Bad Economy

The New Jersey Nets have announced a promotion to help those affected by the downturn in the economy. The team is offering up to four free tickets for select games to unemployed fans who submit their resume to the Nets Job Bank. Plus, these fans are invited to a career fair this Saturday at the Nets arena, and the team will distribute the submitted resumes to its various corporate sponsors. (Newark Star Ledger) Source from Veritix Sports Marketing Newsletter.

Interesting promotion

Red Sox Fan Sues Over Playoff Promotion
Tom Rotunno of CNBC Sports has reported that Boston Red Sox fan Gisela Levin has filed a class action law suit against Taunton, MA based furniture company Jordan's Furniture. She claims their promotion, which offers free furniture to anyone who purchased furniture during a promotional period if the Red Sox sweep the World Series, is an illegal lottery and therefore against the law in Massachusetts. Jordan's Furniture ran a similar promotion in 2007 when the Red Sox swept the Colorado Rockies, resulting in them issuing between $20-$30 million worth of furniture to 24,000 Red Sox fans for free. Jordan's has announced that they do not expect the judge to rule against them as precedents have already been established in their favor.

From:
http://ventaboutsports.blogspot.com/2008/11/red-sox-fan-sues-over-playoff-promotion.html

Olympics 2012

Should England pull out of hosting the 2012 Olympics? Cost have tripled to date and one of the leading advocates and Olympic executives in England recently indicated that if they would have seen the economic collapse coming, they would not have bid to host the Olympics. Maybe we should put some limits on how much countries can spend on the Olympics. It is really nice to have a great and expensive party. However, if people are not receiving the health care and food they need, maybe we should spend less on the Olympics and more on ordinary people.Gil-

Jets ticket sale

The New Jersey Jets generated over $16 million in bids during an inaugural online auction of personal seat licenses. The sale was conducted through stubhub.com (owned by ebay) and allowed individuals to bid on specific seats. the winning bid allowed the bidder to have the PSL and pay $750 per game for the tickets. The highest bids were received at the auction kick-off dinner on October 16th at the Four Seasons in New York. The winning bid for a pair of 50-yard line tickets was $200,000. During the nine-day auction the average winning bid was $26,000. The highest bid was $82,000 followed by several other bids in the $60,000 range. the lowest bid was $10,500. The team initially was interested in selling 2,000 PSLs through the auction, but was only able to sell 620 of the seats.

This could create a new environment in the future where the choicest seats are put up for auction by teams/facilities and let the free market determine the true value.

NFL Europe

With a major game to be played in England, the NFL is interested in expanding throughout Europe. In an effort to help grow interest before the game the NFL has developed an educational web page, has stalked the stores with more NFL licensed, increased the seating capacity, and will air the game over additional broadcasting options such as BBC. The NFL hopes to play more games in Britain through 2010.

New Concession Company

If there were not enough sport concession companies out there (Levi's Aramark, DNC, Global-Spectrum, Centerplate, AEG, etc...) the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Yankees have entered into a partnership (with Goldman Sachs) called Legends Hospitality Management. The first clients will be the Yankees and the Cowboys with their new stadium. However, due to significant branding opportunities there could be a slew of additional new sites (such as minor league stadiums hosting Yankee affiliated teams) that could sign-up with the company. Legends has hired the former President of Pizza Hut and several other top industry officials to help run the company.

Death Sentence

A Beijing Olympic official was found guilty of corruption and paid the ultimate price. Beijing's Vice Mayor Liu Zhihua was fired from his job overseeing Olympic construction projects for allegedly accepting bribes. Liu was originally sentenced to death, but if he has good behaviour in prison over the next two years his sentence can be commuted to life in prison. This story was published in last week's Sports Illustrated.