From Painters to Punters

Monet; Giotto; Michelangelo; Picasso; Bernini; Some man or woman named Ug wearing a bearskin in a Lascaux cave : They all brought breakthrough creativity to the art world. In truth, in every field, one can trace lines of innovators who pushed their professions forward. So if I may transition from painters to punters, I’d like to note that sports has its artistes, too. In our last blog post, I mused on creativity in sports. Today, I provide a by-no-means comprehensive list of a few folks I see as demonstrating the vital role creativity plays in sport.

A power forward depicted on the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome's Piazza Navona, sculpted by Bernini

 I welcome your comments on contributors to add to the list, especially from outside the U.S.

James Naismith

If you invent a sport from scratch, that counts as pretty creative. If it goes on to become one of the most popular in the world, that factor really moves you up in the rankings. Naismith applied his creative mind to the task of creating a winter sport one could play indoors and came up with basketball in 1891.⁽¹⁾ Windmill dunks, salary caps, and Dennis Rodman in a wedding dress were to follow.

William Morgan also deserves a mention in this section for having made up volleyball just four years later. ⁽²⁾  

LPGA Tour

In the 40s and 50s, the very notion of an all-female sports circuit required a major creative leap. The actual implementation of the tour required creativity from those founding players every day, on the business side as well as when figuring out how to address a challenging lie. ⁽³⁾

We should also mention here the ahead-of-their-time All-American Girls Professional Baseball League ⁽⁴⁾ and the All American Red Heads ⁽⁵⁾ basketballers.

Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson

Figuring out a way to overcome institutionalized racism to break down barriers and help your team win at the same time? Brilliant.

Bob Cousy

He led the NBA in assists eight times,⁽⁶⁾ He won six titles. Those accomplishments validate the way Cousy played the game : with unprecedented flair. They changed rules in part because of how creatively he performed the most unproductive act in sports, that of running out the clock.

Slap Shot

Bernie Geoffrion is often, though not definitively, credited with inventing this hockey technique. It added a new dimension to the game. The movie, invented by George Roy Hill, Nancy Dowd, Paul Newman, and some Hansons, also added a new dimension to the game. It is funny, poignant, creative (of course), and now indispensable.

Professional Wrestling

Because, um, professional wrestling.

Harlem Globetrotters

They were groundbreaking as a successful African-American barnstorming team. Then when the sports world changed, they became a show, constantly coming up with new and fun ideas to maintain their business and spread the gospel of basketball.

Football Formations

The single wing, run-and-shoot, shotgun, wing-T, wishbone, one, two, and three tight end sets, trips left, trips right, west coast, spread option, wildcat, even punt formation - creativity abounds just in the naming of these offenses and alignments, to say nothing of finding ways to get eleven burly men to choreograph their movements to execute them.

The ABA

The American Basketball Association provided us with the 3-point shot, the dunk contest, Dr J, and so much other creative greatness. The ABA's only problem is that they could only go to their right. That is, the league seemed to be all right-brain, possessing awesome creativity and not nearly enough bottom-line awareness. Except for those owners in St. Louis, who could easily finance my next movie with their share of the NBA TV money for the past 3+ decades (yes, that was a hint, gentlemen - you'll love the script).

Candy Cummings

He may have invented the curveball in the 19th century.⁽⁷⁾ If he didn't, somebody really creative did. A ball that moves when you throw it? That is steampunk as hell.

NFL Films

Their inspiration changed the way sports are portrayed on all screens and helped propel their league to the top of the American sports scene.

Bill Veeck

He gets credit for Eddie Gaedel, the White Sox in shorts,⁽⁸⁾ and, by extension, just about every other wild promotion tried by anyone in sports ever.

Tastes Great, Less Filling

When I was a kid, my father and I watched a lot of sports on television. We still do, although we now have a lot more choices than we did in the 1970s when Miller Lite sought to counter any possible assumptions that a low-calorie brew might sissify its imbibers. They did so by using former athletes in its TV spots, via a campaign created by Backer and Spielvogel.⁽⁹⁾

In 2014, I am more likely to choose a brew based on whether I am in the mood for something hoppy or stoutish, but back then there would have been no doubt what beer I would have picked. It would have been the one in whose 30-second message Bubba Smith extolled the virtues of the easy-opening can, as his powerful grip easily sundered some defenseless aluminum. I suggested to my fifth grade teacher that I be allowed to recreate this particular spot using the old container from a "barrel of monkeys" toy. The idea did not make the talent show. I was instead made MC, so my remarks could be better scripted, I expect.

By the way, just to be clear, my parents did not encourage my elementary-age self to consume beer. It was left to college to acquaint me with what occupied the hollow space on the inside of the can.

Those beginnings led me to a career creating sports commercials, so I have certainly taken notice over the years of commercial work I considered especially exciting.  These included the Nike Bo Knows commercials (inspiring an intramural team named Diddley and Jackson), Spike Lee's Mars Blackmon spots for Nike, Larry Johnson's Grandmama series for Converse (I had a t-shirt), Wieden + Kennedy' SportsCenter campaign, and my favorite Super Bowl spot of all time, Nothing But Net for McDonald’s with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird.

Doubleday and Company

Abner Doubleday supposedly invented baseball. William Webb Ellis allegedly had the idea to pick up the ball at Rugby School and run with it. Legend has it that Pheidippides created the marathon with his dash to Athens. Al Gore invented the internet and through it, sports websites. Though history has called into doubt the accuracy of all these narratives, a good story remains a good story.

There are lots of inventive sports stories out there. This short list of important contributions to sports creativity is a little basketball-heavy, not quite as gender-neutral as I'd like, and by no means complete. I welcome your contributions to help correct those shortcomings.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

⁽¹⁾  “James Naismith,” Kansas Historical Society. https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/james-naismith/12154 (accessed March 27, 2014)

⁽²⁾  “History of Volleyball,” Volleyball Hall of Fame. http://www.volleyhall.org/history.html (accessed March 27, 2014)

⁽³⁾ “The Trailblazers : Adventures of the 50s and 60s,” LPGA. http://www.lpga.com/golf/news/archive/2010/2/the-trailblazers--adventures-of-the-50s-and-60s.aspx (accessed March 27, 2014)

⁽⁴⁾ Jeneane Lesko “League History,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Players Association. http://www.aagpbl.org/index.cfm/pages/league/12/league-history (accessed March 27, 2014)

⁽⁵⁾ John Molina, “All American Red Heads 1936-1986,” allamericanredheads.com. http://www.allamericanredheads.com/index.html (accessed March 27, 2014)

⁽⁶⁾ “Bob Cousy,” BasketballReference.com. http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/cousybo01.html (accessed March 17, 2014)

⁽⁷⁾ “Cummings, Candy,” National Baseball Hall of Fame. http://baseballhall.org/hof/cummings-candy (accessed March 27, 2014)

⁽⁸⁾ Tim Kurkijan, “Best ‘Extinct’ Uniforms – White Sox : The Shorts,” espn.com. ttp://espn.go.com/mlb/photos/gallery/_/id/9268895/image/1/shorts-best-extinct-uniforms (accessed March 27, 2014)

⁽⁹⁾ Frank Deford, Lite Reading (Middlesex, England : Penguin Books, 1984), p. 12.

Of Jobe and Jay-Z

Much of sport involves fundamentals. Practice. Run some drills. Build muscle memory.

Speaking of muscles, however, a recent event reminded us that creativity plays a major role in sports, too. We’ll have more on that in a moment, but first, here are some thoughts on the creative factor in sports.

Coaches sometimes need to keep a lid on creativity. "Take the sure out, chip the puck off the boards, lay up in front of the hazard," they tell us. The safe strategy has value, of course. Its value lies in setting up the creative play that must follow. After all, the point of safely getting the puck out of the zone is for it to then be picked up by Wayne Gretzky so he can use it to execute multiple dekes and put home a top-shelf beauty.

Two men known to produce excellent creative work in the sports industry : former 39 On Deck host Craig Miller and NHL Hall-of-Famer Wayne Gretzky

So it is in all creative pursuits. The writer must research. The designer must master software. The rhythm players must set the tone for the soloist. Indeed, recent years have seen an ever-increasing influx of creatives in other fields crossing over into the sports world. Master P represented Ricky Williams. Jay-Z started Roc Nation.

Sports offers much that should appeal to the creative spirit : colors, colorful wordplay, personalities, stories, and many, many microcosms of the human condition. Sports innovation comes as spontaneously as a jazz sax break when a Cristiano Ronaldo concocts a never-before-seen dribbling flurry. It comes through the meticulous process of an old master painter when Joe Maddon pores through data that inspires a vision to move his third baseman to some previously unimagined fielding position when a certain hitter bats.⁽¹⁾

Yes, even coaches get creative, though some might not admit it. All the best teachers find fresh ways to help pupils succeed, and the coach who can modify her formulae when called for may also end up modifying the scoreboard in her favor.

The best creative endeavors in all fields build on a game plan. At its heart, creativity is about finding a solution to a problem, whether of communication, of how to thread a pass through a zone defense, or of something greater. Which brings us to the event we referenced at the top of the article.

The muscle (and ligament) related event was this month’s passing of Dr. Frank Jobe. Doctors, too, must endure a minor league journeyman’s career’s worth of mastering the basics before they graduate into the ironically named level of their field known as practice. Dr. Jobe went a step beyond. His decision to replace Tommy John’s cleft elbow ligament with one harvested from elsewhere in the pitcher’s body derived from a boldly creative idea.⁽²⁾ The physician’s solution to Mr. John's problem led to success not only for that player, but also for countless others.

Succeeding in sports (whether playing them, marketing them, coaching them, or supporting them) requires creativity. Hopefully your success doesn't necessitate innovating a surgical technique. But if you drive right every time, the defense will eventually figure it out and you're going to need to think of something else. Maybe you should try dribbling left from time to time, or pull up for a jump shot, or, for goodness sake, pass the ball for once in your life. Some are better at being visionaries than others. In Chris Paul's hands, creativity results in a dunk for his teammate; In mine, a turnover careens out of bounds.

Sports, in all its aspects, can never be about succeeding every time. But it should always be about enjoying oneself. New ideas in all fields come with an aim to improve life, whether through an inspirational film, a morale-building company initiative, or just enabling one to throw with a working elbow ligament. As part of the human condition, sport can be no different.

Creativity is fun. Sports are fun. That they should co-mingle seems fundamental. 

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

(1) Hunter Atkins, “Rays’ Joe Maddon: The King of Shifts,” New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/sports/baseball/rays-manager-joe-maddon-is-the-king-of-shifts.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 (accessed March 14, 2014)

(2) Will Carroll, “Dr. Frank Jobe, Tommy John and the Surgery That Changed Baseball Forever,” Bleacher Report. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1672080-dr-frank-jobe-tommy-john-and-the-surgery-that-changed-baseball-forever (accessed March 11, 2014)

Connecting the Spots

Whenever I talk to aspirants hoping to make a mark in the media and/or sports businesses, I always stress how interconnected the various facets of the industries have become. With video on the internet, radio on TV, and rappers in the sports business, the expertise one gathers and the connections one makes in one place may well pay off somewhere else. Even if they want to work in one certain medium, a job in another can help them get to their preferred career more effectively than ever before.

Last week, the Fort Worth Weekly put a photo of me on their cover. The story inside talked about a documentary project on which I’m working and also covered much of my career. It has resulted in social media attention, a few double takes at restaurants, and, hopefully, added credibility in future endeavors. It has been a positive event.

It also got me to thinking about the path that led to it coming out in print. I realized the events followed one of those unplanned trails of diverse experiences inimical to today’s interconnected world.

Let’s start with the project that got the paper interested. Like many endeavors a long time coming, this one started with my father, whom we’ll call Salvatore. I’ve decided to change the names of the people in this story, partially in case they don’t want to be mentioned and partially because it will amuse those who know them (including me).

Anyway, back in the day when Salvatore was athletic director at a university I’ll call Kruger College of Industrial Smoothing, he recommended me for a job doing announcing with a local cable outfit televising some of the school’s athletic events. That job grew into a regular gig, and when the local pro hockey team won the Wonderful Hockey Association of Texas championship, I got to write and produce a documentary on the season that led to the WHAT title. A few years later, when the local baseball team, the Lagrave Leopards, celebrated its history, I wrote another documentary.

Meanwhile, I had also begun to work full-time for another baseball club. We’re going to call them the Randol Mill Rutabagas. At the Bagas, I worked making commercials with a co-worker ostensibly named Callie Kringle. Callie was exceptionally competent and helped make my work better. She also had a better half. Her husband and I got along well because we both liked the taste of a beverage called whuskey (some varietals are spelled whusky).

Mr. Kringle is an architect and he and I talked about doing a documentary on a project he was working on. We never gained any traction with it, but the work we did on it, plus his knowledge of my creative background, led him to recommend me to a former colleague. The colleague now worked at the architecture firm rebuilding the damaged schools in West, Texas. The company wanted to create a documentary about the process and must have decided the credentials accumulated through my work with the Rutabagas, the previous documentary projects, and the recommendation of my whuskey-drinking friend made me the guy to spearhead the project.

That project got the attention of the newspaper. They assigned their film writer to cover the story, and, consequently, me. But how did they find out about it? That tale has its roots in television, treks through music, has a baseball element, and, once again, involves drinking.

While I was doing sports announcing, I simultaneously held a full-time gig at a local TV station we’re going to pretend is named KOWW. At KOWW, I worked with a colleague named, for our purposes here, Bruno. Bruno and I both liked music, and bonded over it. Many years later, he put together a jam, and some of those musicians and I later got together in a blues band called A Little Cake and Some Icing. We played a lot of fun biker shows and saw some things we’ll never be able to forget. After that band broke, up a couple of the members and I started a band called Loda Dimes. I went ahead and used its real name because nobody’s ever heard of it anyway.

In an attempt to establish a stronger presence for Loda Dimes in the music scene, I joined the local music co-op. There I met and worked with its driving force, an MC whose name we’ll say is Elric Gryffindor. Elric and I both liked music and baseball. He worked at the Fort Worth Weekly. Aha, you just said, I see where this is going! But then, suddenly, he left the Weekly!

But later Elric went back to the paper. At some point after his return, he and I went out to drink a beverage we both liked called “boor.” While we consumed some microboors, I told him about the documentary project. He went to his editor with the idea that a story about a local guy doing a movie related to an important event might interest folks. She agreed, the story got done, and my face got plastered on newsstands across Tarrant County.

The point of this whole blog post you’ve managed to digest is that it wouldn’t have gotten done without the interplay of varied experiences in the entertainment business. From college sports to TV to pro sports to music to documentary films, they all helped lead to a positive career development.

I often tell folks the most important thing for advancement is demonstrating to people that you’re not crummy at what you do. I actually usually use stronger language, but you might be reading this to your kids. Tell them to never miss an opportunity to do show their competence, no matter what the endeavor.

After all, who would have thought that playing blues in biker bars, watching hockey fights, and drinking whuskey with architects would get a guy on the front page of the paper?

Teams Need to Get Out More

In 1995, the New York Times reported that each NFL team took in "about $3 million a year from official sponsorship and merchandise."⁽¹⁾ That year, the Dallas Cowboys made disruptive moves that ultimately led to changes in the way the NFL handled such sales. The ownership group sold Pepsi a $20 million package that included pouring rights and official sponsorship of Texas Stadium. The stadium assignation helped the team work around the league's centralized sales structure, which had sold Coca-Cola a package that included official sponsor designation for all the league's teams.

Dallas owner Jerry Jones felt the league's teams could grow their collective overall revenue if the rules incentivized them to sell more sponsorships individually. Despite a series of lawsuits, the moves helped lead to the current structure that allows franchises substantial autonomy in sponsorship sales. IEG reported last week that sponsorship revenue for the league and its teams added up to $1.07 billion,⁽²⁾ a strong piece of evidence (even when inflation-adjusted) that Jones assessed the market correctly.

The pre-1994 NFL sponsorship landscape has a lot in common with the way U.S. sports leagues currently handle their international business. International marketing and broadcasting initiatives originate at the league level and individual clubs have little incentive to mass market to foreign fan bases.

The question thus becomes : if leagues allowed clubs some leeway to market themselves abroad, would the incentives created result in expanded revenue growth overall?

Would Bulgarian teenagers wear the apparel of U.S. athletic brands when they come here to play their sport?

When I've traveled to Europe, the only American sports brand I've seen consistently worn is that of the Yankees, and I suspect that it had more to do with an identification with New York than a Bulgarian teenager's appreciation for Mariano Rivera's cut fastball. Anecdotal observations are unscientific at best, but we do know for sure that baseball's system pools revenue from most forms of gear sales. A team thus has no reason to invest resources in selling its branded caps or platypus plush dolls outside its local market. Jones' Cowboys' also opted out of the NFL merchandise structure when that option became available and Dallas Cowboys Merchandising, Ltd. has found numerous ways to innovate.⁽³⁾

A key reason to incentivize teams to market themselves and their bobbleheads abroad involves creativity. 30-some teams worth of employees, agencies, and consultants thinking about ways to interact with fans in other countries might result in more good ideas than one league office. Other teams can always copy the good ideas. They do that already when it comes to scoreboard features, ticket sales, advanced defensive metrics, and every other best practice.

Another reason to get teams involved is that people don't get emotionally infatuated with leagues. They get caught up rooting for Cowboys, Warriors, and Vikings. Club marketing personnel specialize in creating fans for their teams. While they wouldn’t be selling, say, group tickets, who knows what other initiatives they might invent? Turning them loose on new markets could end up growing the total revenue pool.

Teams already have started to stretch the envelope. Some leagues allow teams to retain control of internet rights, so they can at least communicate worldwide, but their ability to monetize them is still limited. More centralized setups, like Major League Baseball’s, almost completely remove the motivation for teams to look beyond borders electronically. In fact, the zeal to control content and revenue outside home team territories can impair teams’ abilities to use web tools to market locally over channels that could also be seen by those outside their hometown.

Ironically, clubs do have some autonomy overseas in the area the Cowboys pushed in the nineties : sponsorship sales. When an MLB team signs a prominent player from NPB, expect to see signage with Japanese characters behind home plate at their ballpark. The Sacramento Kings' Indian owner, Vivek Ranadive, just sold a sponsor package in his homeland.⁽⁴⁾ These sponsorships generally involve activation within the U.S., as in stadium signage seen by TV viewers back home or initiatives with domestic customers of an international brand.  But could the league bring in more sponsorship revenue if the teams actively worked to create fan bases in alternative markets and set up team-branded activation within them?

Ranadive seems to want to find out. He said of his Kings, "We strive to become India's home team."⁽⁵⁾ Leagues may want to encourage others to follow his lead.

The world's soccer clubs already engage fans around the world with their brands. In the competition for fan loyalty in developing markets, U.S. sports leagues need to make their team brands viable challengers to the Liverpools and Barcelonas. Already at a disadvantage due to the popularity of the sport of association football, they risk falling further behind. It is not just the big clubs they need worry about. Welsh club Cardiff City controversially changed their kit colors this season⁽⁶⁾ because it felt red would hold more appeal to fans in Asia. With Malaysian ownership, one would expect the Bluebirds to continue to work that market even if they lose their current relegation battle.

Multiple nationalities own English soccer teams and pro sports on every inhabited continent seek to add international on-field talent to their rosters. The world has shrunk since the Dodgers couldn’t make a lot of headway in Asia nearly a decade ago.⁽⁷⁾ Now, thanks to the internet and social media, clubs can create virtual presences in places they couldn’t afford physical ones.

The successful ones may eventually need offices abroad, too, certainly. Initial areas where clubs could realize financial gains from a trans-oceanic presence include merchandise, travel packages, foreign market sponsorship activation, preseason playing tours, online advertising sales, and broadcasting. Currently, leagues generally don’t permit teams to send locally originated TV broadcasts outside of designated home areas so as not to negatively impact ticket sales and ratings in other teams’ markets. But Blue Jackets games shown in old Jersey wouldn’t impact a team in New Jersey. They might, however, give the Devils some ideas for capturing the souls of fans in Columbia.

Plea to teams from someone who has worked for them : if you go all in for some international marketing, give your staff the extra resources they need to do it properly. They’re already putting in massive hours to maximize your local revenue streams.

One would still have to define the areas the leagues would handle and the areas where the teams could do their own thing. There is probably a lot of work for lawyers there. For instance, if you let teams market internationally, do you necessarily have to allow them to market more broadly within North America? Probably not, but, admittedly, determining parameters for letting teams play in the international arena wouldn’t be an exact science. Some league might find a competitive advantage in becoming the first to try it, however.

How about the objection that bigger clubs will be better positioned to take advantage of expanded opportunities than smaller ones, negatively affecting competitive balance? We could note that the New York market teams already enjoy outsized local revenue ratios compare to the rest of their leagues, yet we still have the Knicks and Mets. Revenue sharing plans wouldn’t have to go away and would remedy some of the imbalance. Our point in using the Cowboys as an example earlier wasn’t about how they leveraged their already powerful brand. It was about how their maneuvers allowed all teams to find new, creative ways to build revenue. In fact, the team-independence option gives nimble smaller teams a broader population base from which to even the playing field with good ideas. The “Moneyball” revolution showed how teams with insight could find ways to compete with behemoths on the playing surface. The Cowboys, for all their success off the field, haven’t bought any championships in a while.

However, almost every team in the NFL does have a chance to compete for a title, and the other North American circuits have also achieved an era where most fans can legitimately hope that their team will have a big year next year. This provides a competitive advantage over most European teams, where the current lack of competitive balance often means 75% or more the teams harbor no hope of winning the league. This is big, because, let’s face it, no marketing effort works as well as winning.

Which brings us to a final point. There will come a time where teams who might not have jumped all in with international marketing might eventually change their minds. That moment will happen when an in-demand international free agent chooses a certain team over other comparably priced suitors because he grew up rooting for them – in Jersey or Columbia or Sofia or New Delhi or Kuala Lumpur. When that happens, baseball/basketball/roller derby GMs will walk into their Marketing VPs’ offices and offer their support and their budgets to the international expansion the marketer had wanted all along.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

RushOlson.com

Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports

Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports

Footnotes

(1) David Barboza, “THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING; Dallas Cowboys' stadium ousts Coke, despite N.F.L. deal, and gives Pepsi 'pouring rights.',” New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/07/business/media-business-advertising-dallas-cowboys-stadium-ousts-coke-despite-nfl-deal.html (accessed February 3, 2014)

(2) “IEG: NFL Sponsorship Revenue Totals $1.07 Billion in 2013 Season,” IEG.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/02/prweb11541990.htm (accessed February 3, 2014)

(3) Alicia Jessop, “Jerry Jones' 1995 Risk Allows The Dallas Cowboys To Become Leaders In The Growing Women's Sports Apparel Market,” Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciajessop/2013/11/29/jerry-jones-1995-risk-allows-the-dallas-cowboys-to-become-leaders-in-the-growing-womens-sports-apparel-market/ (accessed February 3, 2014)

(4) “Sacramento Kings begin Indian push with Krrish Group,” SportBusiness. http://www.sportbusiness.com/sponsorship-insider/sacramento-kings-begin-indian-push-krrish-group (accessed February 5, 2014)

(5) IBID.

(6) “Cardiff City to change kit from blue to red amid financial investment,” BBC.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/18324804 (accessed February 3, 2014)

(7) Daniel Kaplan, “Are the Dodgers scaling back efforts in Asia?” Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal. http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2005/04/20050411/Marketingsponsorship/Are-The-Dodgers-Scaling-Back-Efforts-In-Asia.aspx?hl=MLB%20International&sc=0 (accessed February 4, 2014)