How the ATP Courts Worldwide Support
If you're a fan of individual sports, you've probably noticed that player are globe hopper. Take tennis. No single country boasts enough interested fans to keep [layers at home for year-round competition, yet today's top-flight tennis pros come from every continent except Antarctica. For 2013, the Association of Tennis Professional (ATP) sanctioned 64 tournaments in 31 countries. It also requires member pros to play in a certain number of events---and thus stopover in a number of countries ---to maintain international rankings.
Because no tennis pro can possibly play in every tournament, organizers must attract enough top draws to fill stadium seats and land lucrative TV contracts. So tournaments compete for top-billed stars, not only with other tournaments but also with such regular international showcases as the Olympics and the Davis Cup. Prizes for two weeks' worth of expert serving and volleying can be extremely generous (about US$2.55 million for the 2013 single champions of the Australian Open).
Remember, too, that tournaments earn money through ticket sales, corporate sponsorship agreements, television contracts, and leasing of advertising space. The more people in the stadium and TV audience, the more sponsors and advertisers will pay to get their attention. Moreover, international broadcasts attract sponsorship from international companies. The partner and sponsor list for the 2013 Australian Open tennis tournament included a South Korea automaker(Kia), a Dutch brewer (Heineken), a Swiss watchmaker (Rolex), a French clothing company (Lacoste), and a U.S. sporting goods firm (Wilson). Such sponsorship of world watched sporting events generally pays off in higher market growth rate.
THE WIDE WORLD OF TELEVISED SPORTS
Not surprisingly, other professional sports groups have expanded their global TV coverage (and marketing programs). Most viewers of Stanley Cup hockey watch from outside North America. Fans watch NASCAR races (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) in more than 120 countries and NBA games in about 200. If you lived in Tunisia and enjoyed simultaneous access to multiple TV channels, you could watch more hours of NBA action than there are hours in the year.
TV isn’t the only means by which sports organizations are seeking foreign fan bases and players. The National Football League (NFL) of the United States underwrites flag-football programs in Chinese schools and is playing some regular NFL games in Europe. The NBA has appointed a director of basketball operations for India to help build youth leagues there. With the growth of broadband, we’ll soon enter the realm of thousand-channel TV, where we’ll able to tune into sporting events that currently appeal only to highly localized niche markets. How about Thai boxing or Japanese sumo wrestling?
The Top-Notch Pro as Upscale Brand
Many top players are effectively global brands because of their sports success and usually because of good looks and pleasing personalities as well. Philippine boxer Manny Pacquiao, Russian tennis pro Maria Sharapova, Portuguese soccer forward Cristiano Ronaldo (he has over 50 million fans on Facebook), and U.S. basketball star LeBron James are so popular globally that companies within and outside the sports industry are willing to pay them millions of dollars for endorsing clothing, equipment, and other products.
Promotion as Teamwork
A few team, such as the New York Yankees in basketball, the New Zealand All Blacks in rugby, and Manchester United (Man U) in soccer also have enough brand-name cachet to be global brands for selling clothing and other items to fans around the world. Just about every team can get something for the rights to use its logo, while some have enough name recognition to support global chains of retail outlets. Similarly, companies both sponsor and seek endorsement s from well-known teams. For instance, Nike, the U.S. sports shoes and apparel giant, has fought hard to become the top sportswear and equipment supplier to European soccer team. The success of this campaign gas stimulated Nike’s international sales to become greater than those in the United States.
Many nonsports companies, such as Cannon (cameras, office equipment), Sharp (consumer electronics), and Carlsberg (beer), sponsor teams mainly to get corporate logos emblazoned on uniforms. Still others, such as United Airlines in Chicago, pay for the naming rights to arenas and other venues. Of course , teams themselves can be attractive international investments. For instance, the owners of the Boston Red Sox baseball team (U.S.A.) bought the Liverpool Football Club of the United Kingdom.
Sports and You
What does all this mean to you as a sports fan? Chances are you fantasized at one time about going pro in some sport, but you’ve probably given up that fantasy and settled into the role of spectator. Now that pro sports has become a global phenomenon (thanks to better communications), you can enjoy a greater variety--- and a higher level of competition---than any generation before you.
That’s the upside, but we must point out that people don’t always take easily to another country’s sport. Despite many efforts, cricket, although popular in counties that were British colonies for centuries, has never become popular elsewhere. (In post-colonial United States, it was popular, but it gradually gave way to baseball.) Nor has American football gained much popularity outside the United States. A former NFL lineman expressed a reason: that rules for cricket and American football are so complicated that one must learn them as children. However, basketball and soccer have traveled to new markets more readily because they are easier to understand and require no specialized equipment.
Further, there is disagreement about the economic effect of successfully winning a bit to host big international competitions such as the World Cup and Olympics. On the one hand, they help spur tourism, foreign investment, and infrastructure construction, and improvement of blighted areas that will speed future economic growth. (The cost of building facilities for the 2012 London Olympics was about $15 billion.) On the other hand, in light of threats from global terrorism of security has skyrocketed, while hosts may have to spend on stadiums and facilities that have no use afterward. Many competitions have ended with substantially increased local and national debt.
Nor is everyone happy with the unbridled globalization of sports---or at least with some of the effects. Brazilian soccer fans lament the loss of their best player, and French fans protested the purchase of the Paris Saint-German(PSG) football club by Qatar Investment Authority.