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Regular price: $25.00
NSMN discounted price: $17.50
In 1945 Byron Nelson's unthinkable feat of winning
eleven straight PGA events earned him $200 and a case
of cereal in exchange for appearing on a Wheaties box.
In 2003 LeBron James had barely finished high school
before signing a $90 million promotional agreement
with Nike. CBS reluctantly paid $50,000 to televise
the Squaw Valley Olympic Games in 1960, but over forty
years later, NBC eagerly bid $820 million for the rights
to broadcast the 2010 Games. Cherished sports traditions
such as the Green Jacket, the Wrigley Field ivy, the
Twelfth Man, and the Stanley Cup did not start out
as lucrative icons, but as novelties. Successful sports
institutions like the Olympics, the NBA, the Super
Bowl, the Boston Marathon, and the Tour de France all
have roots in events, companies, and personalities
from an era more characterized by uncertainty than
riches.
From the very first time a promoter put a fence around
a field and sold a ticket, to the NFL's most recent
multibillion-dollar TV contract, the business of sports
has evolved around a simple concept: attracting a captive
audience for profit. That "simple concept," over
time, built a foundation that today supports the fields
of licensing, sponsorship, facility management, and
electronic media upon which the games, money, and cheers
depend. SPORTS, INC. traces the fascinating evolution
of sports from an arena of competition to an entertainment
industry.
Dean Bonham, a highly respected, extremely successful
expert in the sports marketing field, gave a speech
in 2005 to the Commissioners of the NHL, LPGA, MLS,
Deputy Commissioner of the NBA and the CEO of the WTA.
He started it by saying this; "I’d like
to lead off this morning reading a quote from Phil
Schaaf’s book, Sports, Inc. – for those
of you, by the way who haven’t read it, you should
get it, it’s a very interesting retrospective
on the history of sports in this country..."
As you probably know, Bonham writes a sports business
column for the Denver Rocky Mountain News. He reviewed Phil's
book back in '04 and it is archived here: http://www.bonham.com/press/2004/022804.html
Table
of Contents
Book
Exerpt
About the Author:
Phil Schaaf is a consultant
based in northern California, and the author of Sports
Marketing: It's Not Just a Game Anymore. |
