There are certain times during the year when the attention of sports fans turns toward men wearing suits. The NBA draft–when newly minted young millionaires show off their questionable style sense on national TV–is just one example. During the last few weeks, for instance, the eyes of NFL fans have been glued to news reports coming from the labor negotiations being held between the owners and the player’s union.
There’s still a long way to go before the scheduled start of the NFL season, but when there is even a slight chance that a multi-billion dollar industry won’t exist for a year, the business world takes notice. Because not only do the players and the owners stand to lose out if this work stoppage persists, but all the surrounding industries that depend on the NFL also face the risks associated with an interrupted football season.
This doesn’t, though, mean that the damage will be limited to, let’s say, the popular Madden video game series. The NFL’s second greatest export–following high-level football–is marketing. In 2010, the NFL drew millions of millions of TV viewers for its games, ranging from regular season contests to the Super Bowl. That’s a lot of advertising time directed at the young male demographic that would need to be replaced. This is only one after-effect to consider. And who better to AdAge’s Dave Morgan to guide us through the possibility of an NFL-free 2011. Here’s Morgan:
Web alone won’t solve it. A lot of folks believe that the loss of NFL programming could be a tipping point for the web and social media. I am not one of those folks. As amazing as the web is in terms of reach and impact, it is still a distant and weak cousin to TV. Facebook, which currently dominates the web and serves 25% of its page and ad views, is only one-fifth the size of CBS in terms of total audience minutes and would be comparable to PBS if it was rated as a TV network.
Prime time will get more prime. In a fragmenting world, the haves will continue to gain and the have nots will continue to lose. No NFL will only accelerate the process. If you are a big consumer brand that needs to create mass awareness across a national audience, need to “cume” it quickly and want to buy it cost-effectively, nothing works better than prime-time TV. If there is no NFL, all of prime time will get more expensive.
So yes, 2011 might be tough for marketers. Is the web ready to handle an increased marketing burden? Only time will tell. But the lack of an NFL season will almost certainly make the other big events on the weekly TV schedule only that much more competitive.
Marketers will face many tough decisions if the NFL season is canceled. Is this the time to stick to the general approach, searching for what may be less-effective versions of events and programming which draws in young males? Or is this the time to seek out new avenues to reach this demographic?
How would you approach marketing without an NFL?
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