was the first live sports game that was broadcasted in 3D in March 2010. Lee Berke, president and CEO of LHB Sports, Entertainment & Media, mentioned “sports programming has been a key component for driving the success of virtually every new media technology over the past 90 years, from analog radio to broadcast television to cable, satellite, broadband and wireless”. However, there are a lot of issues that have to be overcome by the media industry.

Media Technology and Sports

            

Everyone might agree that the best way to enjoy watching sports is going to stadiums and watching games. It is difficult to share the atmosphere and feeling at the stadium through TV or radio. However, the advance of technology has changed ways of sharing games and information. Therefore, the sports industry utilizes new technologies to maintain their fans and get new fans.

Sports Disputes

To understand what kinds of legal issues would be happened in the sports industry, I watched two podcasts related to sports law. The first podcast is “The Future of Sports Dispute Resolution” provided by Pepperdine University, and another one is “Sports in Courts” provided by North Carolina State University. Both podcasts discussed about the potential disputes in the sports industry with some actual cases.

Court Cases Involving Sports Volunteering

Since my business plan is providing package tours including sports volunteering in developing countries, I was looking for some court cases related with coaching sports, travel abroad, and volunteer tourism to protect my business from lawsuit. I found three articles that can help to develop my business plan.

         

Collage Sports

In Japan, we don’t have any popular collage sports event like the NCAA basketball tournament in the United States. We have a popular high school baseball tournament because baseball was almost the only sports to watch long tome ago. These days, Japanese people watch and play more different sports, such as soccer and basketball, but there are no professional or amateur sporting event, which has nation-wide popularity besides international match of the Japanese soccer team. So, I became to dream to develop collage sports events as a business in Japan like the NCAA basketball tournament in order to enhance more people to get interested in sports, develop more young talented players, and encourage local economy.  Therefore, I was looking for the pros and cons about the NCAA basketball tournament and found some interesting articles.

David Falk: A Sports Agent

David Falk

David Falk is a sports agent who mostly works with the NBA players. He has worked with more than 100 NBA players including famous players, such as Patrick Ewing and Allen Iverson. His significant career was representing Michael Jordan for his entire career. In 1990’s, he was considered the second-most powerful person in the NBA because of his impact on the NBA. 

Toshihiro Nakatsuka: A Japanese Basketball Player

Toshihiro Nakatsuka is a professional Japanese basketball player for the Japan Basket League (JBL) and is signed to the Panasonic Trians (2009 – Present). The JBL is a professional basketball league in Japan in which the teams are company sponsored. The JBL is ranked just below in popularity to the Basketball Japan League (bj League), a league that is state owned. The two leagues are in fact one in the same but due to a conflict of interest during merger negotiations both leagues remained independent and now competing against each other in ticket sales.

Ads on Sports Jersey

Selling ad space on the team jersey is one of the great ways to generate revenue for sports teams. According to an article on Advertising Age, total income of selling ad space on jerseys of 20 English Premier League soccer teams was $155 million in the season of 2010. Each team got different amount of revenue by selling ad space, but Liverpool and Manchester United took 40% of the total amount of the advertisement income. Both teams took more than $30 million. On the other hand, 7 teams tool less than $1 million. Therefore, popular teams in the English Premier League can make more revenue from selling ad space on the jersey.

NASCAR

The World's Most Valuable Sports Team

            Soccer is the most popular sports in the world. The best three prize money sports events in the worlds are soccer events: UEFA Champions League, UEFA European Football Championship, and FIFA World Cup. So, when I found “the World’s 50 Most Valuable Sports Teams” by Forbes.com, I expected that soccer teams dominated the ranking.

TED Talk

In my course at Full Sail University, I am developing a business plan named “VolunTripper.” The product of this business plan is a package tour that includes volunteer working related with sports development in developing countries. I believe that playing sports can help children to develop their humanities and communication skills. To prove my opinion makes sense, I was looking for a speech on TED.com that talked about the importance of sports. I chose an interesting speech about educating children by Gever Tulley. The main topic of this speech was not sports, but this speech showed a relationship between the physical activity and educating children.

Voluntourism Industry

WYSE Work Abroad

         
 Most of sports development program in developing countries are operated by volunteer workers and non-profit organizations.  According to Adventure Travel Trade Association, travel companies provide package tour including volunteer work. This kind of tour is known as voluntourism, and this industry is growing fast. WYSE Work Abroad is a trading association for the voluntourism industry. This association is one of the sectors of WYSE Travel Confederation dedicated to improve the youth travel industry. More than 150 companies and organizations from 40 different countries join WYSE Work Abroad, and as the benefits of being the member, they can receive business opportunities and trends for the industry.  Also, the member of this association can receive research.

           

The Olympics: Does it actually help the economy of the host countries?

Pyeongchang, South Korea will host 2018 Winter Olympics

          
On July 7^th, South Korea won to host 2018 Winter Olympics. South Korea calculates to gain 27billion dollars by hosting the Olympics. Also, the potential economical benefit of the Olympics is estimated as twice as large as the benefit of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup and 4 times lager than 1988 Seoul Olympics. As South Korea, a lot of countries try to host the Olympics to boost their economics. However, it is hard to say the Olympics always bring economical benefit to the host countries.

           

India: the Hottest Sports League

Since 2008, India has hosted major sports events. The Indian government plans to develop infrastructures and transportation by hosting sports events. Also, India associates with other countries to educate future athletes, so the government send athletes to abroad and invite coaches to India.

           
The most popular sport in India is cricket. It is said that every Indian boy played cricket. Therefore, cricket is called as the unofficial national sport of India. Also, India is one of the most important countries for the development of cricket. In the middle of the 19^th century, cricket was brought to India by the British. Since then, it spread throughout the country. Because of the popularity of cricket, the national cricket team won the World Cup Cricket in 1983. This year, team India won the championship again.