Media - what is it good for…

A story in the WSJ this morning reports that Seattle Sounders FC has inked a deal with Microsoft to be the main shirt sponsor for the team.  The deal specifies that the team will wear XBOX 360 Live on their shirts.  I think this is a great match and I was hoping Microsoft would step up to the plate and sponsor the new Seattle MLS franchise.  OK, now I really want to see the jerseys.

Update: Well, they had a press conference and actually the agreement is much more than a pure franchise sponsorship as it also involves the MLS and is somewhat reciprocal in that Microsoft gets some interesting value out of the deal that goes beyond a traditional sponsorship deal as in:

• makes XBOX 360 the exclusive video game console of the MLS
• Xbox 360 also will be featured as the presenting sponsor of the Sounders FC annual international tour.  This is revealing in that Sounders apparently will have an annual international tour.  I bet it will be in Asia.  The XBOX has not done that well in some Asian markets so this gives Microsoft an opportunity to market the XBOX in Asian markets that it might not otherwise have had.  Plus Seattle obviously already has a strong Asian connection both in business as well as in sports (Mariners & Ichiro).
• Xbox 360 gain entitlement to the team’s playing surface, “The Xbox Pitch at Qwest Field”.  Not sure what this means in reality.  XBOX logos on the field?  Will they stay there for Seahawks games?

Saw this on GigaOM.  This software is a killer feature for me.  I have toyed with the idea of buying a cycling computer but this much slicker because I always bring a mobile phone anyway.  All the hardware is built into the phone already so essentially this is just software.  I am sure a cycling computer would be more accurate but at least for me I am not sure I care that much about the accuracy.  Awesome.  Maybe a Nokia phone for me next.  Additionally, this of course can also serve as a navigation device preventing you from getting lost.  And if Nokia is smart they can build a whole brand around this.  Of course, they have to be careful to not dilute the Nokia brand but they should get this in front of every person toying with the idea of buying a Garmin device etc.

In an article (you have to login to read it, really annoying I know) today in the NY Times, George Vecsey compares Drogba to Zidane.  He opens one of the lead-in sentences with:

With one master imitating another,….

Well, I will give him that there were similarities in them both getting red-carded in a major final.  But that’s where the similarities end.  Drogba is hugely overrated and Zidane is a soccer legend (his stupidity in the last world cup final notwithstanding).  Drogba is backed up  by the most expensive and talented set of teammates that Roman Abramovich could buy.  Any decent forward would do well in that setting with Chelsea and they have not exactly poured in the goals this year even with their new “crowd-pleasing” style of play.  Drogba remains a petulent, diving cry-baby who is a decent forward but please don’t compare him to Zidane.  He only scored 8 goals in the EPL this year (one more than Kalou who probably played about 10% of Drogba’s minutes) and 15 for the season.  He is not even in the top 10 scorers in the EPL.  Anyway he is a decent striker but seems seriously flawed as a person.  Read about his autobiography here.  You could not make this stuff up.

In general, Chelsea as a team are the biggest protesters.  Whenever there is a possible call in their favor Lampard, Cole and Terry pester the ref endlessly and with such righteous indignation.  It’s pathetic really.  Just to be clear, I am not a ManU fan either.

I should have written an update about this long ago but better late than never.  Anyway, I solved this problem on my macbook pro by replacing the memory with “authentic” apple memory.  Costs more but apparently Apple memory is better.

Live Search has some legs I think.  Certainly MSFT has the ability to run with this for a while to see what works and tweak the model.  It’s like an auction where retailers bid in real-time (although I am not sure how real-time the backend is) for a customer by discounting the product to win the sale.  The smart retailers will implement their own backend that figures out what exact discount closes the sale.  These guys will win because they will maximize margins in this market place while completing a high number of sales.

However, I don’t see a way for other web sites to be an affiliate to live search.  For example on this blog it would be nice to be able to send people to Live Search Cashback if I was talking about some product on the blog.  So how about it MSFT?  Where is the affiliate program?

I am pretty excited about Seattle getting an MLS team in 2009 even though I have been unimpressed with the level of play in the MLS. Perhaps I should restate that: it’s not the level of play that is disappointing so much as the brand of soccer being played in the US. It’s a boring, rigid kind of soccer that leaves me cold and I think is not competitive on the world stage.  I actually believe that the level of play has plateau’d in the US and I think this will be reflected in the performance of the US men’s national team in international competition. I would love to be proven wrong. BTW Concacaf success does not count. This is not a competitive region except for Mexico and even they continue to struggle on the international stage.

Here’s what I think has to change for US soccer (both the MLS and men’s national team) to improve:

• Better coaching - a lot of coaches in the US did not grow up in a soccer culture. This is not a knock on the US but I think it the end product suffers as a result. If I were starting a professional baseball team in Europe I would recruit a US coach. The US also needs to start exporting coaches abroad for them to later return to coach here.
• Better youth system - the current system is emphasizing the wrong things. It’s all about size and speed and while these are very important attributes, it’s pushing aside smaller & slower players. Yet if you take a look at the top 3 leagues in the world (EPL, Serie A and La Liga), you will find many diminutive soccer stars. Some also don’t have terrific speed. A lot of the top players in the world would not be chosen for US youth teams (e.g. Maradona, Romario, Roberto Carlos, Pele, Keegan, Tevez, Michael Owen, Lionel Messi, Gattuso, Farbregas, Paul Scholes).
• Getting more kids to play pick-up soccer. Right now kids soccer education is nearly 100% through coaching which is not healthy. This may seem contradictory but the greatest classroom for soccer is the playground and pick-up games. This is nearly non-existent in the US. I guess it’s fair to say the pickup games across all sports occur less frequently. Not sure how to solve this one.
• 2nd & 3rd tier leagues need to be established to create more opportunities for talent to develop. The USL is certainly a step in that direction.
• Conform with international rules at the youth and college level.  Specifically, the substitution rules.  Young players never learn to play a 90 minute game and the implications thereof.
• The MLS needs to achieve a higher level of play. This will enable US teams to compete for more global soccer talent and this will help US soccer in the long term. Ideally, if the MLS could achieve the level of play of a 2nd tier European league like Holland that would be a great goal. This is a chicken-and-egg problem. A big part of achieving the desired improvement will be connected to who the teams choose to bring over as DPs. You need character players as much as superstars. Ideally you want superstars who are at the end of their career but who are in excellent physical shape and lead by example. An example of someone like this would be Henrik Larsson. The guy is in amazing physical shape at 36. I think a lot of superstars tend to slack off as they get to 30. They are not willing to endure the physical rigor that is required to continue to compete physically at the end of their careers.

Regardless I am still a fan and will attend the Seattle Sounders FC games.  And I think Seattle fans will prove to be some of the best in the US.  The excitement here in anticipation of the MLS franchise is huge.  It will also be interesting to see if they can turn Qwest into an exciting soccer venue.

Riding the 7 hills of Kirkland on Monday (doing the metric century).  Will post update after the ride…

There is a really interesting article the IEEE Spectrum by Clayton M. Christensen, Steven King, Matt Verlinden, and Woodward Yang. It basically tells the story of them apply the TPS (Toyota Production System) to semiconductor manufacturing and results of doing this.  Pretty amazing results.  The most amazing change is that this methodology allows smaller runs of chips while still being profitable and producing the chips at competitive prices.  This is a game changer in silicon as it allows silicon to more closely match the trajectory of ever-shorter product life cycles in consumer electronics.

Who wants to guess the company that is the subject of the article (purposely withheld in the article)?

By now it’s fairly well-known that selling digital music downloads is a tough business with thin margins. However, across both online as well as brick-and-mortar retailing, music and video is being used more universally as a loss leader and it’s not clear what this trends means for content in general. For example:

• for Apple, digital downloads are not something they make a lot of money on, however, it enables their hardware universe (iPhone, iPod, Apple TV).
• for Amazon, many people have suggested that digital downloads is a traditional retailing loss leader. It drives people to their page, where Amazon hopes to sell them something above and beyond the digital download.
• for wal-mart, CDs and DVDs have been used for a long time as a loss leader.

The New York Times is reporting that Apple’s new deal to sell movie downloads (as opposed to their rental business) is not a great deal for Apple from a dollar perspective. So, Apple appears to be using the same model here as they did with the iPod. Effectively they are relegating the movie downloads to a loss leader in the hopes of selling more Apple TVs.

So is content no longer king?

Started a tumblog.  Check it out.