Average Steve

Larry Bernandez

2011-05-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

Like many baseball fans living in the Midwest, I start getting excited for the upcoming season when the snow starts to melt. Baseball is a sign that spring is near and that it is safe to get off the couch to go outside to enjoy a game. Unlike nearly all of my fellow hibernating Midwestern baseball fans, I follow the Seattle Mariners. I grew up going to games in the Kingdome and cheering for Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Jay Buhner, Randy Johnson, and Edgar/Tino Martinez. I moved to Iowa when I was in 5th grade, but have remained a huge Mariners fan ever since.

My wife, Hailey, will disagree that the nice weather actually does get me off my couch, so the real sign for me that the baseball season is finally almost here is when the Mariners release their commercials. My favorite 2011 Mariners commercial is titled "Encore, Encore" and stars 2010 Cy Young winner Felix Hernandez. While I am certainly biased in many ways (huge Ms fan & Felix is the only jersey I own after the Cutler debacle...) I absolutely LOVED this commercial. Here it is:

The Mariners marketing department must have received an amazing amount of positive feedback from this commercial. Within a few days after the commercial was first released online there was a team controlled twitter feed (@Larry_Bernandez) and they recently announced that they will be having a Larry Bernandez Bobblehead night on Saturday, August 27th against the White Sox (2011 Mariners Promotional Schedule).

Typically I am not motivated to go to any sporting even based on promotional giveaways - at least I like to think that I'm not. But when I found out that the Mariners were doing this and that it magically fell on a Saturday that I have absolutely nothing on my calendar, I convinced Hailey to let me look into tickets. Unfortunately the combined cost of airlines, hotels, and tickets to the game will have to postpone my first trip to Safeco Field, but you can bet that I'll be intently searching eBay for Larry Bernandez bobbleheads on August 28th.

You can see all of the 2011 Mariners commercials here: 2011 Mariners Commercials, and get a great review of all of them from one of my favorite Mariners' blogs here: Lookout Landing.

Have you ever been coerced into buying tickets to anything due to a giveaway or a promotional handout? Comment below!

EDIT: This story was on the espn.com front page the afternoon after I wrote this post: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6583786

Free Marketing Idea of the Day

2011-05-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

Last night I was at The Sands Volleyball in Des Moines and a teammate and I had a conversation before our game about how we noticed that all of the volleyball nets were supplied by various beer companies. He suggested that the nets were probably given to The Sands by the local beer reps at a drastically reduced cost (if not for free) as a way of marketing to the thousands of players that take the sand volleyball courts every spring & summer.

While it is somewhat of a faux pas to talk about what happens in the restroom, a bathroom stall is one of the few places left where a marketer is able reach a relatively captive audience. Using the same strategy as the beer reps and the volleyball nets, if a toilet paper company would be willing to give public restrooms a better product in exchange for their logo on the dispenser doesn’t everyone win?

The toilet paper company would get inexpensive advertising at the cost of some reduced rate toilet paper and the signage they would use on the dispenser. The bar or public restroom operator wouldn’t have to pay any more than they are currently paying for the pathetic excuse that most places pass off as toilet paper. Finally, the patrons would receive a better product!

I’m not sure the cost difference in creating or supplying the high quality stuff vs the alternative, but since toilet paper isn’t something that many people are overly brand loyal to, I’d venture to guess that many consumers would be willing to switch to a quality product in a saturated market after taking advantage of a free trial sample.

While this idea isn’t totally thought out and doesn’t have every possible scenario outlined, that is the point of a half-baked idea. Run with it TP companies, and if it is viable, your public restroom patrons will reward you with purchases!

Derrick Rose is the MVP

2011-05-04T19:05:00.000-07:00

Derrick Rose is a 22 year-old point guard who was named the MVP of the NBA for 2010/11. Many people would automatically assume that since Derrick Rose is good, and good NBA players get paid a lot, that Derrick Rose would be one of the highest paid NBA players.

The NBA salary cap for 2010/11 was set at $58 Million per team. Each team is allowed to have 15 people on their roster and if you were to split the $58 Million evenly, each player would have a salary of $3.867 Million.

Here is a list of players who are making more money than Derrick Rose this year. I have limited it to the remaining 8 playoff teams because I believe that these teams represent most of the best teams in the league and the best teams are generally run by the smartest people and you'll see LESS bad contracts.

Chicago:
Carlos Boozer - $14,400,000
Luol Deng - $11,345,000
Derrick Rose - $5,546,160

Atlanta:
Joe Johnson - $16,324,500
Josh Smith - $11,700,000
Jamal Crawford - $10,800,000
Kirk Hinrich - $9,000,000
Marvin Williams - $7,262,500
Al Horford - $5,444,857

Boston:
Kevin Garnett - $18,832,044
Paul Pierce - $13,876,321
Ray Allen - $10,000,000
Rajon Rondo - $9,090,911
Jermaine O'Neal - $5,765,000
Nenad Krstic - $5,543,116

Miami:
Chris Bosh - $14,500,000
LeBron James - $14,500,000
Dwyane Wade - $14,200,000

Memphis:
Zach Randolph - $17,666,666
Rudy Gay - $13,603,750
Shane Battier - $7,354,500

Oklahoma City:
Nick Collison - $13,270,000
Nazr Mohammed - $6,883,800
Kendrick Perkins - $6,696,720
Kevin Durant - $6,053,663

Dallas:
Dirk Nowitzki - $17,278,618
Tyson Chandler - $12,600,000
Caron Butler - $10,561,960
Jason Terry - $9,873,000
Jason Kidd - $8,610,500
Shawn Marion - $7,055,500
Brendon Haywood - $6,900,000

Los Angeles:
Kobe Bryant - $24,806,250
Pau Gasol - $17,823,000
Andrew Bynum - $13,700,000
Lamar Odom - $8,200,000
Ron Artest - $6,322,320
Luke Walton - $5,260,000

*All salaries taken from ESPN.com*

So that is a total of 34 players - on only 8 other teams - that are getting paid more than the league MVP. I also threw in a couple of other guys that are making close to what Derrick is getting paid.

So why is Derrick Rose so underpaid? The main reason is the NBA Rookie Wage scale. Unlike the NFL or the MLB (which is complicated), the NBA has a set of guidelines that pretty much state what each team is to pay each rookie depending on when he is drafted. Since Derrick is still performing on his rookie contract, he is getting paid less than 34 players that are still in the playoffs. The NBA doesn't limit what players can make in endorsements and Derrick has taken advantage by doing multiple local ads as well as being one of the faces of Adidas.

By understanding the rules that the NBA, NFL, MLB, etc, impose on their teams and players we fans can make more educated decisions regarding some of the recent hot sports topics over the last year. For example, the NFL is currently in a lock-out and one of the sticking points is the owners would like to institute a rookie wage scale similar to the NBA.

It takes a lot of luck in the draft and a smart GM to create a title contending NBA team, usually the best choice is to go against the popular opinion and not sign a guy for more than he is worth. I'm sure that if Derrick Rose chooses to re-sign with Chicago when his contract expires for $20,000,000 (completely made up number) per year in 2013, the Bulls fans will forget that he was ever at one time underpaid, even though many of those same fans will then complain about how he is ruining the Bulls' chances at potentially creating a title contending team.

Event Marketing

2011-03-09T12:57:00.000-08:00

Last week I went to Hilton to watch the Iowa State Men's basketball team defeat the traitorous buffaloes of Colorado. While there I noticed that seemingly everything in the stadium was used as a piece of marketing material. Almost every media timeout featured an ad.

- American Family Insurance had the student section "pump-up" their logo by supplanting it on a live video of the students pushing their arms up in the air.

- Delta Dental had a similar strategy as the camera found smiling fans while playing a song that basically repeated the words; "put a smile on your faaaaace..."

- Scion put their logo on the back of some large signs that the students used to organize their coordinated free-throw movements. (A quick aside - coordinated free-throw movements are dumb and that has been proven)

- The student's t-shirts also had many sponsors, but I didn't notice any of them or remember any of the sponsors on the shirts that I wore while I was in school and in the student section.

- Toyota of Ames hosted a free-throw contest at half-time. MC included!

- Someone won round-trip air-fare from some company by winning a dizzy lay-up competition.

- The floor used to be sponsored by Pioneer, or at least there was a Pioneer logo on the floor at one point, I didn't catch if it was still there.

- I'm sure there were many more that I either don't remember or didn't notice.

That last 'dash' point is the most concerning thing to me. I was actively trying to notice and remember the marketing schemes that took place during the game and just a week later I can only slightly remember 7 of them.

I have no idea how much American Family Insurance pays to run that ad to a captive audience of roughly 10,000 people. Captive meaning that we couldn't change the channel on the big-screen, not that Iowa State was forcing us to watch their basketball team against our will. However, I bet that if you polled the 10,000 people that were present for that game last week, less than 400 (4% is a typical response rate for mailings) would be able to recall that ad and even less would be able to correctly identify the company.

My point is, most people look past the marketing schemes we see every day. I couldn't find up-to-date numbers on this, but according to David Shenk, in his book Data Smog, the average American encountered 560 daily advertising messages in 1971. By 1997, that number had increased to over 3,000 per day. With the growth of the internet and corporations seemingly making more of an effort to advertise I wouldn't be surprised if that number was approaching 10,000 ads per day.

The trick as a marketer is to stand out above the white noise that we Americans have been forced to just look past. Bringing that back to Iowa State basketball games, I still remember the shoot 5 for 5 promotion they ran at halftime from games when I was 6. Benson Motors would give away a free car if anyone could make 5 shots in a row from various spots on the floor. The trick that made me remember the name "Benson Motors" to this day is that the MC was always the same guy and he always had the crowd get involved with saying the company's name as the introduction to the contest. I used to think Benson Motors was someplace special to go, even though in reality it was just like any other car dealership. If a car dealership could get a 6 year-old to be excited to go there, and not bug his parents about how boooored he was, I think they would consider that a resounding WIN!

I've read some other cool stories about companies making smart marketing decisions recently. Jack-in-the-Box has something similar to a sports mascot star in its commercials. That mascot, and his son, recently showed up at a LA Lakers game and just acted like they were there to watch the game. While I'm sure the team was aware of the stunt, the Jack-in-the-Box guy didn't do anything to draw attention to himself, which in turn made it a cool story that I heard about here in Iowa. That is successful marketing! All it cost Jack-in-the-Box was the courtside tickets and whatever they had to pay the actor.

Right now, as I watch the Big East Tournament on ESPN I see logos for Reese's, and read that Volvo and St. Patrick's Church are official sponsors. Really, a church! I'm sure that all of those companies have deals that allow them to use the schools likenesses on other advertising materials, but just placing a logo on the floor isn't going to get you noticed. Challenge your marketing department to come up with something that will generate traffic on Facebook and Twitter. Repeating other people's ideas is lazy and is going to cause your marketing efforts to be part of the massive amount of white noise that we as American's naturally filter out every day.

Major Market Advantage

2011-03-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

Recently there has been a lot of talk about how only "Major Market" sports teams are able to compete for the right to employ the best players and subsequently compete for a title. I decided to dive into the numbers to see if this was true.

First, I defined "Major Market" by looking up the most populated metropolitan areas in the United States according to the 2009 population numbers. Here are the top 10:

1) New York - 19.1 Million
2) Los Angeles - 12.9 Million
3) Chicago - 9.1 Million
4) Dallas - 6.4 Million
5) Philadelphia - 6 Million
6) Houston - 5.9 Million
7) Miami - 5.5 Million
8) Washington DC - 5.5 Million
9) Atlanta - 5.5 Million
10) Boston - 4.6 Million

Now many people might not consider all of these places to be Major Markets, I certainly don't. I would probably consider the top 5 to be Major Markets. Although Houston and Philadelphia only have a difference in population of almost 100,000 people, the sports media tends to focus more on teams in the Eastern Time Zone and I felt like it was a nice, even cut-off point.

I defined cities 6-10 as teams that represented "Middle Markets". All other markets are made up of less than 5 Million people, and while Boston is also under 5 Million in population they would easily be more if you include the entire “New England” area (which compromises much of their fan base).

I also thought that the internet might be a factor in the results. With the birth of blogs and the ability to see almost every game on TV these days, sports stars simply do not need to migrate to a Major Market in order to sign endorsement deals like they did in the mid-20th century. I choose 1997 as the cut-off point because that is the year people point to as the year the internet really took off. In 1997 nearly 10% of the people living in developed countries were using the internet, by 2010 that number had sky-rocketed to over 65% and continues to grow at almost a 2% per year rate.
It is also important to define the number of teams are in each market. For the purpose of this exercise I included New Jersey based teams as part of the Major Market group and all Canadian based teams as part of the Small Market group.
Here are my results broken down by the 4 major American sports, the market size, and the pre/post internet era:

	Major Market		Middle Market		Small Market

NFL	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
NFL	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
1967-1996	10	33%	5	17%	15	50%
1997-now	1	7%	3	20%	11	73%
Total (45)	11	24%	8	18%	26	58%

	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
Teams (32)	5	16%	5	16%	22	69%

NBA	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
NBA	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
1950-1996	16	34%	19	40%	12	26%
1997-now	6	46%	2	15%	5	38%
Total (60)	22	37%	21	35%	17	28%

	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
Teams (30)	7	23%	5	17%	18	60%

MLB	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
MLB	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
1903-1996	44	47%	11	12%	39	41%
1997-now	7	50%	4	29%	3	21%
Total (108)	51	47%	15	14%	42	39%

	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
Teams (30)	8	27%	5	17%	17	57%

NHL	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
NHL	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
1927-1996	14	20%	5	7%	51	73%
1997-now	5	38%	0	0%	8	62%
Total (83)	19	23%	5	6%	59	71%

	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
Teams (30)	9	28%	3	9%	18	56%

	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
ALL SPORTS	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total	Titles Won	% of Total
Pre-1997	84	35%	40	17%	117	49%
1997-now	19	35%	9	16%	27	49%
TOTAL	103	35%	49	17%	144	49%

	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams	# of Teams	% of Teams
Teams (122)	29	24%	18	15%	75	61%

These results prove my theory completely wrong. If you just look at the number of titles won by Small Market teams (144) compared to Major Market teams (103) you might be able to argue that there is no advantage to being in a Major Market. However, once you include the percentage of teams in each category, it becomes clear that Major Market teams do indeed have a decided advantage.

The leagues with the most imbalanced title distributions are the NBA and the NHL. The NHL is easily explained as I put every Canadian team in the Small Market category and they accounted for 41 of the 83 total titles. Since hockey is a sport predominately played by Canadians, it makes sense that Canadian teams would place a higher importance on winning (i.e. spending money on the best players) and thus win more titles than their American counterparts. It is also important to note that many American NHL franchises are owned by NBA or NFL owners who would much rather use their money to compete for titles in those sports.

The NBA results are probably best explained by what has happened in the NBA over the last few years. LeBron has moved from Cleveland (Small Market) to Miami (Mid-Market) and Carmelo moved from Denver (Small Market) to New York (Major Market). This isn’t a new trend. In fact, NBA players are the ones most known for moving to large markets so it should make since that the titles are heavily distributed towards the larger markets as well.

All of the leagues had dynasties greatly affect the numbers. In the NBA the Lakers and Celtics have almost 1/3 of all the titles between just the two of them. The Yankees have celebrated 27 World Series titles, and like I said before the Canadian hockey teams account for almost half of the names etched on to the Stanley Cup. I thought about throwing some of those dynasties out to compare numbers, but I ultimately decided that the best study was one that included all of the title winners.

So why do Major Market teams have such an advantage over Small Market teams? I was initially planning on arguing that the Green Bay Packers, San Francisco 49ers, San Antonio Spurs, etc. were able to keep their superstars and win multiple titles because they were run by smart owners and general managers. While players ultimately decide the outcome of the games on the field, smart owners and GM’s are the people that are putting the teams together. LeBron and Carmelo stayed with their respective teams for 6 years and gave each franchise every chance to succeed. Neither GM was able to surround their superstar with a capable supporting cast, so they left for a better environment, even if that wasn’t necessarily a better team.

While I still believe that smart people can win in sports no matter where their franchise is located, I think the smartest people choose to work in the biggest markets. Take this for example; I heard on Mike & Mike (ESPN Radio morning program) the other morning that if Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks Owner/Billionaire) were to gain control of a baseball team and move it to Idaho he could make it successful by just simply choosing to spend as much on his players as the Yankees do. While I agree with this concept, I found a fatal flaw in the logic.

Mark Cuban is a smart businessman; this is proven by the fact that he is a self-made billionaire. Smart businessmen generally try to surround themselves with other talented people and have very little tolerance for failure and work together to make smart choices that will most benefit their respective organizations. Thus Mark Cuban would never move a team to Idaho. Teams in Major Markets have 5+ Million people willing to pay for their tickets, buy their merchandise, and watch their games on TV. This creates a decided monetary advantage for the Major Market teams, money that these organizations can use to recruit better players and then have a better chance at winning more titles.

Finally, I wanted to touch on the 1997 internet based cut-off point that I included in my study. If you look at each individual sport, you could probably make an argument that either the internet was helping the Small Market teams (particularly in the NFL) or hurting them. Ultimately, when you compare the combined title winners from all sports the percentages are nearly identical. I thought this was pretty cool, and was able to just write off the discrepancies in each individual sport to the fact that it is a smaller sample size thus more greatly affected by recent dynasties. I would be interested to see if this trend continues or if Major Markets will always have an advantage of their Small Market counterparts.

To be a fan, or not?

2011-02-23T08:41:00.000-08:00

They say some genetics skip a generation. It could be a balding gene, or a musical talent. My grandpa passed on to me his love of sports. Neither of my parents have ever really cared about the outcome of a game that they weren't involved in. My dad played football and my mom was a cheerleader, but from the time they graduated high school to the time I was able to walk, they probably never even glanced at the sports page.

One of my favorite stories about my childhood was about when I was 2 and my mom sat me down to watch some Sesame Street. Like seemingly all kids in my generation, Sesame Street was a vital part of my childhood and I particularly loved Ernie. However, when my mom left the room to do whatever moms do, and returned 2 minutes later, I had changed the channel to Wimbledon. My mom assumed that it was an accident, changed it back and left the room again to do another mom task. In the minute it took her to return, I had changed the channel once again back to Wimbledon and was transfixed by what was taking place on the screen. My parents lost control of the TV from that day until I moved out of the house.

I don't particularly care about tennis, but that wasn't the point of the story. If it was an athletic event and they were showing it on TV, I found a way to watch it. These days I particularly enjoy watching the English Premier League (EPL) on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Like a typical sports fan, I have been straining to figure out which team will be "mine" over the last few years. But just this week I started asking myself why I felt the need to cheer for a particular team.

In the NBA I used to be a Seattle SuperSonics fan. The franchise moved to Oklahoma in 2008 and I have been an NBA "widow" ever since. Since I still like to watch the NBA, I run into situations where friends and even strangers will ask me who "my" team is. I've never had a favorite NHL team, but again I've struggled at times with who I should cheer for.

Unless you have an emotional investment in any one particular team, it doesn't really make sense to limit yourself to 1 particular franchise. In most American based leagues there are around 30 professional sports teams. If you cheer for just one of them, the odds of your team winning a championship and you being happy are 1/30 or less than 4%. Granted, if you cheer for the Yankees/Celtics/Lakers/Steelers/Red Wings your odds go up, but it is still a long shot that all of your emotional investment will be paid off at the end of the year.

As fans we buy gear, tickets, and pay for the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTv, but each year you are really paying for the small chance that you will be happy with that weeks game or the season as a whole. Even if your team does win, is it worth the 1 year investment of over $500 (approx what I spent on the Broncos this year) to be happy in your living room watching "your team" celebrate the Super Bowl victory? What about all the Bears fans this year, were they ultimately happy that their team exceeded expectations, or upset that they lost to their rivals in the playoffs? Why do we willingly pay massive amounts of money to experience gut wrenching pain for the slim chance of excitement?

The fact that your emotional investment will really be "paid off" is an interesting concept as well. I didn't receive anything from Iowa State when they won their BigXII basketball title. Sure I was happy, but the lasting feeling from those great seasons are the pain I experienced when less than a month later they lost in the NCAA Tournament. The Broncos never really paid me anything when they won the Super Bowl and the Mariners never gave me anything but an opportunity to buy more gear when they set the record for most regular season MLB victories. Essentially, as fans, we are spending gobs of money for a 4% chance of fleeting happiness. If you look at it that way, it is a poor investment of both time and money.

So why do we do it? As I stated earlier, I have loved sports since I can remember, but why have I been programed to cheer for this collection of athletes over another? The NBA/NHL/MLB/NFL all want us to buy gear. Nike just signed a deal with the NFL for the licensing rights to all of the league's teams. The terms of the deal were undisclosed, but many are reporting that Rebook, the current provider, lost a deal worth over $500 Million. Since nobody really wants to buy a hat with just the NFL logo on it, the league pushes for people to cheer for certain teams. We often don't even realize they are doing it, but all of their commercials with happy fans cheering Super Bowl victories make us as consumers and fans want to be just as happy as the people on the screen.

The solution I have recently come up with (with a major assist to my father-in-law) is to cheer for teams that you enjoy watching. Barcelona is playing amazing soccer right now, and when they play I can't take my eyes of the screen. Why should I cheer for anyone to beat them? But in the same breath, why should I be emotionally and financially invested in them? What if a major player gets hurt or traded? Those things are completely out of my control and if I were invested in the outcome, even if just emotionally, I would be crushed.

The NBA right now has about 8 teams that I enjoy watching. The Clippers with Blake Griffin, OKC and Durant, the Lakers, Heat, Magic, Celtics, and now Knicks. Do I need to pick one team, go buy a jersey or t-shirt and start disliking the others in order to be a true fan of the NBA?

I'm 100% for being fans of certain teams. I have been an Iowa State fan since I was 2 and will continue to be one until the day I die. I spend money on tickets and merchandise as well as my substantial emotional investment. I'm also willing to admit that even though Iowa State mathematically has a 1/120 (<1%) chance to win a title in football and even longer odds in basketball, neither will probably happen in my lifetime. However, I have a reason to cheer for Iowa State, the Broncos, and the Mariners. It doesn't really matter what the reason is that caused me to choose to cheer for those teams, just that I am already naturally invested in them. I just don't see the point in creating an artificial reason to limit myself to one team in another league or sport when the bond is clearly a poor investment of my time, money, and emotions.

The $300 Million Man?

2011-02-16T12:26:00.000-08:00

Baseball games are great. Really groundbreaking stuff going on here right? Even if you aren't a fan of the game or the teams playing, most people can enjoy: being outside in the nice weather, partaking in the sport of people watching, having a beer, and occasional crack of the bat.

A 2006 Gallup poll found that over 47% of Americans admitted to being fans of the game. I would venture to guess that number had increased over the past few years as we get further away from the 1994-95 strike. A conservative estimate has over 150 million people "liking" the game of baseball.

Most of those fans count a particular team as their favorite for one reason or another. When I played little league, I lived in Seattle and played for the Mini-Mariners. I was instantly a fan for life. While my Mariners have their own problems, I decided to write this post concerning the St. Louis Cardinals and their future Hall of Fame 1st baseman, Albert Pujols.

Albert is widely considered the best player in baseball. His contract runs up next year and he is reportedly asking for $300,000,000 over 10 years. That would make him the highest paid baseball player (which he probably deserves to be) as well as provide him with a guaranteed contract until he is 41 years old. You can catch all of the gory details at your favorite sports website as it seems everyone is talking about Albert today.

I wanted to explore a different angle. What if baseball, and all American sports, were modeled after every worldwide soccer league (except for the MLS which has its own weird rules so it can compete with both entities)? In soccer, a player and a team must both hold up their end of a contract. We will use World Cup winner and recent transfer Fernando Torres to help explain my point. Fernando played for a prestigious English team, Liverpool, and was unhappy. While he still had a couple of years left on his contract, he requested a transfer to another team. Ultimately Chelsea, another prestigious English team, agreed to terms with both Liverpool and Fernando and he was "traded" there. Chelsea had to pay Liverpool almost $80 million in order for them to agree to release him from his contract. Chelsea then had to come to an agreement with Fernando over what he would be paid.

Now lets apply that concept to Albert. If Albert truly thinks he is worth $300 million over 10 years, and the Cardinals don't agree, then the only options American sports have to offer are: 1) Albert finishes this year, becomes a free agent and StL gets nothing in return or 2) StL trades him for a likely haul of players that wouldn't come close to equaling Albert's value. Now if baseball were run like soccer, then Albert could turn in a transfer request and both Albert and the Cardinals would be allowed to ask for a fair compensation. It is likely that the Cubs and Yankees would be interested in Albert's services. The Cardinals could opt to charge the Cubs more than the Yankees because the Cubs are in the same division. Albert could choose to give any team a salary discount because he has always wanted to play/live in their city. If the Yankees agree to terms with both Albert and the Cardinals, the Cardinals could use the money from the Yankees to go find another new player. The possibilities are endless and would result in a fair market value deal for both Albert and the Cardinals and their fans. One that I don't think would end up as $300 million dollars for Albert Pujols. To me, he is holding the Cardinals hostage and trying to get them to overpay him because he is astutely aware of the backlash that will result if the Cards choose not to resign him.

Like nearly everything, people will be resistant to change and argue that this would give "big money" teams like the Red Sox and Yankees an unfair advantage. For one they already have an unfair advantage, and by adopting this new system it would create a more fair market for all teams and owners to do what is really important to them. Some owners may choose to pocket the money earned from players like Albert Pujols, and others may choose to re-invest. I argue that owners of sports teams have the right to do what they want with their assets just like the owner of Microsoft or the local bakery does. It is unfair to owners like the Cavs' Dan Gilbert to be subject to the whims of a 25 year old basketball player and lose over $100 million of value to his franchise overnight because LeBron wanted to "take his talents to South Beach".

Fans will also benefit from this system change. While many people will continue to do what I did and cheer for their local team, at least now you won't be subject to the luck of a ping-pong ball or have to go through a 4-12 NFL season in order to have hope for next year. Smart general managers, like smart CEOs, will be rewarded and people who are just out to make a buck will be lambasted by their fans and ultimately lose value in their franchise instead of making money off of profit sharing systems like we have today.

So is Albert Pujols really worth $300 million over 10 years in a free market? Since today's deadline has come and gone, we might find out next year. I hope for the fans of the St. Louis Cardinals it doesn't come to that and they don't end up losing their favorite, and best, player for absolutely nothing. However, that is the way the sports business landscape is set up in America. Would you feel better as a Cardinals fan if you knew that the team was getting $80 million for selling the rights to Albert Pujols and that the team would likely reinvest that in new players? I would.

About Me

2011-02-16T09:47:00.000-08:00

In no particular order of importance, here are some things that most of my readers should probably know about me:

I am married to my best friend. I know it sounds cliche, but she was the girl I went to for advice until I wised up and convinced her to date me.

I have lived in California, Washington, Illinois, and 5 different cities in Iowa. As much as I try to run away from it, I am and always will be an Iowan.

I graduated from Iowa State University with an undergraduate degree in Marketing, and I am currently going to Iowa State for my MBA as well. Along with hopefully getting multiple degrees from ISU, I have been a huge Cyclone fan since I was 2 years old.

Along with my Cyclone fandom, I really like all kinds of sports. I like going to games, watching on TV, and reading about teams and events. As I have grown up, I have become more interested in the sports business side of things and I would assume that most of my posts are somehow sports related. My favorite teams are:

1) Iowa State Men's Basketball
2) Iowa State Football
3) United States Men's National Team (soccer)
4) Seattle Mariners
5) Denver Broncos

My favorite sporting event is probably the World Cup and while I have played and loved soccer since I was young, I am an admitted newcomer to all things 'futbol' and have really thrown myself into learning about the EPL and Champions League.

I am also very interested in marketing. While I am definitely a football fan, I am one of those people that watches the superbowl for the commercials. I think it is amazing how some companies choose to market their products.

I assume that most of my posts will be about things that I am interested in, as listed above, and I don't really know how often I'll update. Hopefully you enjoy reading, and feel free to comment and let me know what you think!