Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Media & Entertainment Law Blogs -> Sports Biz

Media & Entertainment Law

: Sports Biz

How Fast Did Your Team Brand Grow?

Forbes just released a study of the fastest growing team brands in the four major North American sports, excluding Major League Soccer, which sticks to its single entity concept and really doesn't have individual team brands in the truest sense. There are certain patterns common to the ranking of the top five within each sport but those patterns do not necessarily cross over from sport to sport. For instance, in the NFL the five fastest growing team brands share one essential trait: they have moved or are moving into a new stadium. They are, for the most part, winning on the field, i.e. the Arizona Cardinals, but it is the added revenue and sponsorship from a new stadium that boosts the brand, at least according to Forbes.

In hockey, winning is the key ingredient, just as it is in the NBA. As the NBA is a star driven sport, more so than the other four, the emergence of a superstar helps you brand considerably - thus Cleveland and LeBron are the fastest growing brand in the league. In the NHL, which is not nearly as star driven, Sid the Kid Crosby drove the Penguins to the fastest growth but the other four were driven mostly by on ice performance.

Baseball is a bit of a mix of the two prevailing tendencies. Winning helps - the Tampa Bay Rays are the fastest growing band but the Rays started from perhaps the smallest base. A new stadium helps: both the Mets and the Yankees are in the top five. The mystery to me is the placement of the Dodgers in the top five (primarily due to winning and a certain suspended dreadlocked star) but not the Angels who I think have experienced the largest brand increase of any professional team in the North America in the last five years. That is not based on any measurement on my part just by observing at a (far) distance what Arte Moreno has accomplished. Winning has played a big factor but so has repositioning the team as both a LA and Orange county team not to mention the Southern California value proposition.

All in all, a interesting study that's worth a look.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on May 10, 2009 (boomark / email).