| 15 December 2009
As many of you know, last Wednesday, yours truly was in New York City. I went to the UConn-Kentucky game that night, and on Thursday came home and wrote a column about it, which also doubled as maybe the only sports story on the entire internet that day which didn’t include the words “Tiger Woods,” Jamie Jungers,” or “Ambien sex,” in it.
However, despite being at the best college basketball game of the young season, that is not in fact, why I was in New York. Nope, on Tuesday, my uncle got invited to a seminar on the “Internationalization of Professional Sports,” hosted by ESPN personality Jay Bilas and sponsored by the Duke Law School, a place from which he graduated in the mid-1980’s (And, no my uncle isn’t Tucker Max).
Now I know what you’re thinking: Globalization of Professional Sports, huh? That’s right up your alley AT!!!
Not so fast my friend.
Nope, when I got the invited, I hemmed and hawed like a 16-year-old girl trying to pick out a prom dress. I tried to come up with excuses, but unfortunately nobody believed that I had to wash my hair, and that it “was just that time of the month (God damn political correctness).” I even contemplated faking my own kidnapping, but during this holiday season, I just couldn’t do that to my mom (Although, what an emotional Christmas morning reunion I could have turned that into!)
The fact remains, I just didn’t want to go. But why?
The reason is, I’ve been to enough of these events (and maybe it’s just the one’s that Duke Law School throws) to know, that they’re- how do I put this nicely- they’re freakin' Duke Law School events! Do they sound something you'd want to go to!?!?!
Sure, they may start off with the best of inentions, but quickly turn stuffy and elitist. They're a place for old buddies to congratulate each other on how important they’ve become, and for recent graduates to convince everyone in the room how important they will become. The whole thing evolves into a back-slapping, hand-shaking good old boy’s reunion, and since I don’t like most people I meet anyway (let alone a room of self important lawyers), I usually end up disappearing into the bathroom, or trying to hang myself with my necktie. Sometimes both.
Even worse than the guys who think they are more important than they are, are the one’s who are un-important, and know it.
These guys are even more prevalent than the self-important back-slappers; at the event only for the free beer and crab cakes, trying to enjoy just one minute of life before they go home to an apartment they can’t afford and a wife they can barely tolerate. The conference could about the “Internationalization of the Porn Industry,” and 30 of would show up, just as long as the Heineken’s were cold, and the scallops were wrapped in bacon. One even spent the entire conference sitting in front of me, only looking up from the solitaire game on his phone to hit on the 23-year-old second year student next to him. And yes, the shine on his wedding band almost blinded me.
Now anyone who reads me knows that I’m a pretty optimistic guy, so with a scene that bleak, is it any surprise that I didn’t want to go?? Regardless, my uncle and I trooped on, two of maybe the half dozen people in the crowd actually interested in the seminar.
Luckily for us, a great discussion broke out.
As I mentioned earlier, Bilas, currently of ESPN and a Duke Law School Graduate himself (I met Mr. Bilas, and promise you he was nothing like some of the aforementioned folks. He was a genuinely good guy) was the moderator, and joined by executives from the three major professional leagues: Tim Brosnan of Major League Baseball, Adam Silver of the NBA and Mark Waller of the NFL, as well as Jim Tanner, a young, but big-time agent, who represents Grant Hill and Shane Battier amongst others.
Going into the affair, I had my own agenda (not to mention a few cold drinks), assuming the guys on stage would be as stiff and unquotable as Derek Jeter after getting spotted with a girl in the Caribbean half his age. Surprisingly though, everyone on the panel opened up pretty easily, and tackled a bunch of subjects I’d just assumed would have to be dragged out of them.
Brosnan started the conversation discussing the World Baseball Classic- you know that thing that you and I spend most of our time ignoring and making fun of every four years- saying how baseball believes it can be as big as the World Cup of soccer.
My initial reaction was obviously the same as yours, something along the lines of “Riiiiight Brosnan, whatever you say.” But over time it began to make sense.
He discussed how through no choice of their own, baseball is no longer a part of the Olympics, the sport becoming a victim of fans wanting to see the best players, and the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) politicking to get Major League Baseball to take two weeks off in the middle of the season. Which obviously won’t be happening any time soon.
Something had to give, and unfortunately, it was baseball in the Olympics. However, without the IOC, Major League Baseball is free to market their own product the way that they see fit, and as Brosnan added, the patriotism of the players has never wavered (Just Google the words Daisuke Matsuzaka and World Baseball Classic. And try not to cringe if you’re a Red Sox fan.). This is an event the players want to be a part, not one forced upon them. Within five minutes Brosnan had me nodding in approval and thinking to myself “You know, this thing could actually work!”
Next Waller discussed the globalization of…you guessed it…the NFL!
His comments were what I was most intrigued by, mainly since I’d heard him say in an interview (The New York Times is a pretty legitimate news source, right?), that he expects there to be an NFL franchise outside of North America with the next 20 years.
Again, I know what you’re thinking, but Waller made it sound feasible.
He talked about the most recent Patriots-Buccaneers game in London, and how the hoards of people who turned out rated the NFL game day experience better than that of an English Premiere League match. No, seriously.
Tom Brady enjoyed London, and London
enjoyed Tom Brady!
As he discussed during (and I spoke with him about after) the conference, what European kids need is just the real, tangible, NFL product in their hands. For the game to expand, there have to be teams and players to call their own, and for just one superstar to emerge from their soil. Kind of how most kids didn’t play tennis in the inner city until Serena and Venus Williams came along.
What was most interesting to me, is as someone who’s been to Europe, Waller is right on point (Which makes sense I guess, since he is in charge of the NFL’s International Marketing and all).
I was there two summers ago, and I can tell you more than anything else: girls, coffee houses in Amsterdam, anything, what most guys in their early 20’s wanted to talk about was American, NFL football.
They wanted to talk about the rules, the teams, the players. Did I think fill-in-the-blank Scottish kid, or German kid or Austrian kid was big enough to play? Tough enough? What position?
Being American and answering everything, was like when you go away to college for the first time, and all your younger friends ask you, is everything on TV and the internet true? Are the parties that big? Are the girls that hot? Is Tom Brady that awesome?
If Waller was the high school student asking about college, Adam Silver was the one returning from his first semester, who’d been there and done that. His league, the NBA, was probably the first to truly globalize their sport, dating all the way back to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelon
a. More recently, the league has partnered with the government of China on an arena, and has seen many other state-of-the-art buildings pop up across Europe.
He was also there for the intense, and borderline crazy negotiations to bring Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian to America. The negotiations themselves were premised on…you guessed it…globalization. As Silver explained, the best way for the Chinese to develop basketball, and Chinese industry as a whole globally, would be to get their athletes onto, and thriving on the international platform. Makes sense, right?
(On a different note, I was dying to ask Silver about the whole Ricky Rubio situation from this summer. Ultimately I decided that the risk of being dragged out by security and having my body dumped in the desert outweighed the chance that he might actually answer truthfully. Call me old fashioned, it just wasn’t worth it.)
The conference ended with each league (and Tanner adding his own perspective) talking about the future. Obviously by now you can figure out that each thinks it’s a matter of when, not if, their league will be fielding teams and franchises on foreign soil. And while the timeframes vary differently, they are all united on that front.
Which I guess isn’t surprising in the world we live in.
If we as Americans can export every ounce of our culture, from movies to TV shows to music and even David Hasselhoff (No seriously Germany, you can keep him. Please!), why wouldn’t sports be the next logical step? If LeBron and Kobe can be on billboards all over China, and make millions of dollars off their consumers, why can’t they take up residence and continue their careers there as well?
Overall, the experience was an interesting one, and even got me thinking about my own world, and the tiny bubble that I live in. How could I get more international viewers to this site you’re looking at right now? Are there marketing opportunities that I’m missing out on?
The entire discussion was rewarding and engaging, and like any good debate made me think outside the box, and differently than I ever have before.
The debate turned into a great resource, and I noticed that as it went on, a lot of the people I’d eyed suspiciously earlier, were actually engaged and interested.
Well except for the guy sitting next to me, still thumbing his Blackberry, and wondering what’d happened to all the crab cakes. I guess even a great conversation like this one couldn't take his mind off the 23-year-old sitting next to him, and the pile of papers awaiting him at work the next day.
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