The Basketball Tournament (TBT). Single-elimination. Winner-take-all. $2 million. ESPN. This summer. Sign up as a fan, support that team that wins, and you could win a share of the prize!
Source: The Basketball Tournament (TBT)
Yep, I know this is a sneaker site, but brands are no longer sneaker companies. In today’s retail environment brands, and retail outlets, require a multifaceted approach to driving engagement. While the majority of analysts and data brokers push sales numbers, it is becoming a very difficult process to really find the devil in the details and provide companies with information that will improve their ability to place products on the feet of consumers or apparel on their backs. People now readily have access to entertainment on demand removing the need to check in at a specified time to be marketed towards. This has left television, retail, business in general, reeling. It has also created a subset of marketing opportunities via social media and influencers that is proving just as difficult to navigate; and it has opened the door for innovation and opportunity.
The Basketball Tournament is a winner take all tournament with a kicker for fans to share in a 2 million dollar pot. The tournament is set up in the same manner as the NCAA tournament. One of the few live events that garners ad revenue and eyes consistently. (Sporting events may be the last place where advertisers can successfully reach consumers.) TBT athletes are primarily former NCAA basketball players who have played professionally. There is an obvious benefit in getting attention by doing this.
TBT features 72 teams of top professional, college alumni, and international basketball players competing in a single-elimination 5-on-5 tournament for a winner-take-all $2 Million prize. All 72 games will air on ESPN networks beginning Friday, June 29, culminating with the championship game on Friday, August 3 live at 9:00 pm ET on ESPN. Regional competitions will be hosted in Richmond (July 13-15), Los Angeles (July 13-15), Brooklyn (July 20-22) and Colombus (July 20-22), with the semifinals and championship game in Baltimore (August 2-3).
The highly-competitive tournament has attracted some of the best basketball players in the world. In 2017, Overseas Elite won for the third year in a row. Teams compete for spots in the tournament by soliciting votes from fans and supporters via social media. Applicants must be 18 or older and willing to forego their amateur status. For more information, visit www.TheTournament.com. Connect with The Basketball Tournament Online: Visit the TBT Website: https://www.thetournament.com/
Follow TBT on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thetournament
Follow TBT on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.tournam…
This year the event implemented the Elam Ending (via The Star Press):
At the first dead ball after the 4:00 mark of the fourth quarter (or second half), the game clock is shut off and a Target Score is set equal to the leading team’s score plus seven points. Then play resumes, without a game clock but still with a shot clock, until one team matches or exceeds the Target Score. So for example, let’s say the Team A was leading Team B 88-78 at the first dead ball under 4:00, the Target Score would be 95. The Team B would still have a chance to come back without fouling, while Team A couldn’t just stall and try to run the clock out; it would still have to score to win.
The Elam Ending was born during the NCAA Tournament by Nick Elam. It was a concept that was discussed, but never really considered by any of the major basketball outlets, until TBT implemented it last season and in every game this season. TBT has gained in popularity because the ending of the game moves just as the fast as the start. This hasn’t really pushed a lot of people towards the sport, but it has made it considerable enough in the eyes of Puma for them to sponsor the tournament.
For a one month event started in 2014 the tournament shows the limitations of reaching a larger audience. Tournaments are too short lived to really see the benefits of engagement. This is why the digital footprint of TBT is not extensive. There are only 20,000+ followers on Twitter and about the same on their other social channels. Because it is a product of ESPN it is limited. How can something attached to ESPN be limited? ESPN has so much content dedicated to a variety of sports that TBT is relegated to online streaming and ESPN3. Even then it has to compete with the NBA and the NBA Summer League. The Summer League now garners more interests than MLB baseball on certain nights because the marketing is directly tied into the creation of new millionaires and the most popular sport in the world behind soccer.
ESPN has created a tournament that doesn’t require very much funding for the company therefore the investment into promotion is minimal. Unlike Ice Cube’s Big 3 League the opportunity to reach eyes in the television market is bigger for the Big 3 because they aren’t relegated and isolated to the ESPN channel. TBT still lends itself to an opportunity I’ve discussed before:
The NCAA Should Be Disrupted and Nike’s PK80 Could Carry Some of the Burden
Like the PK80, the Tournament format is not quite the attraction for consistent marketing. However, if you consider the ability for brands and retail outlets to generate their own LEAGUES. Yes the logistics are difficult, but for a company like Nike who ran one of the most successful online sporting events ever at midnight (Breaking2) if their PK80 Tournament actually moved from a tournament to a semi-pro event paying college athletes at Nike branded schools, the brand equity would be insane (the details would really have to be worked out of course).
A PK80 League probably won’t happen, but Nike is on to something that every brand needs to consider. In this post a few years ago I gave some details into what could be done:
This is Why More Female Athletes Don’t Have Signature Sneakers
In the article above this is what I wrote:
Consider this example: If Nike goes behind the scenes and creates a women’s track & field league (which already exists internationally we just don’t show [it] …in the US). They pitch the 12 show league to ABC to air on Saturday Night. The league doesn’t consist of just US athletes, but an international market and it is open to athletes from other brands, and Nike pays the women contracts of 1 million dollars per athlete and we are looking at 100 athletes for all events, that would cost 100 million dollars. Do you know that Nike’s budget for advertising is around 8 Billion dollars? 100 Million would be 1.25% of that ad budget. A commercial during primetime would garner about 100,000 per spot. That’s three commercials at 300,000 x 5 spots over the course of an hour or 1.5 Million. Sell the rights to streaming services for a Final Four style finale and Nike recoups over 12 Million in tv ads with an additional 12 million for the finale. This doesn’t make a dent into the 100 Million spent on athletes, but wait, think about this, Nike spends 8 billion on advertising. What percentage is slotted for the promo of apparel for women? Who knows, but 100 Million with the potential for a bigger marketing opportunity for the women’s market seems reasonable to me. More important, the moment you pay the women, the moment the sport becomes much more appealing to the world. Girls begin to train more to become pros, which means apparel and footwear sales increase. Women begin to idolize the strength of these women athletes, which means they buy more sportswear and apparel.
Now the 1 million for each athlete is extreme. You could pay the athletes 100,000 per season and it would work and become profitable. It’s the same concept with the WNBA or any sport that a brand wants to look at to create a league. TBT, The Rucker (which was once televised on ESPN), The Drew League, are all foundation elements for brands and retail outlets to build a new means of branding in a long term fashion while also creating a potential revenue stream. With the amount of athletes brands sponsor and the amount of international events that lead up to events like the Olympics it could be difficult to move athletes from what they are familiar and comfortable with. The failure of the XFL, USFL and IBL, and CBA loom as warnings to anyone who would try to launch a league. The difference in why new leagues have an opportunity to thrive now with the backing of sports brands and retailers? Diversified media outlets. We are in a time where a kid swinging his arms with a backpack on can become a millionaire. Sports are consumed in digital chunks, but the right sport will be consumed. TBT is a guide and it’s also kind of entertaining, but if it was marketed the same way Breaking2 was branded and handled there is real opportunity there.