Forbes: The World's Most Valuable Sports Brands

Forbes has ranked the top 10 sports brands in the following categories: sports business, sports events, athletes and teams.

Article excerpt: The Forbes Fab 40 is for people interested in quantifying brand value using numbers and math. Using our proprietary data base and methodology, the Fab 40 values the top 10 names in sports in four distinct categories: athletes, businesses, events and teams. (full article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2011/10/03/the-forbes-fab-40-the-worlds-most-valuable-sports-brands-3/)

The top ten sports business brands:

1. Nike - $15 billion
2. ESPN – $11 billion
3. Adidas - $5 billion
4. Sky Sports – $3 billion
5. Gatorade – $2.5 billion
6. Reebok – $1.5 billion
7. Under Armour – $1.0 billion
8. EA Sports – $625 million
9. YES Network – $600 million
10. MSG – $500 million

The top five sports events brands:

1. Super Bowl – $425 million
2. Summer Olympic Games – $230 million
3. FIFA World Cup - $147 million
4. World Series – $140 million
5. UEFA Champions League - $132 millions
6. Winter Olympic Games – $123 million
7. Daytona 500 – $112 million
8. NCAA Men’s Final Four – $92 million
9. MLB All-Star Week – $76 million
10. Kentucky Derby – $70 million

The top ten sports athlete brands:

1. Tiger Woods – $55 million
2. Roger Federer – $26 million
3. Phil Mickelson – $24 million
4. David Beckham - $20 million
5. LeBron James – $20 million
6. Kobe Bryant – $14 million
7. Maria Sharapova – $9 million
8. Dale Earnhardt Jr. – $9 million
9. Cristiano Ronaldo - $8 million
10. Shaun White – $7 million

The top ten sports team brands:

1. New York Yankees – $340 million
2. Manchester United - $269 million
3. Real Madrid - $264 million
   
4. Dallas Cowboys – $193 million
5. Bayern Munich - $179 million
   
6. Boston Red Sox – $173 million
7. Barcelona - $172 million
8. Arsenal $158 million
9. AC Milan - $147 million
10. New England Patriots – $146 million

EA Sports uses YouTube effectly in marketing of FIFA 12 video game

"FIFA Soccer" is one of the most popular video games sold by EA Sports. In the promotion of the 2012 edition, EA Sports did well in its use of YouTube. In the videos, EA Sports was able to demonstrate the product through the use of game play, but also effectively use athletes who come across as real.

Landon Donovan vs. Tim Lincecum
Landon Donovan is the best soccer player ever born in United States. Tim Lincecum is an excellent pitcher who most sports fans recognize.



Hope Solo vs. Steve Nash
Hope Solo is the starting goalkeeper for the US Women's National Team and she received tons of exposure during the recent Women's World Cup. She's also currently on "Dancing with the Stars." Steve Nash is a very famous NBA star, former MVP, and he also owns part of an MLS franchise.



By using the USA's two most recognizable soccer stars, EA Sports was able to prove the authenticity of the game. If Landon and Hope like it, so should you. By using Tim Lincecum and Steve Nash, EA Sports is showing that the game is not just targeted to soccer fans, but instead all gamers.

The personalities of all four athletes are revealed in these videos. In "real life," Steve Nash is pretty outgoing, but Tim, Landon, and Hope are more reserved. These videos allowed consumers to get to better know these athletes which in turn leads to added trust (and then added sales for EA Sports).

Forbes finds the most successful billionaire owners of sports teams

According to the Forbes 400 list, there are 33 billionaires who own professional sports franchises in baseball, basketball, hockey, or football. Here are the 10 with the highest winning percentage:

1. Mark Cuban ($2.3 billion), Dallas Mavericks: 68.7 percent wins. Cuban bought the Mavs in 2000 for $280 million. They won their first NBA Championship this year.
2. Robert Kraft ($1.7 billion), New England Patriots: 66.2%. Kraft’s Patriots, purchased for $170 million in 1994, have won three Super Bowls since he hired Bill Belichick as coach.
3. Henry Samueli ($1.7 billion), Anaheim Ducks: 61.1%. The Broadcom founder bought the team in 2005 and won the Stanley Cup in his second season.
4. Michael Illitch ($2 billion), Detroit Red Wings: 60.3%. Four Stanley Cups later, Illitch’s 1982 purchase price of $8 million looks pretty good.
5. Jeremy Jacobs ($1.15 billion), Boston Bruins: 59.5%. After an almost 30-year drought, the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011.
6. Dan Gilbert ($1.5 billion), Cleveland Cavaliers: 59.1%. Gilbert rode the LeBron train to victories until King James took his talents to Miami a year ago.
7. Stanley Kroenke ($3.2 billion), Colorado Avalanche: 58.4%. Kroenke also owns the St. Louis Rams, Denver Nuggets, and Arsenal soccer team. None have been as successful as the Avalanche.
8. John Henry ($1.1 billion), Boston Red Sox: 58.1%. The Red Sox broke the Curse of the Bambino by winning two Word Series since Henry bought the team in 2002.
9. Stephen Bisciotti ($1.3 billion), Baltimore Ravens: 58.0%. The Ravens have won a NFL playoff game for three straight years.
10. Jeffrey Lurie ($1.1 billion), Philadelphia Eagles: 57.0%. Lurie hasn’t won a Super Bowl in his 17 years of ownership, but consistent success has helped raise the Eagles franchise value to $1.16 billion.

The perfect scenerio

I woke up this morning, grabbed my phone, and the first thing I read was that Syracuse and Pitt had become members of the ACC. Rutgers and UConn *may* join them … but first the ACC needs to see if Texas is coming first (which also means Texas Tech is coming too because the Longhorns and Red Raiders have become joined at the hip recently). But Texas (and Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State) may be going to the Pac 12 instead.

How in the world did this Pitt and Syracuse business fly under the radar? Here’s how. Texas and the Longhorn Network have sucked all of the oxygen out of the room, that’s how. While they were distracting everyone, the ACC, Syracuse and Pitt went through the formalities behind the scenes and then surprised us all with an extremely rare Sunday morning conference call with the media to announce the news.

While there was some conference movement last year (most notably Colorado to the Pac 12 and Nebraska to the Big Ten), now that the ACC has gotten aggressive, things have gotten real. The rest of this month will get *really* interesting in regards to teams moving around.

With that said, here is a scenario that makes sense (at least it does to me…)

The commissioners of the six major conferences should not sleep until they have 16 universities in their conference, a restructured and larger TV contract, and HUGE buy-out for any school that dares to leave in the future.

• In reality, two of the six BCS conferences will not survive. Those on life support appear to be the Big East and the Big 12. A major game of musical chairs is about to happen and some schools (Iowa State, Baylor, TCU, etc.) may be left without a place to sit when the music stops.
• The four, 16-team super-conferences will survive and they will most likely be the ACC, Big Ten, SEC, and the newly-branded Pac-16.
• Notre Dame has to decide right now if it is going into a conference or not. Same with BYU. Also, Texas can’t afford to become an independent. Why? Because these four super-conferences should leave the NCAA and form their own governing body and create their own championships, rules, and regulations.
• Let’s cut to the chase. All of this conference realignment is about money. Every bit of it. If these 64 schools form their own version of the NCAA, they no longer have to share $$$ with the NCAA, non-BCS schools, etc. It’s all theirs. And, they can kiss the bowl games good-bye too and create a 16-team playoff that will generate north of $1 billion annually in ticket sales and TV revenue. Imagine that $$$ divided between 64 teams. What do many of the current bowl games pay each team? $750,000? C’mon…
• Should this happen, the NCAA will become a shell of what it is now. If those 64 schools leave, what will fans think of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament then? How about the watered-down BCS bowl games? Watch how fast television networks like CBS and FOX will be “lawyering up” to get out of those contracts.
• If this happens, the 64 schools in the four super-conferences can also stop abiding by the NCAA’s rules. Sure there is still Title IX. That’s a government regulation which can’t be bypassed. But it is the NCAA that mandates that each school have a minimum of 16 sports. Unfortunately for the majority of the universities, between 14-16 of these teams lose money each year, and in many cases, millions of dollars. The new organization has the potential to be fiscally responsible by having a fewer number of sports. Whether they choose to support fewer sports is a different story all together.
• While the vast majority of the public thinks that schools in existing BCS Conference are rolling in the dough, that is simply not the case at all. Last year roughly 20% of these 64 schools actually made a profit for their university. By forming its own organization outside of the NCAA, the super-conferences and schools will have a much easier path to becoming profitable. Now, I’m not going down this road. I am not saying that college sports should exist only to make money for a university. However, I will say that it shouldn’t be a financial drain either, like it currently is.

State Farm runs an uplifting commercial with a 9/11 theme

Very cool national anthem at the Houston Texans game on Sept. 11, 2011