One reason that sports might be a nice advertising venue is its immunity to Tivo.  People Tivo thier shows, stream the rest online, etc, etc, in increasing numbers.  However, if your names on the stadium, or you’ve sponsored the program, and that sports are best watched in real time, well, you begin to see the picture.  Is it effective?  That I don’t know.  But if getting your name out there is the heart of advertising, then this seems to be a good way to do it.

Craig, thanks.

Craig, I have to own up.  The Nielsen figures are from Maury, he added them to the piece.  I was initially surprised by the figures but after some thought, less so.  And this takes me to Arva’s point.  Advertisers see more and more value in TV sports because as Arva notes it is less likely to be DVRed and more likely to be viewed live and still commands a mass audience in this era of audience fragmentation, internet and video games.  And this is where the rubber hits the road.  The marketing execs think these naming rights are good investments but they won’t make the investment because they fear a political and media backlash.  BofA was quoted as saying they backed out of the Yankees deal even though they thought it was a good investment…

@ Monahan, I linked to that article a few times in the post and it is where I ripped off the title.  Always good stuff @ SBJ.

One more confession, some of the links I copped from Shysterball but I might have sent them to Craig in the first place anyway….

In a nutshell, if the Corporate America decides that it is no longer good to be associated with pro sports we will see revenues and salaries come down big time (and I’m not arguing that that would be bad)