Talking Tickets 23 April 2021: Happy Birthday to the Boy! The Super League Was Fun! Live Nation's Antitrust Concerns! And, More!
Number 81!
Hey!
Happy Birthday to the boy! He’s 11 today and is dragging me off to a soccer tournament in Richmond.
Ken and Matt will be hosting the happy hour tonight while I am MIA in Virginia trying to find an acceptable pizza place for the boy’s birthday!
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To the Tickets!
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1. The Super League! That was fun while it lasted!
Big Idea:
Brand is everything!
Everything that adds meaning to your brand is brand building. Everything that takes meaning away from your brand is brand destroying.
The Super League was a major negative brand event for the teams involved.
So many great articles about the collapse of “The Super League” that it was hard to pick one to sum up what went on this week in Europe.
And, I have to say your fearless consultant and newsletter writer summed up the situation and predicted the future on Monday!
There are so many avenues to go down with this story that I’m a bit perplexed with where to begin.
I guess I’ll focus on one today:
Brand Management
For anyone that is new here, I define your brand as the accumulation of all the touchpoints your customers and market have with your brand, good and bad, over time.
Every touchpoint matters, but it pays to recognize that the good ones add up much more slowly than the bad ones tear you down.
To simplify it even more, think about it from this angle:
Anything that adds meaning to your brand is brand building.
Anything that takes value away from your brand is destroying your brand.
So what this Super League mess has done to the brands of the teams involved in “founding” this mess?
I’d argue in the short term it did a great job of unraveling decades of work in about 48 hours and due to the lack of achievement of some teams, reinforced some bad brand attributes…I’m looking specifically at my favorite club.
To really know where your brand stands with your customers, you have to do some brand tracking over time, but it is pretty clear that these 12 clubs really put a hit on their brands in many ways, like:
Undermining their leadership within the global soccer community.
Blowing up the idea that they are really all about competing on the pitch.
Disconnecting their business from any form of dedication to their community.
All of this matters because in the case of these 12 teams, they are often looked to as leaders in the world of football because of their ability to grow their brand like Manchester United, running a profitable and growing business while building a better team culture with Tottenham, representing the epitome of excellence with Real Madrid, and on it goes.
Now, it is a question if the other clubs in their leagues and associations are willing to work with them and trust is far down the road. This is likely to hurt them on the pitch and in the back offices.
At the heart of European football is the simple concept of the pyramid where any team can have a chance to compete and beat any other team. You saw this in a really great way when Tottenham went to play Marine FC in the FA Cup.
Now that is gone because the heart of the Super League idea was a closed system where 15 teams were always guaranteed a place in the tournament.
That hits right at the core of what it means to support and follow European football.
Finally, all of these teams were built as part of their community. As an example, Arsenal is called Arsenal because the founders of the club back in the 1880s really were building guns!
In the States, at this point we pay lip service to our teams’ histories, but in the UK around football…those histories still mean something. Even new fans are coached and fed the history of their teams. Mostly through gestures, stories, and touchpoints, big and small.
I’m American and spend a great deal of time in Europe in the before times so I get the culture of the football supporter. I’ve bought in hook, line, and sinker to following Tottenham Hotspur, for better or worse.
But I’ve also been around sports business in the United States long enough to be cynical about any real connection to the community.
Bring ‘em Back!
Now all of my friends in the UK can see where that cynical streak comes from.
While these 12 teams were shooting themselves in the foot, PSG, Bayern Munich, and Borussia Dortmund were adding to their brand equity while looking like the defenders of football…even if branding isn’t a zero-sum game. And, their willingness to take the other side was completely in their self-interest.
Takeaways here:
I’m doing a podcast with a team’s CMO this afternoon and we are going to discuss their brand and brand management for the podcast. If you are thinking about where your brand is right now, I’d suggest you spend a little time doing some brand tracking work or doing some research on what people are really saying and thinking about your brand.
Second, map out your touchpoints again. Is everything you are doing helping you build your brand or at least neutral? If the answer isn’t yes, what are you going to do about it?
Third, what are you going to do to build your brand now?
2. Leaders in Congress call for an antitrust investigation of LiveNation:
Big Ideas:
Joe Biden seems to have an agenda on antitrust focused on actually using antitrust laws to get competition back into the market.
Live Nation is just doing what any big company would do: protecting its market share, first. Followed by finding ways to suck up more market share.
Antitrust enforcement is probably coming to a number of industries and it will have a knock-on effect to tickets.
It seems like so long ago that we were all together on Capitol Hill for a hearing on tickets and a lot has changed since then:
A pandemic has mostly shut the world of tickets down for a year or more.
We’ve had a change in administration in DC.
And, the government on both sides seems way more willing to pick antitrust fights.
As I’m sitting here writing, I don’t have any clue how or what really ends up happening.
None of us really know.
I do know that I’ve lived in DC long enough to not be surprised by anything.
But I’m keeping my eye on three things:
First, antitrust seems to have taken on a bigger prominence in the debates around the economy over the last 12-18 months.
My lady is a big antitrust attorney so it is good for the family business!
But there are a few signals that stand out to me:
The Federal Government’s case against Google.
The Texas Attorney General’s case against Google.
The nomination of Lina Khan to the board of the Federal Trade Commission. (Y’all weren’t expecting me to be able to pull out some real thoughtful analysis of antitrust law, were you?)
All three of these things point to an entirely different antitrust environment. Realistically, the last significant antitrust action taken by the United States government was when they went after Microsoft in the 1990s.
So it is time.
And, I know that Joe Biden has taken a keen interest in antitrust regulation and using antitrust to help push back against the consolidation of business power. In other words, he’s positioning himself to be the most proactive antitrust president in a generation or longer.
This matters because lack of competition hurts the economy, small businesses, and consumers.
Second, LiveNation isn’t doing anything that any other big corporation would do in a similar situation. This is what makes government intervention important.
I linked to Matt Stoller’s newsletter above where he talks about Lina Khan. But I want to point you towards the book he wrote, Goliath. It is a history of the consolidation of corporate power and monopolies in the United States going back almost to the start of the country.
It is an interesting book with tons of interesting characters.
The big key throughout the book is that there are patterns to how these things play out.
When sectors of the economy start to consolidate, there’s less competition, less innovation, customers are harmed, and more.
The remedy is to impose restrictions on this consolidation through antitrust enforcement, regulations, and taxation.
As my marketing professors told me back in college, the best way to build a bigger brand is to start with a big brand. The same principle applies to big companies. Big companies tend to get bigger and act in ways that reinforce their bigness without some form of intervention.
That’s all that is going on here. It isn’t some nefarious plot that Live Nation is operating. They are just a big business, operating to protect their size, and, if possible, to gain some more size.
Third, I don’t think this will stop with Live Nation.
I’ve mentioned Live Nation and Google here, but Lina Khan is famous for writing about Amazon and other tech companies and the impact of their size on the economy and the country.
And, the thing about this is that the size of these American companies has spillover globally.
Another advisor to President Biden is Tim Wu, a former professor at NYU, he wrote a book that’s also worth your time if you are into this stuff called The Curse of Bigness.
Professor Wu’s big idea is that we need to reinvigorate antitrust enforcement in America.
That likely means companies like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and more are in the government’s crosshairs.
You might ask what that means to folks selling tickets and let me tell you: everything.
Why?
Because if you follow Professor Wu’s logic the heart of American business is innovation and competition and having these big companies dominate the economy, what he calls “national champions” hurts America.
Bring it back to tickets and events, in the UK I’ve talked about the system of allocations and how tickets are doled out by allocation to a number of different partners that compete to sell their tickets.
We don’t have anything of that sort in the States, minus the secondary market. But that hasn’t always lead to innovation, just competition.
And, competition alone often leads to price wars and a race to the bottom.
So making the ticketing ecosystem more competitive through antitrust enforcement of technology and other areas is likely to have an impact on the way all of us sell tickets.
What can you do?
First, pay attention to who is being nominated and hired. Personnel as policy is a saying I’ve heard in DC before.
Second, recognize that a lot of the actions that Live Nation is taking are just to protect its business. You are doing the same thing or trying to, but they have the scale necessary to have more impact.
It is less about sticking it to you or anyone and more about the nature of big businesses. And, the draining impact of quarterly capitalism.
Third, recognize that antitrust enforcement is likely to inject new competition into the market. This will likely require change.
You don’t have to like change. Change is coming no matter what. But you do need to make a choice, embrace change or try and keep your head stuck in the ground.
One can lead you to success. The other, not so much.
P.S. In Ireland, a bill advanced against touts! And, that is actually where this whole thing about regulation started, but it didn’t fit the analysis.
3. Sports and Entertainment in Asia is offering some interesting lessons:
Big Idea:
ESPL and Warner Music are showing the power of new business models.
SMART Objectives are useful to make sure you aren’t spinning your wheels.
Don’t get so wed to an idea or a direction that you keep throwing good money and time after bad.
The Chinese Super League kicked off in front of 30,000 fans on Tuesday with its most recent champion, Jiangsu, has folded.
While in Singapore, Warner Music Asia signs a deal with the ESPL (E-sports Player’s League) to help use the ESPL’s platform to promote Warner Music content.
These might seem like divergent stories but they aren’t. They point to the speed of innovation in Asia.
In the case of the ESPL, they have the biggest amateur gaming platform in the world, serving over 600 million people around the globe. And, as Zoe Scaman wrote a little while back, these businesses are working on putting together a flywheel to help grow and monetize their fanbases and the attention they get.
The Chinese Super League has a great opportunity in front of it because it is important to the Chinese government that the country become a giant in global football and wins a World Cup. It was also a goal in their latest 5-year plan that more money was invested in domestic sports and competitions than was spent in international competitions…which made the timing of the announcement of the Super League interesting since the Chinese money behind Inter Milan were looking to draw out of international competition to focus on China.
When you look at these two stories side-by-side, you see a few interesting insights:
The willingness to try new things.
The power of goal setting.
The ability to adjust to new realities.
First, with the partnership between the ESPL and Warner Music, you see that both organizations are working to attempt new things.
Esports is growing.
How much will it grow and what kind of impact will it ultimately have? No one knows for sure, but I’m pretty sure that the business model will be different than the traditional sports business model.
Warner Music and other music services are all dealing with a situation where content is a commodity and you can get an artist’s content in a number of different places so how do you win?
You don’t do it the old way, whatever that was. You have to look for new behaviors, new platforms, and new ways of getting your content to your target markets.
Second, the Chinese government’s five-year plan is a pretty amazing strategy document.
We’ve seen how quickly it has changed the dynamic in European football and if you listened to my conversations with Greg Turner you recognized that this was going to happen.
Even knowing what was going down, I was surprised how quickly things really changed.
One idea I come back to regularly is the need to set SMART objectives.
What are SMART objectives?
Specific
Measurable
Ambitious
Realistic
Time-Bound
Basically, turning goal setting from BS into something that you can actually do something about and measure your results against.
In China’s case, their goal was to get their men’s national team back into the 70 in the world by 2020. They didn’t achieve their goal, but I’d say that they were still successful in pursuing this goal because it was SMART in its focus.
And, having objectives like this can teach you how to refocus your efforts going forward.
That’s where the third aspect comes into play.
Because the Chinese government’s new plan calls for increased emphasis and investment on the domestic product.
They’ve adjusted to deal with the reality that they see on the ground.
Think about how much pie-in-the-sky thinking we’ve seen over the last year or so around the pandemic with people offering up and picking the path of the most optimistic likelihoods with no plan and no measures around it?
One of the big things I do with my clients is to make sure we set SMART objectives as often as possible. Every now and then, we can’t. But we do it almost every time.
Why?
Because it is important to know where you are going and what success will look like. Success isn’t a straight line so you need to be able to actually see and measure your progress.
That’s what is going on in China and that’s what should go on with you.
Let’s put this to work:
First, take stock of your business.
Are you still approaching things in a “traditional” manner?
Look at where your business is making money or how you are partnering. Then ask your team where there are new opportunities or new ideas that you haven’t explored.
Second, set yourself some SMART objectives.
Remember when you look at your goals you should know what is going to happen by when and how you’ll measure it.
Finally, don’t get wed to any one path. If you’ve set your SMART goals, you have a natural off-ramp to revisit your plans.
In my work with businesses on their marketing, I tell people that they need to only plan their marketing on an annual basis if they are really being serious about marketing.
Why?
So many changes in a year that to try and create a 3-year plan for your marketing is ridiculous.
If you are a country, a 5-year plan is great.
The big idea is to build in a mechanism that helps you remember to check your plan and make sure it still works for you.
4. DC has a lot of theatres and their challenges mirror the challenges a lot of us face:
The strange thing about DC is that I’m not heavily involved in the DC arts community. The folks at the Kennedy Center like Box Office Tony and Derek Younger, I know and hang out with when I can, but that’s the extent of my involvement.
So when I read these things, I don’t have a personal attachment just because I live in DC.
But it is still interesting to read this stuff.
I’m going to highlight three things here that hit in my purview that do pop up in this piece:
The need for Market Orientation
The power of pricing
Do your research
First, let’s swing to the bottom of the page where Studio Theatre talks about being wrong about people giving money to the theatre during the pandemic and, even, people knowing you are there.
Start with the money question:
The research is pretty clear and I worked with a few people over the last year in ways that backed it up for me. During downturns, people give at even greater rates than they do when things are going well.
This research goes back as far as the Great Depression.
What isn’t clear is why, but the behavior is evident.
The second part of this about people knowing you are there is a common challenge all businesses deal with, they stop advertising and marketing at the first sign of a downturn.
Again, research on this is clear.
You get what amounts to a bonus when you advertise during a recession or a slowdown.
Why?
Because everyone else is pulling back.
The bonus comes in two forms, you get more ad space for your money and there is less competition so you get more mindshare.
Again, do your research.
The second point is pricing power.
The piece almost belabors the idea that you couldn’t get comparable pricing for events during the pandemic for streaming shows.
But if you’ve followed along here, you know that this isn’t actually true.
Sean Kelly came on the podcast to share a case study on pricing during the pandemic where the pricing that his partner got was almost equal to live performances.
I’ve been ranting a lot lately about pricing, but the key pricing idea is about value.
Pricing is marketing’s MVP moment. Pricing is the most where you capture some of the value you’ve been creating for your audience. Pricing is about value. Value isn’t something you define, but something your audience defines.
Let’s hit Dave’s greatest hits here today:
For every 1%, you increase your price during the sale, you gain 10-12% in profit.
Pricing is about value and requires research, quantitative. Not qualitative.
Your price is the most important marketing decision you might make because it is where you capture the value you create for your audience.
Finally, Market Orientation would have solved much of this.
Market Orientation, if you’ve missed my ongoing lecture on the topic, is getting the voice of your market into your business.
Why do I continue to belabor this?
Because Market Orientation leads to research. Research leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to better decision making.
I’ve mentioned the work that Eventellect did with their NPS study early in the pandemic. This helped them to make better decisions and offer different value to their partners.
I mentioned my market research at the end of 2020 where I found some pretty exciting stuff like:
Around 80% of CEOs don’t trust their marketing departments.
About 73% of people need to grow this year.
53% would tell me that they didn’t know where to start.
And, about 40% of folks admit to not having a real strategy…and, I know that number is higher because most of what people call strategy isn’t.
Most of the challenges that are on display would have been solved with a little research: a few phone conversations, looking at how people were using video, and secondary data.
Market Orientation gets you to this point.
I go back to “The Magic Bullet” theory that many organizations seem to be living with…and that’s that there will be a “Magic Bullet” that comes along and wipes away everything and puts everything back to normal.
It isn’t going to happen.
So do this:
First, start by getting yourself situated around your customer. Call it Market Orientation if you want to and give me a hat tip so that all of this money I’ve spent on education over the years feels like a wise investment.
Second, do some research. A lot of the most important stuff I’ve looked at over the last year was historical or secondary, not stuff I’ve done on my own. Even though we know I do plenty of research on my own.
Finally, don’t make assumptions about anything right now. Do the research and act based on the research.
5. The AFLW’s success is a role model:
Big Ideas:
Market Orientation helps you launch successful new products and services.
Positioning is about stamping a word or two on your customers’ head and the AFLW wins with the way people use “belonging”.
Real Brand Purpose costs you something.
Australia, how can I stay away?
Australian Tourism Board, call me. Let’s do some partner content and some promotions! Big fan!
Goes without saying, I’m a big fan of the AFL! And, the Demons!
This story is a really great counterbalance to the story of The Super League that I started out with at the top of the page because it shows the exact opposite side of the coin and highlights a lot of what is really great about being a fan of sports, watching sports, or working in sports.
I could just say, “Read the article and look at it as the opposite of the top story.” That’d give you a good grasp on things, but I want to highlight three things here that matter and help every organization in the world that is selling tickets and experiences, in sports or not.
The power of strategy
The power of position
Real brand purpose
I’ll start at the top with strategy.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meet Josh Vanderloo when I was speaking at the AFL’s Fan Day back in 2019 because I feel like we would have had a lot to talk about.
In reading about his approach to building AFLW, a few things stuck out to me:
That he didn’t try to impose the AFL model onto AFLW.
That he did a great job of being market oriented.
He put strategy before tactics.
In any league or situation, it can be easy to use frameworks and shorthand for your new project. This is one of the reasons I often hold off on giving big strategic frameworks to y’all here even though I use them regularly.
I feel like you can get bad work out of good frameworks.
Josh didn’t do that.
Instead, he allowed the culture and the needs of the supporters, players, and community to come out and help shape what has become AFLW. And, this shows up brilliantly in the way that the word “belonging” comes to the forefront in so many conversations that happen about AFLW.
Last week we talked about the Red Sox and how they position themselves. Here’s another example of that from Australia.
As Dr. Kasey Symons pointed out, the culture of the AFL was a lot more macho and less inclusive. This gave the AFLW a competitive advantage because they took the point of view that you should come as you are and not as you think you need to be.
This matters because a lot of the markers of mass culture have evaporated as we have more choice due to the internet, streaming and cable, and more creativity.
So to try and pigeonhole everyone into 2-3 simple personas may sound good when you hear some numpty marketing guru talk about this, but it isn’t an effective tool.
You look at people’s wants, needs, and desires and combine that with their behaviors using something like the meaningful/actionable grid to discover opportunities.
Finally, the way that current AFL sponsors demand that they are a part of the AFLW is what real brand purpose looks like.
In most cases, you hear some knucklehead stand on a stage or on a podcast and talk about how whatever generation is currently in vogue is “looking for their brands to stand for something”.
It is total bollocks and the research has shown it. The research shows pretty clearly that in most cases brand purpose is, at best, a tie-breaker on a decision.
As an example, think about the success of Tesla. The electric car part of the equation is nice and all, but the car itself is amazing. Same with Newman’s Own dressing…no one cares that they give all of the profits to charity, but they do care that it makes a nice chicken marinade.
The way I learned Brand Purpose, it had to cost you something. And, by demanding that their partnership covers the AFL and the AFLW, that costs these organizations more money, and if the AFL said, “no”, it would cost them exposure and interrupt their sales funnels.
This is a great case study in all the great ideas that make working in sports, the arts, and tickets impactful because it shows that you can do a lot by understanding what your market wants and needs, understanding the power of good strategy, and being willing to take risks.
Good stuff to end the week with.
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I’m in DC this week and I’m heading to Richmond this evening for the weekend for another soccer tournament.
I’m also in the process of scheduling my first full trip since the pandemic began to Boston on June 24-25. More details to follow.
I’ve added one more week of office hours! In case you want to chat with me!
Check out my friends at Booking Protect. Refund protection sell-through rates are double what they were pre-pandemic. That means folks want peace of mind! Talk to Simon, Cat, or Cath!
Are you using Net Promoter Score as a tool to see how your business is doing yet?
I’ve partnered with Eventellect to create a worksheet to help you learn more about NPS, why it matters, and how to use it in your business.
I use it and Eventellect uses it to learn from our customers where we are strong and where we need to continue to work.
Eventellect’s NPS of 77 is outstanding…up there with Starbucks on customer satisfaction. This newsletter has a 67…not bad either.
Want to know more, email me and I’ll share the worksheet with you, FREE!
Hook up with Einar, Martin, and the team at Activity Stream. You’ll want to check out their new email marketing tool that helps turn your data into better email marketing campaigns. Keep the fall in mind when lockdowns have hopefully moved to a thing from the past because there is some cool stuff that Einar and Martin are cooking up.