http://convergence-network.com/blog en tom@convergence-network.com Copyright 2009 2009-09-25T16:38:01+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/radical_careering/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/radical_careering/#When:16:38:01Z Anyone interested in a different take on the much-discussed subject of “careering” might want to check out the book “Radical Careering” by Sally Hogshead.  It’s a couple of years old but worth reading during these tumultuous times.  Here’s her comment on the book: Radical Careering doesn’t function like traditional career books. It doesn’t bother with the standard “hang in there, kitty” motivation, or the superficial niceties of your handshake grip. Instead, it’s about something infinitely more powerful: building the ultimate version of yourself. The reality is you already have everything you need to become great. That isn’t in any book, only in yourself. Only by expressing your truest self can you uncover and maximize your own ultimate competitive advantage. Radical Careering helps you visualize your no-compromises future, so you can start to build it, piece by piece. Don’t just read this book. Use it. 2009-09-25T16:38:01+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/the_golden_era_of_networking/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/the_golden_era_of_networking/#When:19:57:00Z Great piece from a recent NY Times about how this tumultuous era has ushered in a golden age of networking, which has been a boon to the popular networking businesses like Facebook and LinkedIn.  Membership and usage growth for both services has been dramatic over the last six months or so.  And no surprise, the fastest growing segment is 35+.   At this point, it’s increasing unusual for professionals not to be using both platforms.  We recommend that everyone get involved to at least some degree; the benefits may not always be evident, but you never know.  As Woody Allen said, “80% of life is just showing up.” April 9, 2009 On the Job, but on the Lookout for WorkBy LAURA M. HOLSON WITH the economy in the tank, one can never have too many friends. So a few weeks ago, Katherine Wu, an executive at NBC Universal, packed an overnight bag with her yoga mat and drove 80 miles to Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y., to a retreat organized by 85 Broads, a women’s networking group. In between spa treatments and sun salutations, she and 17 fellow executives discussed career prospects in an unsettled economy. It was not her first time at such an event. Ms. Wu, 30, found the job she has now through 85 Broads. A self-described “networking evangelist,” her profile is posted on LinkedIn and she gets five to seven calls a month from people looking for jobs. She answers every one. It makes good sense, she explained. Someday it could be her placing the call. “I equate this to dating,” Ms. Wu said. “Networking is a basic numbers game. If you don’t get out, you won’t meet as many people.” With companies firing workers in droves and those with jobs worried that they could be next, 2009 is shaping up to be a golden era of networking. Universities have shifted alumni outreach efforts to focus on career counseling and networking instruction, rather than social gatherings. The Center for Networking Excellence in New York, which advises companies, says requests for corporate seminars have increased 50 percent in the last year. Informal groups are popping up everywhere, inspired by people’s hopes that any connection might lead to the next job. Although networking has traditionally been the urgent preoccupation of the unemployed, these days many are subscribing to the axiom that it is easier to find a job if you already have one. Networking before the pink slip arrives is a measure of the anxiety seeping into nearly every corner of the work world, during a recession that has already claimed 1.5 million white-collar jobs. “People are worried about where the next job will come from even before they lose their old one,” said Janet Hanson, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was a founder of 85 Broads in 1997. “They know that three months from now, they could be gone, too. What we are seeing and what we expect to happen even more is that people are going to become chronic networkers.” If anyone appreciates this, it is Vincent Lauria, the 29-year-old organizer of the Silicon Valley NewTech Meetup Group, whose membership has swelled 75 percent since last fall, to 3,500. Since December, attendance at a monthly gathering that Mr. Lauria organizes at a Palo Alto, Calif., law firm has tripled. He cuts off the guest list at a generous 200 and is still forced to turn people away. “I don’t want it to turn into a convention,” he said. But clearly he is filling a need. Conversations among guests, Mr. Lauria said, tend to focus on two things: how long will the recession last, and whom can they meet who will help them if they are laid off. Mr. Lauria said there is an increasing wariness in Silicon Valley among engineers and developers who are concerned about their own job security and, at the same time, are being hounded by peers desperate to connect. Two weeks ago, he had lunch with a friend who asked him for a contact at Twitter. “I e-mailed two people who are connected to people there, but they both said ‘no’ because they have been asked to make too many referrals,” Mr. Lauria said. “They didn’t want to waste the political capital on someone they didn’t think would get a job.” In this on-all-the-time generation, ubiquity is key. Consider Sonja Kosman, a 32-year-old executive at the online video advertising firm Spotzer Media. She attends two career-related events in New York each week, she said. Some are sponsored by Columbia University, from which she graduated in 2008 with an M.B.A. Others are through professional groups like Sobel Media NY: Media Information Exchange Group. And that does not include Ms. Kosman’s online forays. Last year she joined a group through the networking site Meetup.com. And she has profiles posted on LinkedIn andFacebook, where she currently has 460 friends. “You don’t know where the opportunities are going to come from,” she said. “They could come from sites. You could meet someone at an event, at the grocery store. You have to be open to anything.” Social networking sites, particularly the business-oriented LinkedIn, are aggressively taking advantage of the hunger to connect in the current economy. LinkedIn has more than 37 million members and says it is adding a new one almost every second. Requests from people using the service to find jobs are up 48 percent from a year ago, the company says. The number of members writing recommendations for friends or colleagues (which are included on users’ pages) has grown 65 percent a month since December. But so much networking comes at a price.“If you are a good networker, it takes a lot of time,” said Cathy Stembridge, the executive director of the alumni association for Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “It’s not everyone’s cup of tea.” Recently, Northwestern shifted its focus from organizing alumni parties and social events to offering job counseling seminars instead, Ms. Stembridge said. In February and early March, it held networking events in New York City, Austin, Dallas and Minneapolis. It also offered a new, four-part Web series with classes such as “How Do I Develop Lasting Connections?” Anxiety about economic uncertainty has forced many to adapt in ways they might not have imagined a few years ago. Joseph Farren, a vice president for global public affairs for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide in Washington, recently joined Twitter. He also began reaching out to old high school friends through Facebook. He said he feels the pressure to network more than he used to. “People are doing things differently because they feel vulnerable,” he said. It is not just individuals promoting the benefit of having as wide a network as possible. Large institutions do so as well, said Liz Lynch, the founder of the Center for Networking Excellence. Recently, Ms. Lynch said that she was hired by both Google and Boeing to instruct employees on how to network within their own companies. “That is as vital to keeping a job as finding a new one,” she said.Attending a yoga retreat or reminiscing online about the senior prom is strictly beginner stuff for the most enterprising networkers. A few weeks ago, while Scott G. Cooney, a real estate developer in Missoula, Mont., was getting his monthly $14 haircut, he was approached by an engineer who wanted to switch firms. He took the man’s card but he didn’t hire him.The most enterprising job seeker he has seen, however, was a woman who for three months last year attended local planning commission meetings, introducing herself to Mr. Cooney each time. She was working part time at a construction company but wanted full-time work. Mr. Cooney finally hired her as his outreach coordinator. “It has gotten quite interesting,” he said. So, too, for Robert Raciti, a senior vice president at GE Capital. Recently a colleague asked him if he could get a free ticket to a media conference for a friend, a prominent employment recruiter. Mr. Raciti happily obliged. “I thought, ‘Why not?’ “ he said with a laugh. “He’s a job recruiter. It couldn’t hurt.”     2009-06-01T19:57:00+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/ny_times_piece_how_the_economic_downturn_is_affecting_the_sports_world/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/ny_times_piece_how_the_economic_downturn_is_affecting_the_sports_world/#When:01:05:00Z Great piece in the Sunday Times Sports Section on how the poor economy is affecting virtually all aspects of the business.  Good read...  In Economic Downturn, Corporate Ties Put Bind on Sports By RICHARD SANDOMIR and KEN BELSONThe worst economy since the Great Depression is settling over the fields, courts, tracks, luxury suites and boardrooms of professional sports. The N.F.L. cut 169 jobs, and its commissioner reduced his salary by about 20 percent. The N.B.A. shed a tenth of its staff, and ESPN will not fill 200 vacant jobs. The United States Olympic Committee laid off 54 workers to cut millions from its budget, and Nascar teams have laid off hundreds of employees. The L.P.G.A. Tour is dropping four tournaments because three title sponsors dropped out, and the PGA Tour will lose three title sponsors but no events. Wells Fargo rescued the insolvent bank Wachovia - then stripped Wachovia’s name from a PGA Tour event. The stories are part of a narrative thread that only grows longer. “Consumers and companies are hurting, and some people don’t know if they’re going to sleep in a house or not,” L.P.G.A. Commissioner Carolyn Bivens said. “We have to keep in perspective that this is a golf and entertainment business.” Nascar teams like the legendary Richard Petty’s have merged with others because sponsorships dried up. Honda ended its Formula One sponsorship. This year’s Detroit Grand Prix was canceled, trimming the IndyCar Series to 17 races. Teams have frozen or cut ticket prices, and some, like the Nets and the Minnesota Timberwolves, will give refunds to season-ticket holders if they lose their jobs. Athletes have also felt the pinch. Two players on each team in the W.N.B.A., now without the contracted Houston Comets, will lose their jobs, the result of a reduction in rosters to 11. Several N.F.L. teams, including the Washington Redskins, the Denver Broncos and the Cleveland Browns, have laid off employees. The Jets will furlough 60 workers for two weeks in June and July. And the Arena Football League canceled its 2009 season to cut labor costs and drop its salary cap well under $2 million a team. Pro sports were once thought to be more resistant than other industries to recessions, but this is no ordinary downturn. Teams, leagues and tours have become increasingly reliant on revenue from corporate sponsorships, advertising and luxury suites, and are likely to suffer more than they did in previous downturns. The financial and automotive industries, so heavily invested in the marketing of sports, are undergoing upheavals that have required government bailouts and rounds of layoffs to survive. General Motors, the nation’s largest sports advertiser, did not renew its U.S.O.C. sponsorship or advertise on the Super Bowl last month. And it cut its ties to two Nascar tracks and Tiger Woods, who had endorsed its Buick division. “Corporations have played a bigger role in the last 10, 20 years, so sports have become more susceptible to their ups and downs,” said David Carter, a professor of sports business at the University of Southern California. “Before this, it was all about catering to the fans and making sure the turnstiles were clicking.” In a recession so severe that some call it a depression, leagues are happy to see attendance stay flat or go up just a little, as in the N.B.A. and the N.H.L. On the Nascar Sprint Cup circuit, the Daytona 500 sold out and the Shelby 427 in Las Vegas nearly sold out. But the Kobalt Tools 500 on March 8 in the Atlanta area came up 30,000 fans short of a full house, a little worse than in recent years. Carter said sports usually acted as a lagging indicator of distress, meaning teams, leagues, tours and other organizations might be suffering even after other sectors of the economy started to recover. Sports, especially at the highest levels, operate with financial cushions: multiyear contracts with sponsors, television networks and luxury box renters. The N.B.A.’s deals with ESPN and Turner Sports, for instance, pay it more than $900 million a year and end in 2015-16; the L.P.G.A. recently signed a 10-year deal with the Golf Channel and a long contract with J Sports in South Korea. Even Wells Fargo’s deactivation of Wachovia’s golf tournament sponsorship does not mean the bank will stop paying its fees for five more years. And the L.P.G.A. Tour’s loss of Safeway as the title sponsor of a tournament in Arizona was backstopped by the quick substitution of J Golf. But any sense of long-term economic stability has been jolted. Bank of America’s decision to end talks to be the elite sponsor of the new Yankee Stadium means an annual loss of at least $10 million to the team. The bank did not want to face the type of scorn from Congress, the news media and fans that has tarred Citigroup for its seemingly inescapable $400 million naming-rights deal with the Mets for Citi Field. The Indiana Pacers are losing $30 million this season and are among 15 N.B.A. teams in the red. The 30-team league would not say if the Pacers were one of 12 teams that borrowed from a recent $200 million addition to its $1.7 billion credit facility. The new credit, Commissioner David Stern said, is an affirmation of strength, not financial weakness. “Owners can borrow at better terms than they can get individually,” he said, adding that the additional credit is not crisis-related but can be used for various purposes. If Stern is not scared, Joseph S. Blatter, the president of FIFA, soccer’s governing body, seems to be. Blatter said he was worried that the financial security afforded by sponsor and television contracts for next year’s World Cup in South Africa would be followed by the “second wave of an economic tsunami” and send shivers through the sport. Closer to home, P.S.E.&G., New Jersey’s largest utility, made a decision that, if emulated in stadiums and arenas nationwide, will erode bottom lines. It chose to save $400,000 a year by not renewing its leases on luxury boxes at the Izod Center, the Prudential Center, the minor league Riverfront Stadium and Giants Stadium (although it has chosen to rent one at the new Giants-Jets stadium), and at two arts facilities. Effect on Leagues Major League Baseball may be a test case for middle-of-the-recession fan behavior, more than the N.B.A. and the N.H.L., whose regular seasons are nearly over. Two-thirds of the 30 major league teams have not raised ticket prices - although the Yankees have altered that equation somewhat with premium seats ranging from $350 to $2,500 each, and they have heavily marketed the unsold high-priced real estate. Attendance has been a bit higher in spring training. But even if nearly 79 million fans show up for regular-season games, as they have in recent years, how much will their spending on food and souvenirs decline? “You’d be foolish to speculate,” said Bob DuPuy, the M.L.B. president. “We’re hoping to short-circuit it as much as possible with our commitment to providing affordable entertainment. We’re guardedly optimistic.” Still, a week after DuPuy spoke, Commissioner Bud Selig told The Los Angeles Times that he was increasingly concerned about the extent to which baseball might be hurt at the gate because some fans had lost their jobs since last season. “I used to think we were recession-proof,” Selig said. “I really did. This is different.” In small and big ways, the scope of the recession’s impact has been felt. The N.H.L. cut its revenue-growth goal to 5 percent from 7 percent earlier this season, and it expects next season’s salary cap to be flat. “Any breathing fan has to be concerned,” N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “We’re in uncharted waters. We need to be careful.” In tennis, the WTA Tour said it expected revenue to fall by as much as 20 percent this year. “We’re nervous like everyone,” said Larry Scott, the chairman of the WTA Tour, who, like the L.P.G.A.’s Bivens, says his sport’s global reach offers some stability. Fans Prioritize Spending Major League Soccer is holding its own. It has renewed deals with its nine sponsors and has a new team in Seattle that has sold 25,000 season tickets (and newly awarded franchises in Vancouver and Portland) with the allure of an average ticket price of $20. Three of the league’s four television deals have years to go. But Commissioner Don Garber said there was reason to worry. “We’re all dependent on ad dollars and people spending money on tickets,” he said. “I don’t believe people will prioritize spending over putting food on the table.” Roger Curtis, the president of Michigan International Speedway, seemed to grasp Garber’s concerns as well as anyone. The track, in Brooklyn, is 70 miles from Detroit, where the Big Three automakers have scaled back their involvement in motorsports. “The economy’s been an issue for three if not four years, so we’ve been dealing with this longer than any other area of the country,” Curtis said. The track hosts two Sprint Cup races, one of which lost 3M as a sponsor. Sponsor hospitality will be down. So are suite rentals. Curtis has cut ticket prices by 25 percent for this season, reduced traffic snarls and improved seating and signage. “We view ourselves as a lot more Disney than we do a sporting event,” he said. Hope amid economic gloom is central to Arena Football’s planned return and to the startups of Women’s Professional Soccer, a seven-team league; and the United Football League, which will open in October with four teams, four fewer than planned. “I’m pretty confident,” said Frank Vuono, the chief operating officer of the United Football League. “If it wasn’t the worst economy in history, I’d be flying sky high.”         2009-03-23T01:05:00+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/world_congress_of_sports_approaching_fast/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/world_congress_of_sports_approaching_fast/#When:16:31:00Z The 2009 IMG World Congress of Sports is heading south.  This year’s conference will be held at the Mandarin Oriental in Miami on April 1 and 2.  It will be interesting to see how the economic downturn will affect attendance. business of sports 2009-03-17T16:31:00+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/outliers/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/outliers/#When:20:05:00Z Blink was pretty good, but this actually seems more interesting.  Here’s the overview from Amazon: Amazon Best of the Month, November 2008: Now that he’s gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions, Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the “self-made man,” he makes the democratic assertion that superstars don’t arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: “they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, “some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky.” Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots’ culture impacts their crash record, how a centuries-old culture of rice farming helps Asian kids master math. But there’s more to it than that. Throughout all of these examples--and in more that delve into the social benefits of lighter skin color, and the reasons for school achievement gaps--Gladwell invites conversations about the complex ways privilege manifests in our culture. He leaves us pondering the gifts of our own history, and how the world could benefit if more of our kids were granted the opportunities to fulfill their remarkable potential. 2009-01-29T20:05:00+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/sports_marketing_20/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/sports_marketing_20/#When:14:46:02Z Here’s a good site / network to check out:  Sports Marketing 2.0, which describes itself as a “digital think-tank for sports marketers in the Web 2.0 world.  Sponsors, teams, leagues, agencies, consultants, universities, and technology parters are welcome.”   Lots of interesting blog posts and other tidbits on the site.  In addition, they run a few conferences called Sports Marketing 2.0 V.I.P Summits.  To see the site and get more info. on the Summits, go to www.sportsmarketing20.com.     business of sports 2008-10-02T14:46:02+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/linkedin/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/linkedin/#When:00:36:01Z We at The Convergence Network are big fans of LinkedIn.  Sometimes people ask us why they should join or how they can better use it.  So with no further ado, I am posting a nice little piece from Guy Kawasaki, the Silicon Valley guru and pundit.  It’s something he wrote on his blog in 2007, but it still is a useful tutorial for all of us… This from www.blog.guykawasaki.com:  Most people use LinkedIn to “get to someone” in order to make a sale, form a partnership, or get a job. It works well for this because it is an online network of more than 8.5 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 130 industries. However, it is a tool that is under-utilized, so I’ve compiled a top-ten list of ways to increase the value of LinkedIn. 1.  Increase your visibility.  By adding connections, you increase the likelihood that people will see your profile first when they’re searching for someone to hire or do business with. In addition to appearing at the top of search results (which is a major plus if you’re one of the 52,000 product managers on LinkedIn), people would much rather work with people who their friends know and trust. 2.  Improve your connectability.  Most new users put only their current company in their profile. By doing so, they severely limit their ability to connect with people. You should fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities.  You can also include a link to your profile as part of an email signature. The added benefit is that the link enables people to see all your credentials, which would be awkward if not downright strange, as an attachment. 3.  Improve your Google PageRank.  LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. Since LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high PageRank in Google, this is a good way to influence what people see when they search for you.  To do this, create a public profile and select “Full View.” Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public profile’s URL to be your actual name. To strengthen the visibility of this page in search engines, use this link in various places on the web> For example, when you comment in a blog, include a link to your profile in your signature. 4.  Enhance your search engine results.  In addition to your name, you can also promote your blog or website to search engines like Google and Yahoo! Your LinkedIn profile allows you to publicize websites. There are a few pre-selected categories like “My Website,” “My Company,” etc.  If you select “Other” you can modify the name of the link. If you’re linking to your personal blog, include your name or descriptive terms in the link, and voila! instant search-engine optimization for your site. To make this work, be sure your public profile setting is set to “Full View.” 5.  Perform blind, “reverse,” and company reference checks.  LinkedIn’s reference check tool to input a company name and the years the person worked at the company to search for references. Your search will find the people who worked at the company during the same time period. Since references provided by a candidate will generally be glowing, this is a good way to get more balanced data.  Companies will typically check your references before hiring you, but have you ever thought of checking your prospective manager’s references? Most interviewees don’t have the audacity to ask a potential boss for references, but with LinkedIn you have a way to scope her out.  You can also check up on the company itself by finding the person who used to have the job that you’re interviewing for. Do this by searching for job title and company, but be sure to uncheck “Current titles only.” By contacting people who used to hold the position, you can get the inside scoop on the job, manager and growth potential.  By the way, if using LinkedIn in these ways becomes a common practice, we’re apt to see more truthful resumes. There’s nothing more amusing than to find out that the candidate who claims to have caused some huge success was a total bozo who was just along for the ride. 6.  Increase the relevancy of your job search.  Use LinkedIn’s advanced search to find people with educational and work experience like yours to see where they work. For example, a programmer would use search keywords such as “Ruby on Rails,” “C++,” “Python,” “Java,” and “evangelist” to find out where other programmers with these skills work. 7.  Make your interview go smoother.  You can use LinkedIn to find the people that you’re meeting. Knowing that you went to the same school, plays hockey, or shares acquaintances is a lot better than an awkward silence after, “I’m doing fine, thank you.” 8.  Gauge the health of a company.  Perform an advanced search for company name and uncheck the “Current Companies Only” box. This will enable you to scrutinize the rate of turnover and whether key people are abandoning ship. Former employees usually give more candid opinions about a company’s prospects than someone who’s still on board. 9.  Gauge the health of an industry.  If you’re thinking of investing or working in a sector, use LinkedIn to find people who worked for competitors—or even better, companies who failed. For example, suppose you wanted to build a next generation online pet store, you’d probably learn a lot from speaking with former Pets.com or WebVan employees. 10.  Track startups.  You can see people in your network who are initiating new startups by doing an advanced search for a range of keywords such as “stealth” or “new startup.” Apply the “Sort By” filter to “Degrees away from you” in order to see the people closest to you first. 11.  Ask for advice.  LinkedIn’s newest product, LinkedIn Answers, aims to enable this online. The product allows you to broadcast your business-related questions to both your network and the greater LinkedIn network. The premise is that you will get more high-value responses from the people in your network than more open forums.  For example, here are some questions an entrepreneur might ask when the associates of a venture capital firm come up blank: * Who’s a good, fast, and cheap patent lawyer? * What should we pay a vp of biz dev? * Is going to Demo worth it? * How much traffic does a TechCrunch plug generate? Addendum These additional ideas came in through comments: 1.  Integrate into a new job.  When people start a new job, ordinarily their roots aren’t that deep in the new company. However, with Linkedin, new employees can study fellow employees’ profiles and therefore help them get to know more people faster in a new company. 2.  Scope out the competition, customers, partners, etc. This seems like it’s a no-brainer, but you can use LinkedIn to scope out the competition’s team as well as the team of customers and partners. For example, your competitor’s vp of marketing came from Oracle...she’ll probably believe that business is war. 2008-08-05T00:36:01+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/interesting_news_from_washington/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/interesting_news_from_washington/#When:16:51:00Z Fantasy Sports Score Victory: Supreme Court Strikes Out Major League Baseball, Confirming Firms’ Control From the Wall Street Journal By MATTHEW FUTTERMAN The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declared open season for fantasy-sports companies. The high court effectively ended a three-year legal battle when it refused to hear an appeal from Major League Baseball and its Players Association that, if successful, could have given professional sports leagues the ability to control the lucrative fantasy-sports business. Instead, the court’s decision solidifies the rights of fantasy-sports companies to run their businesses without having to buy licenses from the major sports leagues or their players’ unions anymore. Fantasy sports began to take off in the early 1980s, when groups of baseball fans began putting money in a pot, forming leagues and selecting players to be on their pretend teams. The team with the players that produced the best statistics won. The industry has since mushroomed—leagues have cropped up around everything from the National Football League to the leading bass fishing tour—and fantasy sports generate about $500 million in global revenues annually, according to a recent study by the market-research firm Ipsos for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. While most fantasy operators previously charged players a fee to play, more leagues are now free. A company like CBS Corp. makes money by selling players a range of products, such as draft guides and expert analysis, and through advertising. Monday’s decision was a relief for major media companies including Yahoo Inc. and CBSsportsline.com, a division of CBS, two of the leading Internet fantasy-sports sites. Had the high court agreed to hear the appeal, those companies could have wound up paying some of the highest licensing fees to the leagues. “This opens the door for every media outlet to have a fantasy sports component,” said Christopher Russo, chief executive at Fantasy Sports Ventures, which owns eight leading fantasy sports Web sites and sells advertising space for some 125 others. Greg Bouris, a spokesman for the Major League Baseball Players Association, said the union was “considering its options” in light of the high court’s decision. He declined further comment, as did a spokesman for Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the league’s Internet company. Fantasy-sports companies and the professional leagues and players unions had a mostly peaceful relationship through the 1990s. The companies paid licensing fees of 5% to 10% of revenues for the rights to the players’ names and statistics. Deals with the largest companies produced nearly $1.5 million a year. But three years ago, Major League Baseball tried to limit the number of companies that could use its statistics, even though they were readily available from variety of sources. St. Louis-based CDM Fantasy Sports Corp. sued for the rights to use the information, and won last year in federal court; the Supreme Court rejected MLB’s appeal without comment. In taking on the fantasy-baseball operators, and losing, MLB has likely cost every pro sports league millions of dollars. All the leagues had been getting fees from fantasy operators. Once thought of as a diversion for sports geeks, fantasy sports have come to play a huge role in mainstream culture. In the U.S. and Canada alone, some 19.4 million people participate in a fantasy league of some kind, according to Ipsos. business of sports 2008-06-13T16:51:00+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/sports_museum_of_america_launches/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/sports_museum_of_america_launches/#When:13:40:00Z After many years of dreaming, planning, fund-raising, and politicking, the Sports Museum of America in downtown NYC has finally launched.  Today — May 7, 2008 — marks the official opening.  Congratulations to Philip Schwalb, Sameer Ahuja, and John Urban.  I was fortunate to have been able to consult with Philip a couple of years ago and get an insider’s take on the whole thing.  I loved the idea as soon as I heard about it.  It’s great for Sports, it’s great for all the NGBs, and it’s great for NY City.    2008-05-07T13:40:00+00:00 http://convergence-network.com/blog/the_convergence_network_blog/ http://convergence-network.com/blog/the_convergence_network_blog/#When:08:19:00Z Anyone who works in sports quickly learns that it’s the ultimate “six degrees of separation” business, both in the realm of professional relationships and business experience. Unlike other business cultures within most corporate structures, sports organizations require executives to attain a working (or sometimes substantial) knowledge of other departments and businesses, and then to figure out a way to work together, to converge for the greater good. In the process, executives typically get an amazing opportunity to learn new things outside their vertical comfort zones, while building relationships (and networking) with all kinds of new people inside and outside of their companies. Therein lies the inspiration for the name of the business. This is a business where management talent matters a lot, especially in these challenging and disruptive times. Now more than ever, sports organizations, from leagues to promotion agencies, national governing bodies to digital publishers, have to attract, hire, and retain the best and the brightest in order to maintain a competitive edge. At the same time, executives already in the business and those hoping to find a way in, need to be — or quickly become — what I’d call Sports Executive 2.0, a new model that is smarter, sharper, more tech savvy, more nimble, and bigger thinking than his/her predecessor. We’ve seen evidence over the last few years that this new breed of executive is proving to be the best type of leader in the business. All that said, we are looking forward to helping on both fronts: working with organizations who are like-minded and to find and attract great v. 2.0 exectutives, and working with individuals who get it but may need some help with their career development or transition. I urge all of our visitors and users to register with us, get into our network, and stay in touch. We hope we will get a chance to meet all of you. business of sports, recruiting 2008-04-23T08:19:00+00:00