The East Coast woke up this morning to a distinct red tint. It’s the morning after in Red Sox Nation.
This region’s love affair with the Boston baseball team is like many affairs of the heart by turns exhilarating and debilitating. The New York Times describes it this way: “For much of the 20th century, the Boston Red Sox were a symbol of frustration and pain for an entire region. As popular as they were in their corner of the nation, either they were good enough to lose in agonizing fashion on baseball’s grandest stage, or they were just plain bad. But that all changed in 2004 when the Red Sox ended an 86-year championship drought, and now their fortunes have shifted so dramatically that winning titles has become commonplace.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/sports/baseball/boston-red-sox-rout-st-louis-cardinals-to-win-world-series.html?_r=0)
Regardless of which team holds your heart, there is something we can all agree on: sports connect people emotionally. Brands linked to sports have a longer reach. T-shirts (with Comfort Colors, it always comes back to t-shirts) related to sports teams make up a staggering portion of industry sales. How did this happen? When did sports become such a marketing powerhouse?
This short timeline might shed some light:
August 1858 – First paid admission required for a game (baseball)
1870s – Tobacco cards featuring baseball players are popular
March 1923 – First endorsement deal (golf)
September 1925 – First Goodyear blimp flyover
June 1928 – Coke sponsors the Olympic Games
August 1939 – First televised Major Baseball League game
August 1939 – First televised college game (football)
October 1939 – First televised NFL game
1976 – Millions spent on Montreal Olympics
September 1979 – ESPN debuts
1984 – Hundreds of millions spent on Los Angeles Olympics
1990 – The dawn of high school sports marketing
2008 – Adidas pays Russian pole-vaulter Yelena Isenbyeva $2.5 million a year
2012 – £24billion spent on London Olympics
The National Sporting Goods Association tells us that “Adult Americans spent more than $8 billion on sports logo apparel in 2009.” (http://www.nsga.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=4315) You can see where this is going. But this morning, Red Sox fans will tell you it’s only about love.
Timeline Sources: http://www.timetoast.com, http://smedio.com
comfort colors style 