Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sports. Show all posts

2022-04-04

Wimbledon Confused After Danielle Medvedev Enters Women's Tournament

Yahoo: Wimbledon ready to ban Daniil Medvedev over fears Russian win could boost Vladimir Putin's regime
Wimbledon are ready to ban world No2 Danill Medvedev from this year’s tournament over fears a Russian victory could boost the Vladimir Putin regime.
Word has it Danielle Medvedev has denounced Putin and will play in the women's tournament.

2020-12-09

Socionomics Alert: Major League Baseball Contracts Farm System Again

Major League Baseball cut its farm system by 25 percent today, from 160 down to 120 teams as planned. This was announced in 2019. There were closer to 260 farm teams only a few years ago. Baseball is considered a positive-mood sport. Along with horror movie popularity, transgenderism, political violence and polarization, falling life expectancy, rising nationalism and other social measures it reinforces my argument that perhaps the only "sign" of positive mood is the artificially manipulated stock market.

MLB: Tracking new Minor League affiliates for '21

2020-09-09

Socionomics Alert: Professional Sports Contraction More Likely After Protests

Socionomic theory predicts contraction in sporting leagues during major bear markets. I covered this topic back in May: Socionomics Alert: Sports Contraction. The main threat back in May was a combination of high debt levels and loss of TV revenue amid coronavirs lockdowns. If coronavirus lockdowns returned later in the year or delayed seasons again, it could have pushed the more indebted and less profitable teams to the brink. Luckily for them, coronavirus appears to be on its way out.

Unfortunately, the sports leagues did not heed the phrase "Get Woke, Go Broke." This summer, the major sports leagues injected politics into their seasons, with a resulting crash in fan interest.

NYPost: Public support for sports plummets amid BLM protests, pandemic: survey

More people have a negative view of pro sports than a positive one, as public support for America’s athletics industry plummeted amid the coronavirus pandemic and athletes’ backing of the Black Lives Matter movement, a new survey released Monday reveals.

Americans who have a positive view of sports dropped from 45 percent positive in August 2019 to 30 percent last month, the Gallup poll found.

The number of citizens who had a negative view shot up from 25 percent last year to 40 percent in August 2020.

That’s a shift of 30 points — from a plus 20 percent positive rating to a minus 10 percent negative rating.

During a period of negative mood, mass market business should depoliticize. The best thing for sport would have been positioning itself above the fray. Instead, it made the mistake of picking sides during one of the most contentious periods since the Civil War. Smaller businesses can profit from negative mood by driving customers away from competitors, but most mass market business only faces losses unless they're in the picks and shovels sectors of the unrest, such as social media.

Going back to the polling data, major sports have turned off one-third of their audience at a time when they need TV revenue more than ever because people aren't going to the games. Personally, I used to read sports sites and participate in some fantasy sports leagues. I have cut my sports consumption down to little more than checking the scores. Fantasy football is the most popular and helps drive interest in the NFL. Both of my leagues are effectively on maintenance this year. Both could be eliminated next season. Long-time fans who followed closely for most of their lives are so fed up they're boycotting the season.

Sports leagues have taken years to recover from unpopular strikes and lockouts in the past. This seems more intense, but even if it isn't, the leagues needed years to reover from similar declines in fan support. If the economy and social mood do not cooperate, contraction odds are high and rising.

Update: ‘Sunday Night Football’ Season Debut Viewership Slides To Multi-Year Low; Fox’s Brady Vs Brees GOAT Battle Up From 2019 – Update

Even with the usual ratings gold of Jerry Jones’ team on the field, the NFL and NBC didn’t get that win – at least not in the early numbers. Despite two teams with big national followings, SNF snared a 4.7 in early ratings among adults 18-49 and 14.81 million viewers last night. In numbers certain to change, that’s a fall of 28% in the demo and a hard decline of 23% in sets of eyeballs from the early numbers of the the September 8, 2019 SNF season debut. While the early Nielsen data lacks West Coast numbers — kind of important when you have a team from the Los Angeles market in the mix — his result is going to be hard pill for the NFL and NBC to swallow. To add further context, last year’s opener, a 33-3 pummeling of the Pittsburgh Steelers by then reigning Super Bowl champs the New England Patriots, went on to pull in an audience of 22.2 million on NBC, which was pretty much even with SNF’s 2018 season premiere. That 2019 figure inched up to 22.7 million when digital platform viewing was added in.
Notable that the viewship decline comports with the poll showing roughly one-third of fans swung from a positive to negative view on professional sports.

2020-05-20

Socionomics Alert: Sports Contraction

This is a major bear market. MLB contracting 25% of minor league. Baseball is also classified as a positive-mood sport according to socionomic theory. New sports like cage fighting have grown in popularity as baseball plummets.

Forbes: Shortened MLB Draft A Reminder Of Minor League Contraction Plan—And MLB’s Post-9/11 Contraction Plan
Except Major League Baseball already has the right to cut next year’s draft to no more than 20 rounds. And even if the draft isn’t drastically shortened and the pool of professional players dramatically reduced, chances are commissioner Rob Manfred’s plans to decimate the lower levels of minor league baseball will already be complete.

Last October, in the midst of a memorable postseason, Major League Baseball began its negotiations with Minor League Baseball on a new Professional Baseball Agreement by proposing the elimination of 42 minor league teams — more than one-quarter of minor league franchises — in 2021. These proposed cuts were concentrated mostly in short-season leagues located largely in remote outposts many hours away from the nearest big league city.

...If you are a baseball fan of a certain age, this is probably beginning to sound familiar. On Nov. 6, 2001 — 56 days after the 9/11 terror attacks, which forced the postponement of six days worth of games — Major League Baseball owners voted 28-2 to contract two teams, later revealed to be the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos, before the start of the 2002 season.
Given the high debt levels in sports, contraction could come to the NHL as well, and potentially the NFL and NBA if the economy really tanked, though less likely given their much more lucrative TV deals.

2020-02-26

Social Mood 2020: Ultra Violence Coming to Baseball

Pitchers are taking revenge on the Astros for cheating during the World Championship season by throwing pitches at them. It is only a matter of time before this leads to concussions and violent brawls.

2019-04-30

Baseball is a Positive Mood Sport and Attendance is Crashing

Maybe a salary cap can even out competitive balance, otherwise it may not be long before we finally see contraction in major sport.

USA Today: Attendance drops for 12 MLB teams, as loss of gate takes on more permanent look
Major League Baseball’s attendance problem is not going away, as a significant dip in 2018 has endured into the new season – even with better weather and a boost from some big-name stars on the move.

As the game’s worst part of the calendar comes to a close, 12 of 30 teams will draw fewer fans in March-April than they did in a similar period last year – with seven of those teams seeing double-digit percentage dips, led by the Toronto Blue Jays’ 33% drop-off, according to research by USA TODAY Sports.

Perhaps more alarmingly, 15 teams saw a decrease in their worst March-April gate, which can serve as a relatively informed snapshot of a club’s season-ticket base. Twelve teams’ worst gate was 11,000 or less, with four teams – Pittsburgh (8,523), Cincinnati (7,799), Baltimore (6,585) and Miami (5,934) sporting a base of less than 10,000.

2018-02-04

Patriots Win With Superior Information

The New England Patriots have been a winning team for almost two decades under coach Bill Belichick and QB Tom Brady. Their secret may be information and a second head coach who focuses on strategy.

VoxPopuli: The secret of Bill Belichick
Belichick is the leader and the tactical genius, and Adams is the strategic brain. He is a statistics quant who "helps the coaching staff" by writing the weekly game plans which Belichick then implements. In game development terms, Adams is the designer and Belichick is the producer. That's how the Patriots are able to completely change their style from week to week. That's also why it has almost been irrelevant who has been serving as offensive or defensive coordinator over the years, and why very successful OCs and DCs have struggled after leaving New England.

2016-05-27

Football Forum in Shanghai Aims to Grow Sport in China

2016 Chinese Football Forum will be held in Shanghai grand May 26. By then, the English Premier League as well as representatives of Liverpool, Chelsea, Norwich City, Southampton and other four Premier League football club will be invited to participate. Followed by 1 June 2016 the International Conference of the football industry will be held in Shanghai, this will be an international football the world's only industry conference covering the whole industry chain of football, football is Asia's only all-industry business conference.

Thirteen Five period, China's sports development will enter a crucial period of reform. At present, the overall goal of reform and innovation in sports and sports power construction still incompatible, mechanism Sports and coordinated economic and social development needs to be further improved. Related plan, by 2020, strive to push the proportion of value added services sports to more than 30%, increase sports consumption to more than 2.5 percent of per capita disposable income. Brokerage analysts said that with the league to open themselves virtuous cycle of social attention for Chinese football improve, from the professional event to event basis, the commercial value is expected gradually.
Investors are looking for ways to profit:
Ping An Securities said that since 2015, China's football industry of reform and large outlet, into goal of the reform is to bid to host the World Cup, electric foot in the World Cup, the Olympic games. In accordance with the international sports industry accounted for 40% of the estimated football, Chinese football 2025 industry will more than 2 trillion yuan, a huge industry growth.
If you are interested in some plays:
Alto Electronics (002 587): The company recently signed with the China Football Association China Team LED service provider agreement in exchange for a way to get the stadium advertising rights, and actively explore the sports marketing business.

Lehman shares (300162): Super stadium advertising rights, involvement in a club business development, the Portuguese league title and enter the domestic training young players.

Hualu Baina (300 291): 2015 buyout China Team, Super League, FA Cup sponsor related interests, to benefit from the commercial value of Chinese football tournament promotion.

Michihiro shares (600 136): the establishment of "the world football industry alliance" roots football overseas resources.

Rhine Sports (000 558): Zhejiang Women project.

Interactive Entertainment (300 043): the acquisition of the Spanish La Liga club.
I looked up 600136. Here is the company's business description:
WUHAN DDMC CULTURE CO.,LTD, formerly Wuhan Double Co., Ltd, is principally engaged in the sports business and televsion dramas business. The Company is also involved in trading of phosphate ores, leasing, operation and management of student apartments, as well as the real estate development and commercial residential building agent distribution.
老虎财经:2016中国足球高峰论坛召开在即,概念股迎风口

2015-05-27

FIFA Donated To Clinton Foundation

ZH: The Farce Is Complete: FIFA, Qatar Donated To The Clinton Foundation
Earlier today, when commenting on the latest global criminal scandal, that of "rampant corruption" at FIFA, we - jokingly - said: "And now we just sit back and wait to see how many of the defendants sent "donations" to the Clinton Foundation and how many speeches Hillary and/or Bill gave at the Baur au Lac in the past two decades."

Then we decided to make sure the joke wouldn't be on us and that FIFA hadn't indeed donated to the Clinton foundation.

The joke was on us... because not only did FIFA donate to the Clinton Foundation...

... but so did the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, responsible for organizing and winning the 2022 World Cup, a world cup hosting which was also contested by the United States:

2015-05-12

China Tries to Reform Football Too

If you have experience with China, you know that one of the most bitter topics is Chinese national soccer. You would think that with a nation of 1.3 billion people, competitiveness in any sport is only a matter of effort. However, history has shown China is usually limited to women's sports and individual events where perfection can be achieved through endless training sessions, such as diving. The government has tried to create athletes such as Yao Ming, by encouraging their male and female Olympians to marry and have children. The results have been limited though. One problem is that the state system of identifying young children with natural athletic ability is not the best sorting method for finding future athletes, as many of them do not blossom until well into puberty. Chinese society has very little outlet for a 17 year-old guy who suddenly becomes very good at basketball. See: Why the Chinese aren't good at basketball

Another problem in China was widespread corruption.

Little red card
China crisis: Soccer rocked by corruption scandals
China jails former football chiefs for corruption

In the past few years, large companies have purchased teams, spending money to improve the quality of play by importing foreign talent. The government's reform focus is also having an effect too, with a new plan to reform football down to school age children. The ambitious project is a microcosm of China's overall reform efforts under the Xi-Li administration.

The Economic Observer recently covered the topic in a story: Let Football Fly. 让足球飞
One strategy is the creation of football schools:
Two months ago, the State Council issued the "Chinese football reform plan" for the chaotic years of Chinese football specified course of action. Recently, the media has exposed a message that Chinese football reform leading group set up to promote Chinese football reform, established the "inter-ministerial joint conference system," and under the "Joint Meeting on Reform, the Office of Chinese football."

At the national top-level design process, grassroots football reform would have been tempted to put into practice rapidly impulse, increasing efforts to promote football. Qingdao City Board of Education led the country's first campus in April Football Association announced the formation of Qingdao, Qingdao, schools, universities join. 24 colleges and universities in Qingdao, the first batch of 203 primary and secondary schools football school has joined Features. Shenyang City Board of Education announced in early April 40 declaration of national characteristics of the school campus football list. Xiamen City Board of Education announced that it would use three years, so that 60% of schools into football characteristic school. Xinjiang also announced that from this year, the autonomous region will strive to create 300 national demonstration school campus football every year, by the end of 2017 strive to build 800-900 National Campus Football characteristics of the school, a substantial increase in population of football.
Several major companies are also talking about investing, following Evergrande and Alibaba's forays into the sport.
Wang Jianlin, chairman of Wanda Group has emphasized the group's ongoing fourth round of restructuring, the fledgling Chinese sports industry is their desire to share a piece of cake, and the occupation of the industry's high-end market through mergers and acquisitions; Letv company's music as the sport is financing, company valuation is not less than $ 450,000,000; Lehman photoelectric recently the announcement, intends to use its own funds invested in the main football-related business mobile Internet App technology companies; many football concepts in the technology industry and other listed company's share price It was quickly pushed up.

Qingdao City Finance has also been moving up, the 2015 municipal campus football special funding arrangements in place. One plan is to invest 30 million yuan in the city to build 100 football fields cage. Qingdao city districts also have their own investment plans, it is learned, Jiaozhou City plans to invest 10 million yuan, of which 500 million for the construction of a football field, Lee Chang plans to invest 300 million, the city of Shenyang and the city of North had been a large number of ongoing investment. 2014 Chengyang has invested more than 5 million of special funds for the campus football.

Qingdao has to create the Ministry of Education declared school football national experimental zone, is awaiting approval of the National Leading Group on campus football. Economic Observer news is obtained, the country will have a provincial Inner Mongolia, Qingdao and Xiamen, two municipal, 30 county-level experimental zone for the national school football, recent or approval.

Bohai Securities analyst Yao Lei of the Economic Observer newspaper said the reform of football as a national policy has been proposed, is having a profound significance, not high-level momentary preferences. Soccer economy is a quantitative change to qualitative change from. Mass football up, love and attention the sport of football population, the football industry will develop, football industry as part of the regional economy will be driven up. This is a gradual process. Now is the investment period. Space and future development of football industry prospects are very bright.

Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin April 21 described in detail how much a piece of cake, he says, China's sports industry is just emerging. The sports industry is the world. America's sports industry nearly $ 500 billion in 2014, China's sports and related industries only 300 billion yuan. Related industries for example clothing, Nike shoes are considered the sports industry, the statistics in this industry but may, when they plan for the garment industry, in short, together have $ 50 billion. If the Chinese sports industry can double 20 times over in a decade, then a small piece of cake will be enough for a business to eat.
Europe has an extensive farm system for developing youth talent. In the U.S., universities give out scholarships that can make it worthwhile for a student to focus on sports.

Things are improving now that they're using the strategy of throwing a ton of money at the problem:
Corruption scandals in the past, Chinese football prospers with new talent and big investment
Guangzhou's club experienced perhaps the biggest turnaround: relegated to China's second division in 2010 as punishment for alleged match-fixing, the team was purchased by big-spending real estate group Evergrande, signed Italy World Cup-winning coach Marcello Lippi and high-priced foreign players like Argentinian Dario Conca, and three years later became the first Chinese team to win the Asian Champions League trophy.

Last year, the team got another boost when Chinese online sales behemoth Alibaba purchased a 50 percent stake for $192 million (€179 million). It also announced it would set up football academies for young Chinese players in Spain and the Netherlands.

Now, every team in the league wants to replicate the Evergrande model. According to FIFA, during the recent winter transfer window, Chinese Super League clubs spent a record $85.5 million (€79.5 million) on foreign players — the third-highest total in the world and more than five times what they spent in 2013.

...Byer said there's a misconception that China lacks the sports fields to develop at the grassroots level, but he believes the facilities are actually better than what he sees in Japan. The problem is that China lacks a culture that encourages kids to start playing at a very young age.

"This isn't just to put China in the World Cup," he said. "It's basically an attempt to put sports, in general, back inside the school system."

Rowan Simons, head of China ClubFootball, an amateur soccer network in Beijing with 4,000 children, said the reform plan has the potential to be a major turning point if the government truly commits to the long-term process.

"It changes what has been a fatal short-termism, leaders being appointed and requiring results in the few years they'll be there, and discounting any plans that take longer than that," he said.

"Football reform has been tried many times in China, but nothing of this scale."
In terms of political return on investment, the government will see huge returns if it can deliver a competitive team in the next decade or two.

2013-11-22

Socionomics Test Case

Here's a clearand direct example of social mood in action.

How Manny Pacquiao Became The Philippino POMO
Many have wondered why one of the greatest boxers of our generation, Philippines' Manny Pacquiao, has not retired gracefully into hero-dom following his loss to Marquez late last year.

While in the US, investors have POMO to almost guarantee an up-day in stocks, in the Philippines, stocks rise 73% of the time after a Pacquiao win (compared to 52% average) and rise a stunning 0.5% (against a 0.04% average). Pacquiao is 6-1 on to win against Brandon "Bam Bam" Rios on Saturday (86% likely to win); is there a Philippines ETF?

“Pacquiao’s victory in the ring creates a nationwide euphoria that things will get better -- positive sentiment, positive investment,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at BDO Unibank. “A victory by Pacquiao will help lift the Philippine spirit at a time when it’s facing the impact of calamities. The nation definitely needs to hear something positive right now.”

2013-08-21

O'Reilly: Warfare Breaks Out In Major League Baseball

Alex Rodriguez signed his $275 million contract with the Yankees in December 2007. The stock market peaked at the end of October 2007. Today, with social mood sinking, Rodriguez faces a suspension for more than 1 year (the MLB season is 162 games and his suspension is for 211 games).

Notice how far he has fallen, to the point where even the Yankees dislike him. Any popular figure in the public eye, from Warren Buffett to President Obama, faces the same challenges as social mood continues to sink. The margin for error is shrinking, the public is angry and they will turn quickly and suddenly on their soon to be former heroes and idols. Also, note O'Reilly's description of what's happening in baseball: warfare. Yet another sign of the social mood.



2012-01-28

Social mood and the NFL

Goodell tells '60 Minutes' recession has helped NFL's TV ratings
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says the recession has helped build TV audiences for NFL games.
Speaking on CBS' 60 Minutes, to be aired Sunday, Goodell says the nearly 60 million people tuning in to watch last Sunday's conference championships show that.
"People want to feel part of a group, feel like they're connected, and right now during these difficult times, they can turn on free television and watch the greatest entertainment that's out there," Goodell says. "They can forget their worries.for just a few hours."
If people want to feel connected, they get out of the house and meet in large groups. When they want to be alone, they stay at home and watch the game.
"Our biggest challenge going forward is how do we get people to come to our stadiums, because the experience is so great at home," he says. "When you turn on [a football game], you want to see a full stadium."

2011-12-27

Changing mood and diversity

I've yet to finish Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?, but there's a great anecdote on diversity from the book (below) that clearly shows shifting social mood. When I review the book I will go deeper into the issue of diversity, which was considered a good thing during rising social mood, but which already has a growing amount of social science research exposing it as a negative factor, i.e. more diverse societies and organizations are weaker because of their diversity.

This is what is interesting about diversity and why it may be an important area to watch as social mood declines. There is a mood driven shift in attitudes towards diversity, but diversity is also a bad policy that will be exposed as a major problem for diverse societies. Consider these pairs of characteristics, the first is a positive mood characteristic and the second negative mood: togetherness – separatism, inclusion – exclusion. Diversity is about separatism and exclusion because it is about maintaining group identity within a larger group. Diversity was viewed positively because the general social mood was extremely positive and therefore feelings of togetherness and inclusion overwhelmed the separatism and exclusion that are characteristics of diversity. Now that social mood is declining, diversity will not only be viewed negatively, but its negative traits will be revealed just like massive debt loads have been revealed as a major economic problem.

From page 301, Buchanan notes that when the French soccer team won the 1998 World Cup, the diverse team was celebrated as a "symbol of a new diverse France." The 2010 team was denounced as scum, troublemakers, "guys with chickpeas in their heads instead of brains." Buchanan sources the quotes from Racial Tinge Stains World Cup Exit in France, but I went looking for some other articles and came across these stories from earlier this year.

France football heads mired in race row over alleged quotas for ethnic players
The issue hit a raw nerve in France in 1998, where their World Cup victory by a multicultural team led by Zinedine Zidane was hailed as "black, blanc, beur", and was said to symbolise a new beginning for a mixed nation, but it mainly gave way to great unease and bickering over the racial profile of "Les Bleus". Not only did the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen complain of too many black people in the team, a leading Socialist regional head, the late Georges Frêche, was expelled from his party in 2007 for making the same observation.
Crucially, the French team's mutiny at the World Cup last summer was privately blamed by some on black or Muslim players, including the French convert to Islam, Franck Ribéry. Speculation was that the team had fragmented over the lack of the football team's "national identity".


French football 'approved quotas on number of black players’
In February, shortly after his appointment, Mr Blaquart spoke of the necessity to “prioritise intelligence in the game with respect to the technical and, above all, athletic aspect.”
Mr Blanc is reported to have approved a selection process favouring young talent sharing “our culture, our history”.
The site’s sources added that Mr Blanc cited the current would football champions Spain, reportedly saying: “The Spanish, they say 'we don’t have a problem. We have no blacks’”.

2011-08-15

Socionomics Alert—NBA Contraction

David Stern: NBA to look at contraction
The NBA currently has thirty teams, but the league's commissioner, David Stern, seems open to the possibility that that number of franchises could shrink in the future.

Speaking on an ESPN.com podcast, Stern stated that there is some interest in contraction from both the league and players sides and that the subject will be picked up after the current Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations are completed.

"[Contraction] is not a subect that we're against," Stern said. "In fact, when you talk about revenue sharing, a number of teams have said that if you have a team that is perpetually going to be a recipient, aren't you better off with the ability to buy them in? Because between the revenue sharing and the split of international and the TV money, we could almost buy them in with their own money.
Contraction is coming. I don't know if there was a specific prediction made by Prechter or others, but historic studies have shown contraction occurs during downturns in social mood.