Ah, basketball season begins again! As all of you NBA lovers know, over the summer LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers to join forces with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh on the Miami Heat. For those not as basketball-literate, LeBron James is a basketball superstar who has been named Most Valuable Player in the past two years and with his “decision” to leave Cleveland this summer, he has been criticized heavily.
What transpired over the summer was this in short: When LeBron’s contract to play for Cleveland expired, several other basketball teams tried to “woo” him into playing for them. LeBron got a one hour time slot on ESPN where he would announce what team he was joining. Basically, no one knew what team he was leaning towards, and on live national television, he announced, “Yeah, I’m leaving Cleveland to play for Miami.” Ouch.
Now how is this associated with marketing? On Miami’s side: season tickets have sold out, a wait list has been set up, and ticket prices in general, have gone up. On Cleveland’s side: you can image the numbers in attendance and thus ticket prices going down right? With more people attending NBA games, more people buy food, apparel, and other random souvenirs from the vendors at the respective stadiums. With LeBron leaving Cleveland, revenue leaves Cleveland. You see, LeBron IS a product/service/superstar/ whateveryouwanttocall him. People want to watch LeBron James play basketball.
However, he is also his own brand. When he announced that he was going to play for the Heat, devoted fans all over Cleveland burned his jerseys. His Cleveland jerseys also went as low as to being sold around the 20 dollar price range. Other NBA greats have also criticized LeBron’s decision. He damaged his image. Yeah, ALL those angry fans in Cleveland – I don’t think they would be next in line to grab the latest pair of LeBron kicks released. That is why LeBron has tried to rectify his decisions, as you have seen in the Nike advertisement above. In my opinion, I don’t really have a problem with LeBron switching teams. He took a smaller paycheck to play with Miami in exchange for potentially winning a Championship. That’s what he wants to do. Win. I do however, have a problem with how he delivered his “decision.” You go on live national television just to tell the state you grew up in and the team you’ve played with for the past seven years that you will NOT be playing for them next season? Not cool.
That being said, LeBron has taken a good step towards fixing his image, approaching Nike to make the commercial for him. (Nike also made a Tiger Woods commercial for him when he needed to fix his image.) That won’t really change the fact that Kobe’s taking it again next year though. Just saying… (:
———————————————————————————————-
Want to watch LeBron making “the decision?” Click on his burning jersey above!
Watch Nike’s Tiger Woods commercial here.
