Good morning. It’s Monday October 9, 2017 and this is your first early morning Sports briefing.

How to measure the value of an athlete’s social brand? That is a question being tackled by opendorse which continues to evolve the industry’s fastest growing content distribution platform that gives marketers direct access to athletes' social media channels. Boasting 4,700 social media campaigns with top brands as well as 2,300 athletes, Cynopsis Sports caught up with Blake Lawrence, CEO of opendorse, to chat about the growth of the company, the best athletes for brands and creative uses of its property.

Lawrence on the evolution of opendorse: It’s been a great year for us at opendorse. We continue to see the interest in activating athletes on social media grow. If we go back two years we would sell access to advertisers looking to team up with athletes for their campaigns to reach their audience. We used that model from 2013-15, bringing opportunities to athletes on a consistent basis. At the same time, we realized the value of the platform we built, being able to quickly access and activate these athletes in these social media campaigns wasn’t something that was just valuable to advertisers. It was also valuable for rights-holders, teams, leagues, properties and whatnot who could benefit from having access and activation tools at their disposal as well.

So we started to license our software to athletic departments, who wanted an easy way to get content to fans or alumni; or sports teams, or to pro sports teams so they could increase distribution of that post-game content; or sports leagues who wanted to drive tune-in by making sure payers are sharing content by talking about their leagues. That has been a big key for growth over the last two years.

On creative uses of the service: Through real-time activation of athletes, who –when posting the right thing at the right time – can drive major engagement for themselves and their partners. During the Super Bowl, GNC saw their commercial pulled and they had invested heavily in this high-quality commercial that they still wanted to get in front of fans during the Super Bowl. So they took that commercial and came to opendorse a few days before the Super Bowl and said, ‘Hey, we would like to get this commercial in front of these consumers in these markets. Which athletes drive engagement in those markets?” We were able to put together a roster of eight athletes to distribute that commercial through and in less than three days we had achieved some terrific numbers.

On athletes: To recommend that right athlete to the partners who come to us, you have to know the ins and outs, engagement levels and metrics behind the scenes for each athlete. We analyze every post of every social platform for each athlete to get a feel for their audience engagement level and their activity level and where there is a potential match. We find that the more active the athletes are, the higher their engagement rate is with their audience. The most followed athletes tend to have a lower engagement rate, not because of the quantity of the audience, but just because they aren’t the most active. A good standout athlete would be Marquette King of the Oakland Raiders. His engagement level is incredibly high and his audiences have come to know him as a source of entertainment and when he posts a video, they share it.

ON THE AIR

Last week’s presentation of Thursday Night Football sizzled for the league’s broadcast partners, as the patriots win scored an average minute audience of 16.0 million viewers across all platforms, including CBS, NFL Network, Amazon Prime Video, NFL Digital and CBS digital platforms. The telecast on CBS and NFL Network delivered a 28% uptick in viewership from last year’s comparable Week 5 game with an average of15.434 million television viewers, according to Nielsen live plus same day national ratings. The average digital audience, meanwhile, hit 525,000. Meanwhile, Amazon reports that Amazon Prime Video reached 1.7 million combined viewers in 184 countries and territories and all 50 states for the NFL Thursday Night Kickoff pregame show and Thursday Night Football with an average worldwide audience watching for at least thirty seconds hitting 391,000.

Meanwhile, MLB’s 2017 National League Division Series is delivering positive gains for TBS, which saw coverage of the Cubs/Nationals and Diamondbacks/Dodgers average 3.2 million total viewers through Saturday’s Game 2 coverage for a rise of 14% over last year’s comparable game telecasts. Saturday’s NLDS Game 2 doubleheader on TBS averaged 3.1 million total viewers for a 41% increase over last year’s comparable LDS coverage airing on the network. Live streaming coverage of the MLB Postseason across Turner’s TV Everywhere platforms has generated 4.3 million minutes of consumption through Saturday, up 39% over last year.

Around the dial, MLB Network’s telecast of the 13-inning ALDS Game Two battle between the Yankees/Indians on Friday generated an average of 3.2 million viewers to rank as the network’s second-most watched telecast and highest peak audience in its history. The channel’s two 2017 ALDS game telecasts led to its second-best combined Postseason game viewership to date, delivering an average of 2.7 million viewers. “When you do a game like this, you want to make sure everything is done the right way and you don't want to get in the way, but you need to be there and support it when it needs to be supported, like having a nice look at Ronald Torreyes when he got picked off or having the great reaction shots when Francisco Lindor hit the grand slam,” said Chris Pfeiffer, the Sr. Coordinating Producer of the MLB Network telecast. “You don't want to get in the way, you just want to make sure you're there and supporting it along the way.”

ABC’s Saturday Night Football pitting Michigan State/Michigan drew a 3.9 Nielsen overnight score to rank as the highest-rated college football game of week 6 across all networks. The game is up 22% from last year’s Saturday Night Football contest. Meanwhile, ESPN’s coverage of Alabama/Texas A&M drew a 2.7 Nielsen overnight, tying as both the second-highest overnight of the week across all networks.

Speaking of college football, CBS Sports has announced its SEC on CBS football game for Oct. 14 will showcase Auburn/LSU. Brad Nessler, Gary Danielson and reporter Allie LaForce call the contest from Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.

Elsewhere, ESPN’s College GameDay is poised to return to Harrisonburg, VA on Oct. 14, visiting the campus of James Madison University ahead of the team’s game against Villanova over the weekend. ESPN VP, College Sports Lee Fitting made the announcement (and answered Friday’s trivia question) on Twitter, stating, “#1 in FCS? Check. Longest win streak in D1? Check. @CollegeGameDay to @JMUSports again? Check. Show us what you got, Dukes!”

ESPNU will televise up to 21 NBA G League games for the 2017-18 season, with 12 regular-season games on deck as well as the Playoffs and Finals. Play begins Nov. 6 at 8p with the Lakeland Magic/Sioux Falls Skyforce. Meanwhile, the NBA G League Finals Game 1 is set for April 8 at 7p.

Monumental Sports & Entertainment made its new face official as Founder, CEO and Majority Owner Ted Leonsis announced that Laurene Powell Jobs, Founder and President of Emerson Collective, will join the Monumental ownership group as a minority investor. The NBA and the NHL have approved the transaction. “Through her work at Emerson Collective, Laurene has been a longtime leader in areas of education, immigration, social justice and the environment,” Leonsis said. “She shares my belief in a double bottom line philosophy: that the companies that do best are those that do good in their communities, and that sports offers a global platform that unites people and lifts up communities. I am thrilled to welcome her to the Monumental family and to one of the most dynamic, diverse and innovative partnerships in sports and entertainment.”

YES Network announced that average TV Household ratings for the channel’s 2017 regular season New York Yankees telecasts were 57% higher than its 2016 Yankees numbers to mark its best game ratings for the team in five years. YES’ Yankees games averaged a 3.57 TV Household rating this season, up 57% from the 2.28 average rating from 2016.

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SPONSORSHIP & PROMOTION

Lucasfilm will unveil the new trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi on ESPN’s Monday Night Football tonight during halftime of the league’s game between the Vikings/Bears, which starts at 8:15p. Disney – which also happens to own ESPN – will then open sales for tickets for the movie, which hits US theaters on Dec. 15.

Learfield and IMG made their union official, formally announcing a definitive agreement that will see the two merge to create a “more dynamic service provider in the increasingly competitive sports and entertainment marketing landscape.” The move had been expected in recent weeks and Greg Brown, President and CEO of Learfield, noted that, “By combining, we will be better positioned to champion the success of collegiate athletics in the years ahead through the development of new services and offerings that will provide greater benefits to our clients and brand partners than either company could do alone. Together, we will more efficiently assist schools in identifying and implementing methods to derive maximum value for their rights and sponsorship deals in light of greater competition with professional sports leagues and other entertainment options.”

T-Mobile unveiled a major new fundraising effort for the ongoing hurricane relief and recovery efforts. The brand is giving at least $1 million to Team Rubicon for hurricane recovery and will leverage its platform as the Official Wireless Sponsor of MLB to raise awareness and possibly drive the total much higher throughout the MLB Postseason. T-Mobile’s pledging to donate $10,000 per postseason home run, and with 14 home runs already hit during the Wild Card games and the American League Division Series, the donation pot has $140,000 in it off the bat. Each time someone tweets with #HR4HR, T-Mobile will donate another $1 to Team Rubicon’s recovery efforts, all the way up to an extra $500,000 on top of the money raised when players go yard.

Sports-first live streaming TV service fuboTV is now an official partner of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings. This agreement marks fuboTV’s first sponsorship deal with a professional sports team and will see fuboTV become the presenting sponsor of the LA Kings online schedule. A ‘Watch Now’ button will direct fans to where they can stream Kings games on fuboTV. Additionally, LA Kings season ticket members will receive special offers for the fuboTV service.

DIGITAL & STREAMING

ELEVEN Sports locked in a partnership with Twitter to live stream Ivy League football games in 2017. The channel will live stream seven games during October and November via @ElevenSportsUSA on Twitter. “ELEVEN Sports is thrilled to agree this partnership with Twitter to enable sports fans to consume Ivy League football action in this accessible and engaging way,” said Anthony Bailey, Managing Director for ELEVEN Sports in the U.S. “Our aim is to work with Twitter and other partners to deliver live action for fans however and wherever they want to consume it. We are the only platform providing live access to this football content, making ELEVEN the ultimate destination for the dedicated fan.”

NASCAR and The Weather Company inked a multi-year agreement that will optimize the weather-related decision process for NASCAR as it incorporates hyper-local weather data and forecasts into their races to improve race-day operations and fan engagement. As part of the agreement, The Weather Company, via The Weather Channel brand, becomes the Official Weather Partner of NASCAR.

ESPORTS

After trying and failing to secure a franchise in the upcoming Overwatch League, Rogue announced that it would be disbanding its Overwatch roster so that they could pursue opportunities with official teams.On September 20th the first twelve teams were confirmed for the league with Rogue not among the new team owners. Subsequently, the squad released a statement on Sunday, noting that “We did everything we could to get the team a spot in OWL, including procuring the buy-in money and going through the whole approval process. Unfortunately, we were not accepted for Season 1 and had no option but to break up the most accomplished Overwatch team in the game’s history so that the players could accept offers. We will continue to pursue putting together more great teams in the future and hope next time to be able to keep what we’ve worked so hard to build.”

Riot Games will reportedly up the stipend for teams participating in the planned European League Championship Series, according to ESPN. The League of Legends publisher will now shift the EU LCS to a single-game, double round robin format that echoes the one recently announced for the North American 2018 season. Riot is also backtracking on plans for a 24 team league broken into regions, according to the report.

THE MAIN EVENT

Astros/Red Sox on FS1 at 1p.

Check out the 2017 Cynopsis Digital “IT” List Honorees!

Joining us from 38 companies that cover all elements of the industry, digital’s movers and shakers will represent the top brands and innovators in the business at our 5^th Annual Digital Awards Ceremony. Share insights and connect with your peers as we celebrate the honorees at this fabulous awards event on November 10 at Tribeca’s ThreeSixty (NYC). See the full list of honorees, companies and event details here.

ON THIS DAY in 1997: Dean Smith announces his retirement after 36 years as coach at the University of North Carolina.

In the Know: Which two teams did Dean Smith’s North Carolina teams beat to win the championship? (Email Chris-Sports@Cynopsis.com with your answer and be sure to include your name, company and city.)

Answer to Our Last Sports Trivia Question: Which NCAA Division I football team boasts the nation’s longest current winning streak? Answer: As mentioned above, James Madison University with 17 wins as a Division I FCS school. Kudos: Kevin Doyle-IMG Original Content/NY; Tom Doherty-Starcom Media/Chicago; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA

Later -- Chris

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