Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 07, 2009
MIT Globalization Panel

The next panel I'm attending is title Globalization of Sports. Jonathan Kraft of the New England Patriots, Tim Romani of the ICON Venture Group, David Baxter of Adidas and John Huizinga of the U. of Chicago are on the panel, moderated by Mike Gorman of the Boston Celtics. I had a chance to speak with Huizinga last night at the Celtics game. He's Yao Ming's agent, and the story of how that came to be was quite interesting. John is not an agent but an economics professor, and one of Ming's cousins was a student at UC.

Globalization.JPG

Kraft, Romani, Baxter, Huizinga, Gorman

Update: Gorman starts with a quote from DAVOS that sports is one of the top ten global industries, and the only one that truly achieved global dominance.

Update: Kraft says the Patriots are the first team with a Chinese web site, and now has 20 fan clubs in the country.

Update: Romani notes that with teams having built so many new stadiums and arenas in the last 20 years, there's not much left to do in the US, so their group is looking to international venues to build.

Update: David Baxter notes that adidas sells more NFL jerseys around the world than any other sport.

Update: Huizinga notes the NBA got off to a bad start in China because the NBA didn't understand the world was different outside of the US. The NBA wanted to start a reading program. The Chinese found that insulting, and were also trying to encourage students to study less and exercise more.

Update: Is globalization just another term for westernization? The panelist think short term that might be true, but eventually the east will send ideas west. Gorman is asking very good questions. He's done his homework.

Update: Gorman asks what is the Black Swan in terms of globalization. It stumps the panel for a minute, but Kraft thinks a terrorist attack at a facility would change the landscape. Huizinga agrees but adds corruption as a second problem.

Update: A question comes from the audience on the ability to be a fan of any team anywhere. Romani notes that they start designing venues from the camera positions.

Update: Romani notes right now there is money available for infrastructure building from the government, but not for the actual construction of stadiums.

Update: Gorman asks are we really globalizing sports, or just creating minor leagues around the world? I hope someday players are willing to play anywhere, because the majors exists around the world.


Posted by David Pinto at 10:12 AM | Statistics | TrackBack (0)
Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?