Baseball Places 16 in Sports Power 100

Written by: Jerry Milani on 26th January 2012

Baseball Places 16 in Sports Power 100 | read this item

As a global sports business, baseball has maybe never been stronger. From Japan to Latin America, across North America and even into Europe in many cases, the sport is holding its own on the field and engaging fans in ways never thought possible in the past. Still with all that growth, the challenges that baseball faces to engage fans and return investment by those who bring brands to the game is still very high, as it is with any mature business. Young fans gravitate towards individual sports and video games as they get older, only to come back to traditional team sports as spectators later in their life.

So how do you gauge, if you are a sport, how successful or marketable you are in the global landscape, especially against other entities like the Olympics, Mixed Martial Arts, Extreme Sports and NASCAR?

One of those engagement factors in how popular the game is was released this week in the form of the Bloomberg BusinessWeek Horrow Sports Ventures Power 100, a listing of the most 100 influential athletes based on both their on-field performance and their marketability and impact in the social media world. Bloomberg BusinessWeek worked with CSE Analytics to evaluate more than 3,000 athletes, with 50 percent based on “off-field” measurements and 50 percent on “on-field” performance. CSE’s proprietary analytics utilizes a range of industry statistics, including data from Nielsen’s E-Poll as well.

The results were very interesting for baseball, which placed 16 players on the list (third behind the NFL and the NBA) but did not have a player higher than Albert Pujols, who came in at No. 25. The former star of the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals was followed by NL MVP Ryan Braun (31) and runnerup Matt Kemp (33), with Miguel Cabrera grabbing number 37 on the list. What the Power 100 showed is the viability of the team athlete with a strong personality who can mix onfield success with business success (assuming of course Braun can overcome his issues off the field in the coming months) into a brand that transcends the game. Adrian Gonzalez (44), Justin Verlander (54) and Curtis Granderson (55) all cracked the list for the first time, showing their business potential in combination with their All-Star results, while Derek Jeter of the Yankees, now in the twilight of his legendary career, slid to 81. The mix of where MLB players landed on the list, many of whom were first-timers, showed the great potential on the horizon for MLB and its newer stars. The troubling issue is the lack of a top 20 athlete in 2011, while tennis (three) and golf (three) had solid showings amongst the top 20.

MIguel Cabrera

Baseball after all is a numbers game, so 16 is a great showing for the Power 100. In a year where older stars were transitioning toward the end and new faces emerging the result is strong and sends the message that the game still holds great value on and off the field. What will be telling in 2012 is for the break through guys to continue to move up the list, landing those from The Summer Game in the rarified air of the top 10 along with their NFL colleagues like Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady, all of whom finished one through three on this years list. Overall a powerful showing by baseball for The Power 100, more examples that the game is mature, strong and holding its own, the Power 100 rankings also emphasized the importance of team sports, with the NFL’s 26 players ranked in the top 100. The National Basketball Association came in second with the most athletes on the Power 100, with 20 (led by LeBron James at four), followed by MLB baseball (16), tennis (10), golf (8), motorsports (6), Olympics (4), soccer (4), hockey (3), boxing (2), and action sports (1).

What does the list mean? It’s a good litmus test for marketers to see how powerful athletes can be, and it also shows that winning on the field, in the board room, and with fans in the social space are all needed these days to make those who play the game as successful as they can be in a global economy.

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Topics: Albert Pujols, Champion St, Extreme Sports, Field Measurements, Field Performance, Global Landscape, Global Sports, Individual Sports, Industry Statistics, matt kemp, Mature Business, miguel cabrera, Mixed Martial Arts, Nl Mvp, Number 37, Return Investment, Ryan Braun, St. Louis Cardinals, Traditional Team Sports, World Champion