Dilly Dilly

The golfers at The Masters have just begun teeing off; so, I ought to begin today with a few comments about The Masters.  From previous events that have surrounded The Masters and the club that hosts the tournament, I think it is safe to say that the folks who run this event can be a tad stodgy, priggish and overly-impressed with themselves and their event.  According to a report I read yesterday, the club hosts posted a list of things that no one is permitted to say during the tournament.  One of those things is, “Dilly, Dilly”.  According to the club hosts anyone who says that phrase:

“… will be removed from the premises immediately.”

It is their club and they are totally within their rights to make such a pronouncement and to enforce it.  It also demonstrates that the folks in charge there are stodgy, priggish and overly-impressed with themselves and their event.  The folks at Bud Light took no time to recognize that this was free publicity for them and chose to respond without making threats or being confrontational.  Rather, Bud Light announced that it was sending 1000 “Dilly Dilly” T-shirts to Georgia.  Part of the inscription on those T-shirts says:

“For if thou cannot say Dilly Dilly,

thou can still wear Dilly Dilly.”

One other item about The Masters comes from one of the lead-up columns that golf writers have to do in the week or so before the tournament starts.  According to the report, last year’s winner, Sergio Garcia, will join an elite group of golfers if he goes back-to-back and wins The Masters again this year.  I did not realize it, but only 3 golfers have ever done that:

  • Jack Nicklaus
  • Nick Faldo
  • Tiger Woods

That is indeed an elite group…

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned here that the Canelo Alvarez/Gennady Golovkin fight was still going to take place despite Alverez testing positive for a “banned substance”.  The reason for ignoring the “banned substance” in the blood test was that this fight was poised to be the biggest boxing promotion of the year.  For top dollar, the boxing mavens could see their way clear to fudge on the meaning of the word, “banned”.

Well, the fight is now off.  It appears that Alvarez failed two drug tests and even though those two failed tests happened in mid-February, the overseers of boxing – you know, the guys who make sure that everything is on the up-and-up – could not find a way to hold a hearing to decide if Alvarez merits a lengthy suspension until mid-April.  The fight was scheduled for 5 May and so, Alvarez has had to withdraw.

I guess I could say here that these events have given boxing yet another black eye – – but that would be taking a cheap shot…

We have some economic news from the recently completed NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.  According to Broadcasting & Cable – a trade publication for that industry – the whole March Madness Tournament generated just over $1B in advertising revenue.  There were 391 different ad spots run by a total of 142 different brands during the tournament.  In fact, those ads ran a total of 6,761 times meaning that you were not far off in thinking that the ads were incessant.  Here are some more data:

  • For the 2 games of the Final Four on Saturday night, the cost of 30-second ad spots was between $807K and $966K.  Significantly, that is a 10% increase over the cost for ad spots in the Final Four games last year.
  • For the Final Game on Monday night, the cost of 30-second ad spots was between $1.4M and $1.7M.  That represented a 3% increase from last year but there may need to be an asterisk there.  Last year, the game was on CBS; this year it was on TBS – a cable station.

Without getting hung up in the minutiae here, March Madness is an economic force majeure despite all the negativity surrounding college basketball and its recruiting nonsense.  If you want to delve into some of those minutiae, here is a link to the report from Broadcasting & Cable.

Finally, since I mentioned the cancellation of the Alvarez/Golovkin fight above, here is a comment from Brad Dickson – formerly of the Omaha World-Herald – related to boxing:

“There’s talk of a Floyd Mayweather-Connor McGregor rematch. I haven’t been this excited since ‘Rocky V’.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………