Or, The Wrong Way to Build a Market I’ve watched this play out dozens of times now, and it never stops being fascinating or expensive. A founder builds something genuinely interesting. They get some early traction, maybe a few people talking about it in the right circles. Then they make the leap: let’s go big. … Read more
A $606,812.23 judgment against a volunteer hockey administrator nobody outside Colorado has heard of. A billionaire suing the family he sold his own team to. A max-salary forward one podcast away from a suspension. Three stories, no relation to each other on paper. One business model connects all three, and it isn’t the NBA, the … Read more
How a third-division club in Lima, and four teams like it, built sponsorship and identity models the big-budget playbook was never designed to sell. Every jersey deal in the world starts from the same assumption: one shirt, one buyer, one price the market will bear. Peruvian soccer/futbol club Municipal broke the assumption instead of negotiating … Read more
A Comunicano Sports Insight Report Initial Read I wanted to actually read this thing before I say anything about it. That’s rule one in my business: the moment you react to a headline instead of the underlying reporting, you’ve already lost control of the story. So let me lay out what Front Office Sports actually … Read more
The World Cup is over. Spain has beaten Argentina 1-0 in extra time, the trophy has been lifted, and the largest World Cup in history has completed its 39-day run across the United States, Canada and Mexico. (AP News) Now Major League Soccer gets the ball. MLS throws nearly everything it has into capitalizing on … Read more
Every four years, someone writes a nine-figure check to put their logo next to the words “World Cup.” This July, three guys pushing eighty got the same real estate for the price of a Spotify link. The Rolling Stones didn’t sponsor anything. They didn’t need to. They built their own tournament, borrowed the shape of … Read more
I stayed up late last night reading through the notes from a fascinating podcast conversation about FIFA’s financial transformation, and I’m still thinking about it this morning. Not because of the numbers themselves, though a jump from $7 billion to $13 billion in one World Cup cycle is certainly eye-popping, but because of what those … Read more
Here’s a delicious irony for you: sometimes the best way to win attention is to be told you can’t have it. I’ve been thinking about the Levi’s Stadium debacle at the World Cup. You know, the one where FIFA forced them to cover up their branding. Instead of fading into obscurity, they turned that awkward … Read more
Over the past two decades of writing about telecom, mobile and the evolution of how we communicate, one thing has become very clear to me: when companies make it harder to reach them, consumers don’t stop trying. They simply change channels. As someone who has spent more time than I care to admit on the … Read more
The archetypes of today’s NHL grassroots and amateur hockey programs were not originally league-driven. They were community-driven, sponsor-driven, entrepreneur-driven, and in many cases arena-driven. The NHL eventually institutionalized what local hockey people had already proven worked. There are several foundational archetypes that shaped modern hockey participation systems. To find out, I asked ChatGPT for the … Read more
