Positive signs that NBA UK isn't just a Euro marketing tool

So after a few years living in London and occasionally complaining about the poor treatment of UK basketballers, I return home to Australia only to hear that the New Jersey Nets and Toronto Raptors are playing the first regular season game in Britain.

And by the sounds of it, the fans and complete strangers to the game are all going crazy for it. Photo and comments on NBA UK's Facebook page attest to that.

Still, the Nets and the Raptors? When Heat play Lakers or Celtics play the Bulls, then we can get really excited. I know the NBA has domestic ticket sales in mind versus the huge cost of flying the entire showcase to the UK but if they really want the European fanbase to build, bringing in big-ticket teams is the only way to go.

Just look at some of the votes cast on Fan Night. Last time I checked, Wolves v Bucks received only 2% of the votes from fans as their favourite lineup of the night. But those two teams are more likely to play in a London showdown than the league leaders.

So many sports stories, so little time etc.

It's funny that now I've moved further into sports marketing and sponsorship than in the last two years, I've had less time and inclination to write about it.
Partly because some of the stories I could have written about here could have got me fired but mainly due to the limited time I can give over to blogging, with the move back to Australia, settling in, finding work, moving house and all the rest.
Some amazing stories outside my current job are the current hot trend of verbally bashing AFL footballers, with non-sporting types deriding footballers as role models and those in the know supportive of their positive influence on kids.
Then on the US side are the challenges faced by college and pro athletes when using Twitter, as explored extensively in this article.
I attended a forum on sport and social media run the excellent Digital Sport Australia last night and athletes' Twitter tendencies was one of the topics. There was general agreement that athletes should tweet for themselves (rather than designate a publicity-hungry family member or staffer to do it for them) and they should be genuine and honest without using it to overly plug or attack sponsors. Pretty simple really but it seems beyond the ability of some players and celebrity sports stars to do that.
The Digisport people put on a top event so follow the hashtag #dssau for details on upcoming events and sports stories of interest.

Images from the deep - inspiring footage from a marine scientist

I usually blog about land-based sports but will make an exception as an opportunity to show some of the brilliant underwater video work being done by a US colleague Annie Crawley.
She's not an athlete, though her frequent scuba trips would probably qualify her as such, but the footage she brings back from every journey is always stunning and ocean-lovers from surfers and scuba-divers to fishermen couldn't help but be inspired by the images.
I met Annie at a science conference in North Carolina in January 2010 and watched a few of her amazing presentations on her ocean-based education programs. We chatted about her passion for the ocean and, as someone based in London and away from my beloved Pacific Ocean for two years, it revived my inspiration to want to get back in the water.
Her most recent voyage was to the Galapagos Islands. No need to say any more, just watch the video!

Do sports fans at live games really need more stimulation?

There are times in a serious sports watcher's life when they question whether three hours spent yelling at players and umpires on a rain-soaked pitch has really been worth it.

Or for soccer supporters who sit through a string of nil-all or one-all draws, drained of the satisfaction gained from a pivotal victory, who might wish they had an option of something else to watch than the boring spectacle in front of them.

It was only some time before a professional sports league decided fans needed more excitement and, rather than the baseball tradition of just running more colourful and annoying images on even-larger stadium screens, the time must have come for ticketholders to have their own personal entertainment units along with their overpriced hotdogs and lukewarm beer.

These FanVision gadgets, discussed in this post in the New York Times, allow American football viewers to stream footage from the game in front of them as well as several live games from other stadiums.

Teams will sell their own branded units to fans and it's expected that iPhone-draining apps are also on their way from teams such as the New York Giants and the Major League Baseball stable.

While there are positives for fans way up in the nosebleed section who want to know which of the ants on the field scored or people returning from bathroom or bar queues to catch up on missed play, this looks to be further increasing a sense of detachment from the game.

For a paid-up club member, attending and actually watching every game of a team's season either pays off in end-of-season finals success or the hope that their following season will bring long-awaited reward.

For players on the field then to look up into the stands and see supporters staring at tiny video screens, must bring with it some kind of disillusionment with their own achievements. Yes, this may have already happened with the flood of iPhones and similar devices but there should be a limit to how much of fans' attention the NFL, MLB or other leagues want taken away from the onfield action.

No doubt marketing heads in the big leagues have claimed FanVision and other tools are a way of 'owning the space' and taking a slice of the cash to be generated by live-action video content.

What they continue to forget is the reason fans sometimes go back to the lower-paid minor league and country junior competitions: to escape the overstimulated environments and enjoy the simplicity of a game between two teams where the only instant replay is in a viewer's memory bank.