Jimmy’s Blog

I’m very much looking forward to today’s final round of the Masters.   I’m pulling for Tiger to win but he had a tough day y-day – it’ll be hard to come back from 7 shots down.

As usual, CBS Sports is doing a fantastic job of covering the Masters.  I love the spots they’re doing of Jack Nicklaus’ historic win in ’86 — especially the poignant pieces about fathers and sons — the clips of Jack and his son caddying for him — as well as the voice-over about the 9 yr old who used to wonder why his own father cried when witnessing that incredible day.

Watching the Masters always reminds of my father.  I used to go my parents’ home on the final round of the 4 majors to watch it with my father, especially the Masters and the US Open (which usually was played on Father’s Day Weekend).  In the last few years of my Dad’s life, it was tougher to watch golf together since the Alzheimer’s robbed him of his memory.  And, although I’m still deeply saddened that he passed away three years ago, I have nothing but positive and strong memories of watching so many golf tournaments together.

He and I used to love to watch Tiger — there was definitely a connection since both my father and Tiger’s father were US Army officers.  And, of course, Tiger and I both have Asian mothers.   I know Tiger misses his father dearly … as I miss my own father.   But, as noted in the past, we are fortunate my father lived a long, full life.

So, I won’t be sad today watching the Masters … instead I’ll be sitting there with a smile on my face thinking of the many wonderful lifetime memories that Sports creates for fathers and sons.

Baseball … my favorite sport.   It was my favorite sport growing up as a kid and it’s still my favorite sport … to both play and watch (at a variety of levels).

I grew up on US Army bases in Japan … I have great memories of playing Little League baseball against other American teams but also against the local Japanese teams.  Those teams were so dominant.  That’s also the time when the Japanese teams used to regularly win the Little League World Series.   I stopped playing when I was 18 … and ended up playing softball for many years … but then 10 years ago I was introduced to Ponce de Leon Baseball — a 30-and-over hardball league.   It’s now 10 years later and I still love playing the game.   We have our first game of the season tomorrow morning.

I also love to watch baseball … from Little League to high school to college to MLB.  I went to see one of my students at Georgetown Univ, Sean LaMont, play last weekend.  What a blast to watch college baseball.   One of the cool things for me is that our Ponce team occasionally plays on the Hoyas’ home field – Shirley Povich Field.   Of course, I’d much rather face a Ponce pitcher rather than these young college kids who throw some serious heat!

I’ll also be attending my first Nats game of the year this week.  It’ll be a game against the Phillies and their vaunted starting pitchers.  What an incredible rotation they’ve put together … Halladay, Lee, Oswalt and Hamels.  Wow.  But, the Nats are playing much better baseball … stronger defensively and an improved offense.   I also look forward to going to a couple of O’s games in Baltimore this summer — Orioles Park is still one of my favorite places.  And, I assume I’ll be making it to a couple of minor leagues games to watch Bryce Harper and some of the other young Nats.

Let’s play two!

I haven’t blogged in a while since I’ve been so busy with work, teaching, advising and mentoring.  But, I’m ready to jump right back in — and will do so 2 – 3 times a week.   In particular, I want and need to blog when I’m really inspired and motivated.  That’s the case right now.

I’ve blogged many times in the past about a wonderful non-profit organization, Year Up, as well as our GAMBLE students from Georgetown University (Georgetown’s Aspiring Minority Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs).   With the great leadership and vision of Norean Sharpe, the Dean of the Undergraduate Business School at Georgetown, and Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, Executive Director, Year Up’s Capital Region Office, we’ve created a fantastic partnership.

Last year, 30 of the GAMBLE students mentored approximately 90 Year Up students in how to write business cases.   After a 3-week period, this culminates in a Business Case Competition at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business.   Last year’s event was a resounding success.   And, I”m so glad to see it start today with Year 2.

I was given the great honor of providing the Kick-Off Speech this morning at the Year Up Office in Rosslyn.  I focused my speech on Philanthropy, Mentoring,  Education, Sports and Networking.  The students — both from Year Up and Georgetown — were attentive and engaged.   The one hour flew by.  Nearly half of the students came by to shake my hand and thank me.  What a great thrill.

We also two special guests … Jimmy Little from Under Armour and Todd Alston from AOL.  Jimmy’s story is remarkable and I will blog about it separately.

Last  year, I wrote an article for the Washington Post about this dynamic partnership.  Here’s the link — http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/guestinsights/2010/05/business-mentorship.html.

In summary, I’ve been mentored by two great individuals, Ted Leonsis and Mario Morino.  So, in our “Pay it Forward” scenario, as frequently as I can, I try my best to “give back” and share lessons I’ve learned from them — and pass it on to the next generation.   A sincere thank-you to the students — from Year Up and Georgetown Univ — for wanting to make a positive difference.

As we continue to move forward on the evolving Sports Digital space, I thought it’d be good to take a look back to when the Internet Sports space really started to take off.

Back in early ’95, I was in charge of marketing for Home Team Sports, the regional sports TV network serving the mid-Atlantic region.  I had been reading about online services, such as Prodigy, CompuServ and America Online over the past year.  I was thinking about how we could differentiate HTS from the other 22 regional sports networks in the US.

In January ’95 , we met with the NDC Consulting Group to discuss creating a web site for HTS — we’d be the first RSN with a stand-alone internet presence.   At around the same time, I was also contacted by a fairly small company, AOL,  about joining them to help the get their Sports Channel (it was called channels back then) up and running.

I was interviewed by Randy Dean, the channel GM, and Anne Levy, the incoming business development lead for the channel.  We had a couple of interviews and totally hit it off.  But, I still wasn’t sure about leaving the cable TV business for this new internet medium.   But, then Randy gave me the line that hooked me — just as Roone Arledge helped create and define the TV Sports business, we had the opportunity to do the same with the internet.   That line hooked me up — and helped drive the decision to go work for AOL in the Spring ’95.

1995 was the year that Internet sports sites really came into play.  Yes, some sites had been up in the past, but many of the big portal sites and league sites launched that year.  For AOL, the business model was straightforward and simple.  Our model was to generate revenue by consumers paying the $9.95 monthly fee plus $2.95 per hour.  So, our goal was to drive as much usage as possible from consumers.   AOL then split the revenue with its content partners who were called Information Providers (IP’s).   Most IP’s were compensated 10% – 20% of the usage generated in their specific area.

It was like the wild, wild west back in ’95.  We were creating a new medium for the Sports sector.  What did the consumers want?  We spent many hours in strategy meetings, reviewing IP proposals, traveling all over the country for endless meetings with potential IP partners and conducting many conference calls.

Since our goal was to generate usage revenue for both AOL and the Sports IP, we had to develop and program the Sports Channel in way that met these mutual goals.  So, we had to find out what did Sports online / internet users most desire?   We could easily track the usage hours in the different areas of the channel so we constantly monitored what was working / not working.  We quickly found out that Sports fans came online to post comments on the message boards about their favorite sport, league, conference, team, player, etc.  Grandstand was our partner that excelled in helping make this happen (they were a visionary).

Consumers also wanted scores, scores, scores.  In fact, as we found out, the scoreboard is what drives the usage for a sports site — much like the Stocks and Quotes portfolio drives the usage for a personal finance site.   Back in the ’95 – ’96 timeframe, I was working on how to generate more and more usage for our partner, STATS Inc.  While I was responsible for the business side, we fortunately had a great programming mind, Kevin Lockland, who took the lead on the technical side, in creating create the first real-time live sports scoreboard.   This was a home run.  Our usage hours increased dramatically — and the STATS Inc become one of the top 10 content areas on AOL.

Kevin and I also worked on creating a Player Portfolio, which tracked real-time usage for fantasy sports players.  Ironically, this was just the tipping point for what is now a huge business … Fantasy Sports on the internet, mobile devices, smart phones, etc.   When we approached the NFL about serving as their Fantasy Football partner in ’97, they told us that fantasy football was too similar to gambling so they passed on it.  The NBA was the league that took the plunge.  As we saw the traffic spike significantly from the number of people participating in fantasy sports, the NFL took notice the following year and also saw a large spike in traffic.  The NFL then fully embraced fantasy football — which helped drive not only NFL.com traffic but also spiked their Sunday Ticket ratings.  (Fantasy Sports is a topic for a separate blog posting.  Also, much credit should go to Yahoo Sports for being the first and best sports site to fully integrate fantasy sports into their offerings — it is the reason they are a leader in this space.)

Another valuable lesson we learned in the formative years was to provide Sports content that was not being offered by the traditional Sports outlets — TV, radio, newspapers, etc.   A perfect example was the World Wrestling Federation (it was called WWF back then before they changed to WWE).   In 1995, WWF fans could watch their favorite sport on cable TV once or twice a week, but its’ matches were not covered by local and national radio or TV – nor was it reported on in newspapers.   But, this new medium — online / internet — could provide 24 x 7 coverage.   We were able to satisfy the enormous appetite of the WWF fans.  They posted messages, filled the chat rooms, downloaded photos of their favorite wrestlers and managers (one female manager, Sunny, became the most downloaded female on the internet), etc.  They became a top 10 content area on AOL.   For our large AOL Live chats, the WWF wrestlers regularly drew more users than big-name stars from the big 4 sports leagues.

These examples above from the formative years of the Sports Internet industry proved that the Internet would be a viable and important medium for Sports consumers.  In essence, we were able to provide instant real-time info to Sports fans (witness the huge popularity of Fantasy Sports); allowed them to interact and engage with one another (hence the popularly of sites now such as SportsBlog Nation, Fanhouse, Bleacher Report, etc); gave the “displaced fan,” a fan that is does not live in the geographic area of their favorite team, the opportunity to avidly follow their team via the internet.  We also experimented with the “athletes on the internet” model.  This model has not been cracked yet, from a meaningful revenue perspective, but as Twitter is showing us now, the ability to follow our favorite athletes has increased dramatically.

Just as ’95 – ’98 was when the Internet Sports space took off in a furious manner, we are in a similar position with Mobile Sports right now.   As noted in previous blogs, Sports is always the driver of the adoption of new technologies.  The time is now for new Sports applications for smart phones and tablets.  It’s already been an interesting 12 – 18 months, but this period will continue to explode, particularly as this becomes more global with huge emerging sports markets in China, India, Brazil, Russia, etc.  It is indeed an exciting time to be a Sports content provider and Sports Marketer.  There are many, many opportunities facing us — and we take a look each week at key Digital Sports issues.

The spring semester at Georgetown University is now fully underway.   I’ll be teaching “Sports Marketing Strategy” to undergraduate students in our McDonough School of Business on Monday nights and “Digital Sports Media” to graduate students in our Sports Industry Management program (School of Continuing Studies) on Tuesday nights.

In our initial session for both classes, I noted that there will very much be an emphasis on the impact of Digital Media in the sports industry.  Each week — in our classes as well as for this blog — we’ll discuss and review the changes taking place in sports.

This week we’ll focus on what is often called the “next generation fan.”   What is the next generation fan?  It’s the sports fan who consumes sports in a much different manner than the traditional fan.  The “traditional fan” would primarily go to watch the action on the field, court, ice or arena.  But, the “next generation” fan consumes sports in a much different manner.  Instead of just watching the on-field action, the next generation fan is constantly multi-tasking.  They are also watching the big scoreboard / big screen as well as using their smart phone to text, Tweet, take photos, check-in, post to Facebook, etc.

In the past two years, I’ve been fortunate enough to attend sporting events in two of the greatest sports venues in the world.  In late 2009, I went to the famed Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro (one of the three greatest soccer venues in history) to watch Flamengo play a league match.  And, in the spring 2010, I went to see Arsenal play Porto in a Championship League match at their new beautiful Emirates Stadium.   The passion of the fans at both venues was remarkable and bone-chilling.  But, it was also clear that they were there for one thing … to watch the action on the field.

Contrast that to the American sports fan in the US.  Go to nearly any professional sports league game and you’ll witness a good number of fans multi-tasking.  I think back to Feb 2010 — at the NBA All-Star Game at Cowboys Stadium in Texas.   I’ve never seen a more spectacular sports venue.  Wow.  The place is simply amazing.  In particular, the high-definition screen that runs 60 yards long will simply take your breath away.  What’s interesting is that the picture is so clear that often times you find yourself watching the big screen versus the live-action on the field.  Then, of course, the fans are on their i-Phones, Blackberrys, Androids, etc to tell their friends about the spectacular venue — snapping photos and posting on Facebook, posting tweets on Twitter, checking in on FourSquare, texting and emailing, etc.

I do love the purity of watching the soccer / football matches in Rio de Janeiro and London, but as a sports marketer, I marvel at how sports venues in the US, such as Cowboys Stadium, create so many more meaningful ways to create revenue.  The sponsorship opportunities alone are staggering.  But, also, the advent of mobile apps will continue to help sports fans consume in even more engaging ways.   There’s a number of apps that help fans follow their fantasy sports teams, order concessions, change seat locations, follow other teams and sports, look at traffic reports, check on weather, etc.

Sports has always been one of the key content areas to drive the adoption of new technologies.  This “next generation fan” will continue to multi-task in more and more ways as new applications continue to be developed.  Yes, the US is probably leading the way since it’s the large consumer sports market, but many of these lessons will be shared — and fans in the UK, Brazil, China, Australia, India, Russia, etc will also consume sports in a different manner.  This also means that leagues and teams will also be able to create new incremental revenue streams.  It will be interesting to watch this play out in the coming years.  The game — or “watching the game” has changed.  And, those that embrace it will be the ones who can most benefit.

This month marks the fifth year of blogging on this site.  I started in January ’07 — right after attending the premiere of “Nanking,” a great film documentary produced by my mentor, Ted Leonsis, at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City.   I was quite inconsistent at the beginning but have been blogging on a more regular basis recently.  According to the blog stats, I posted 44 blogs in ’10.

Starting this week, I”m going to start blogging on a weekly basis.   And, this will be part of a larger network of blogging sites that are part of the iStrategy Network.   My focus will continue to be on Sports (with an emphasis on Digital), Education and Philanthropy (with personal messages around the holiday periods).

As background, after spending the first six years of my Sports and Entertainment career in PR, radio and tv, in 1995, I went to work for one of the original online services, AOL, to help them start their Sports channel (it was called channes back then).  The other two services were CompuServe and Prodigy.  1995 was the beginning of internet sports sites (many of the large sports media sites and league sites started at that time).   Both AOL and AOL Sports went through a mercurial rise through the rest of the ’90’s.  AOL Sports and ESPN.com were two of the top-ranked sites and AOL grew from 2 million users when I started to over 30 million members around the world.  After the merger with Time Warner in ’00 much of the rest of the decade was a roller coaster ride.

I left in March ’09 to start a sports strategic advisory business, JLynn Associates.  I’m working with 10 clients now, including a number of early stage sports technology companies.  I’m also heavily involved at Georgetown University.  I’m serving as the “Visiting Professional in the Practice of Sports Industry Management” for Georgetown’s graduate sports management program.  It’s a hybrid role of teaching (Sports Leadership and Management, Sports Digital Media, Capstone), advising students and business development for the program.  In addition, I’ve just started year 6 of teaching Sports Marketing Strategy to undergraduate seniors in Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business.

I will post blogs on Sunday evenings / Monday mornings — which works great since many of the big sports events are played over the weekends.  Also, the two classes I teach are on Monday night (Sports Marketing Strategy) and Tuesday evening (Sports Digital Media).   This is such an exciting and ever-changing space.  Sports has always been and will be a key content area for the adoption of new technologies (think back to radio, tv, color tv, VCR’s, cable, satellite, internet, etc).

We will take a look at and discuss a number of interesting areas in Sports, including the impact of Social Media, the proliferation of mobile and tablet apps, multi-platform strategies to reach “next generation” fans, the increased importance of the global markets (with an emphasis on the emerging Sports markets in China and Brazil), the need to better understand multicultural markets for Sports marketers (this will be critical in the coming years with the growth of the Women’s, Hispanic, African-American and Asian segments), etc.

I look forward to blogging each week.   I will weigh in with insights gained from client interaction, conferences, international travel (upcoming trips to Brazil, London and Asia), guest speakers for our two classes, mentors, etc.  And, just as important, I look forward to interacting and engaging with others — from students to thought leaders in the Sports and Digital sectors.   Cheers.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 7,400 times in 2010. That’s about 18 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 44 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 221 posts.

The busiest day of the year was January 18th with 280 views. The most popular post that day was Paul Baker.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com, tedstake.com, linkedin.com, and lmodules.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for jimmy lynn blog, jimmy lynn, jimmy lynn aol, jlynn associates, and paul baker aol.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Paul Baker January 2010
2 comments

About Jimmy Lynn January 2007
17 comments

Washington Redskins Cheerleaders March 2010

Good-bye, AOL March 2009
27 comments

Year Up and Georgetown’s GAMBLE April 2010
1 comment

I just witnessed one of the most beautiful sights one can see … thousands and thousands of headstones adorned with Christmas wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery.   It does truly take your breath away … rows and rows and rows marked with the wreaths.   Thank you to the many volunteers that take the time each year to make this wonderful gesture.  I know it means a great deal to the family members and friends of those that are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

I just returned from the cemetery to pay respects and to pass along on Christmas wishes to my father and Uncle Art, both of whom are interred in the columbarium at Arlington National Cemetery.

Every time I go to ANC, it reminds of the day, May 22, 2008, that my father was laid to rest.  It also makes me thankful to the family members and friends that were there as well as the US Army for honoring a military member and his family in such a honorable and dignified manner.

When people ask me how I had the strength to deliver the eulogy at my father’s memorial service, I tell them I leaned on family and friends — where I received so much strength and support.   I had other good friends who also had to deliver a eulogy at one of their parents’ service — they told me the same thing — to lean on your friends.

While delivering the eulogy, I quoted the line from one of my all-time favorite movies, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which I saw again last night.  I’ve been telling my friends for over 20 years that it’s one of my favorite movies because of the message it sends about family, friendship, helping others, doing things the right way, etc.  I love quote in the book that was inscribed to George Bailey, “… remember no man is a failure who has friends.”  And, his younger brother, Harry Bailey, toasted George as the “richest man in the town” due to his many friendships.

Well, that’s how I felt that day of my father’s memorial service.  With the outpouring and support from so many family members and friends, I did indeed feel like the richest person in Washington, DC.  I can’t thank my friends enough for the support they provided — it’s been almost three years since my father passed but the friendships remain just as strong if not even stronger.

So, on this Christmas morning, I just wanted to pass along this message of the gratitude to my family members and friends.  And, I hope you too enjoy the power of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and also – if you get the chance – please stop by Arlington National Cemetery during Christmas time to see a sight that will truly make you grateful and will indeed take your breath away.  Merry Christmas to all.

As we head into December, here’s one person’s opinion of the DC sports scene:

– Redskins:  well, many people guessed at the beginning of the season that the Skins would be 8 – 8 this season.  So, with a 5 – 6 record, they seem right on track.   As a Skins fan, it is good to see the team with an experienced and proven coaching staff and GM (which is a far cry from the past couple of years).   There’s still a long ways to go — especially in improving the talent on the offensive line, WR and RB.  It is good to have a veteran QB in Donovan McNabb in place for the next few years.  But, it’s still a bummer to see that their highest paid player is a part-time player.  Heck, the highest paid player should be the hardest worker in practice and the one that produces at a high level on game days (think Michael Jordan, Walter Payton, Alex Ovechkin).  They do have a tough road over the next 5 weeks as they face the Giants twice and a couple of other squads with winning records.

– Capitals:  well, fortunately, DC has the Caps.  After 1/4 way through the season, they have the best record in the NHL.   The games at Verizon Center are a complete blast — fun, riveting and exciting — and always sold out.  It’s now the “it” tix on the DC sports scene.  What a great core of young, fantastic players in Ovie, Semin, Green, Backstrom, etc.   And they should just picked up a good vet D to shore up the back line.  It should be a great few months coming up for the Caps.

– Wizards:  the record is not much better than last year but they’re playing a much more exciting brand of basketball.  And, there’s definitely a core of good, young talent that should grow over the year.  Although he’s been injured the past couple of weeks, it’s great to have John Wall here in DC.  And, Gilbert is regaining his smooth stroke.  I believe they’ll continue to improve throughout the season as the team starts to learn to play together.  No playoffs this year but they’re back on the right track — and following the Caps model of building a core of good, young talent.

– Nationals: no real update here since it’s the off-season but let’s hope they pick up a good veteran starting pitcher and a quality 1B.   The Nats fans love Adam Dunn but management might be seeking a 1B that both hits and plays a good defensive 1B (which is important with a young 2B and SS).

– DC United: I like the move of picking Ben Olsen as the head coach.  Yes, he’s young but the team seemed to respond to him.  The bigger news in the soccer world is Thursday’s announcement of where the World Cups will be played in ’18 and ’22.  One would assume that England is the favorite for ’18 and the US for ’22.

– Mystics / Freedom:   it’s good to see both women’s professional sports leagues continuing to fight the good battle.   I think it’s important for youth girls to have role models such as the WNBA and WPS players.

– Georgetown:  the Hoyas hoops team is off to a great start.  They have a tough game tonight against Mizzou, then the real excitement will start with the Big East action in the latter part of December.  They have a terrific group of guards in Freeman, Wright and Clark.   Mad props to the Lady Hoyas for their great start – victories in the past couple of weeks against the past national champions, Tennessee and Maryland.  Also, kudos to the Women’s Soccer team for their 3 NCAA Tourney victories as well as to the Football team for their 4 wins this season (big improvement from the past couple of years).

– Maryland:  I’m very happy for Coach Friedgen for garnering ACC “Coach of the Year” honors.  Good for him – quality, stand-up guy.  It’s good to see the Terps playing well this year.  And it looks like Gary Williams has another good, exiting squad.  Along with the Caps games at Verizon, one of the best and most exciting sports experiences in the DC area is watching an ACC hoops game at Comcast Center.