Sports Business
Why LeBron James Could Be The Most Underpaid Athlete in Sports 
Despite being one of the top 1% income earners in the world, one could make a case that LeBron James could actually be the most underpaid athlete in professional sports. James earns $16 million per season, the 13th biggest salary in the NBA. Which means that there are 12 players making more money than LeBron James. The infographic in this article summarizes James’ value, and what he has meant to the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Miami Heat.
The chart uses a Wages of Wins formula to calculate James’ value. For the 2011-2012 season, the NBA paid players $1.9 billion to produce 990 wins. Each win is worth $1.95 million. James created 15.88 wins according to the formula, which gives him a value of $30.9 million. James’ salary is $16,022,500 per year. Therefore, using this formula, James is underpaid by $14,883, 496.
Read more here: http://bit.ly/ZKpkeD
Sports Media
Kentucky Derby Earns Highest Overnight Ratings Since 2010
NBC’s coverage of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday earned its highest overnight ratings since 2010. The derby earned a 10.4 overnight rating, stopping two consecutive years of ratings decline. In 2010, the race’s overnight ratings also came in at 10.4
The last time overnight ratings for the Kentucky Derby were higher than 10.4 was in 1992 when they came in at a 10.9. NBC said the ratings were up 16 percent from last year.
The leading markets with the highest ratings for the Kentucky Derby were Louisville, Ft. Myers and Cincinnati.
Read more here: http://bit.ly/17GZ6LI
Sports Marketing
Tim Tebow Struggling With Being Marketable
After a rough season with the New York Jets in which Tim Tebow saw just 77 snaps and no starts, the young quarterback is now struggling with presenting himself as a marketable athlete. Last year, Tebow’s positive Q score, which measures an athlete’s popularity among fans, was at a 22, well above the league average of 16. In just one year, it fell six points down to the league average.
“If you think of it like a stock price, it’s gone down,” says Jim Andrews, senior vice president of content strategy for IEG. “Without having had anywhere near what could be called a good season — a season where he barely got on the field and didn’t do much when he was there — there are negatives from a marketing standpoint.”
Andrew’s advice to Tebow? Find himself a starting job in the NFL, and go from there, because backup quarterbacks are not marketable.
Read more here: http://es.pn/18oK5iU
Sports Sponsorship
MLB Partners With YouTube To Deliver Highlights To Fans
Baseball highlights have been a rarity on YouTube for years. But that all is likely to change with the MLB officially joining with a new channel, uploading HD content frequently.
The channel already has 24,000+ subscribers and is seeing rapid growth as the season progresses. MLB has uploaded highlights from every game of the 2013 season as well as fan fare and much more footage.
“Expanding our partnership with YouTube provides another platform for extending the reach of the thousands of hours of archived baseball content in our library and for delivering live baseball games via the Internet to fans in new markets around the world,” said Kenny Gersh, Senior Vice President, Business Development for MLBAM in a statement released to the press.
Check out MLB’s channel on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/MLB
Sports Jobs
Nets Fire P.J. Carlesimo
Less than 24 hours after losing Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals to the Chicago Bulls, the Nets fired interim coach P.J. Carlesimo. A search for a permanent head coach is expected to begin immediately. The Nets have not laid out a timetable for the hiring of a new head coach.
A list of possible candidates include Phil Jackson, Jeff Van Gundy and Larry Brown, but Nets general manager Billy King said that the list of candidates do not end with those names.
“It was a difficult decision,” King said at the PNY Center. “We talked about it, but looking at the long-term future with this organization, I felt it was best to look elsewhere and try to find the right fit.”
Read more here: http://bit.ly/10ibcWc
Sports Sales
Canucks Offering Playoff Tickets At Half-Price
Before the Vancouver Canuck’s first home playoff game of the season this week, the team was selling lower bowl tickets for half the normal cost. Seats in the 100-level, normally going for over $300, were available for as little as $130.
“There hasn’t been the same kind of energy behind the club,” said Vancouver sports marketing consultant Tom Mayenknecht. “A lot of fans taking a wait-and-see attitude before paying for tickets,” he added. “I can’t recall a two-for-one type offer in recent years, but I’m not fully surprised by it.”
Local fans in Vancouver have gotten used to playoff hockey, with the team winning the division crown for the past five seasons in a row. Many fans are unwilling to pay such a high price to get in the door as the buzz around Vancouver feels lower than in years past.
Read more here: http://bit.ly/ZKsCON
Sports Technology
94Fifty Introduces High-Tech Basketballs to Help Measure Player Performance
94Fifty is taking a bit of a different approach to data measurement; it uses the motion of the ball to measure the player performance not the output of the athlete.
The 94Fifty basketballs use a suite of built-in sensors to track a player’s performance. Data from the ball is delivered through Bluetooth to an iOS or Android mobile app to show motion statistics like shot arc, shot speed, backspin, dribble intensity, and many other key performance factors.
The basketball leverages high-tech hardware components from Texas Instruments that can generate over 6,000 pieces of movement data per second. The new basketball is being released in early March through a KickStarter campaign. The company plans to make the product available via online sales only with estimated ship dates in the 3rd quarter of 2013.
Read more here: http://kck.st/11N3yVd