The sponsorship paradox

If my management degree has taught me anything (and it hasn't!) it's that brainstorming and flow charts can solve every problem. So when it came to the great marketing challenge for ultimate (getting a-sponsors and b-coverage) I thought what better way to nut it out than with a flowchart?

So after many scribblings, here's what I came up with....




Basically, sponsors aren't fans of a sport that has little to no media coverage. And media doesn't want to give air time to something without financial backing. So at the moment things are kind of stuck in a loop.

All I have to do is convince someone to take a risk, then the rest will happen from there.

Fun times on the aus-ultimate email list

Yesterday, Jay Dowling sent an email out to the aus-ultimate list about his thoughts on the matter of nicknames...

"Hello,

Since I have started playing ultimate I have noticed that players are often referred to with nicknames on websites and in emails. This is fine as long as everyone knows each other, but can be quite frustrating to anyone who doesn't.

More to the point though, I think that to new players it can present a closed, social group of players. This could not be further from the truth, as it is more likely an extension of the inclusive nature of Ultimate Frisbee. However I doubt this is obvious to new players.

For example, having a 'Huy v Catherine Coope' section on the SA Ultimate website may not be the most inclusive feature of a website. Nor the most professional. Apologies to Huy and Cath for singling them out. It's just an example.

This email is not a criticism of anyone, rather it is just a personal view from previous experience.

Jay"

Fair enough point. However, I logged on this morning to this rebuttal from Piers...

"Hey Jay (is that your real name…..)

I was up here in Queensland talking with the fire storm boys (Wetnose, Cheese, Space Needle, Jangles, Jayray, Mica, Junior and Al) and they didn’t think that there is anything to your claim. Feeling like I should explore this fully I made a few calls. Joelly didn’t answer, but I guess he is in France. Temple is now going under another name at work. Robocop thought you were wrong and told me to talk to Fergie and LTB about it. LTB naturally had an opinion, but he had spoken to Tats, Sturty, Aunty Doctor Sarah and Pennoes before I got through to him. Cupcake had no comment. In Canberra Bruiser, Crazy, Lazy (well that was a long distance call), Chumpy and the other 3 dwarves were outraged to think that ultimate was in anyway cliquey. Mad Dog just barked and suggested that I should not call Crusher or his sister Kicker because Wollongong people make no sense anyway. Crusher was drunk, so I thought I would get better sense from Melbourne and called (in order) Hussy, Wood, Timmers, Booboo, Shhhhebbbbo, Barrie, Wisey, O-Shep, Nat, Cat, (a bat), DK, Drool, Rockbeat, Smithers, Carol, Spesh, KP, the Kleminator, Timill and Bong. They could not see what the fuss was about. Cupcake still had not comment. Tiger said that Tiger was his real name. Go figure.

In short I think you might have got it wrong Jeremy. But you could always ask g-Banger, Bra, G-man, Badman (it’s true), Mama, Holmsie, The seagull, Blondie, Princess, Maymay or Breebell. Better yet put it in writing to the AFDA board. It would be appropriate to write to Pissy, JdR, Bad Mother Footer (Of the Denver BMF mobile – that was an adventureJ ) or better yet our AFDA CEO Pottsy.

Do you know the secret handshake Jeremy?

piers truter"

Well Piers, if you read this, I did a bit of an ask around of the Ballarat crew. Sizzle, Doobie, Heimy, Nessie, Monstar, Gretski, Cass, Dildo, Fletch, Della, Suckstobe, Zipper, Benefit, both of Karibony, Sezzy and Spanka all didn't see a problem either.

When I asked Emma she just looked at me and said "Huh?"

The latest on the Ballarat scene...

Last night BUUF got smashed 15-3 by 'Cougar makes my pants fit noice' at Albert Park League. It was looking a lot worse, with Cougar up 8-0 at half within the bad side of 20 minutes. Their team was easily better than ours - only one of them didn't have Nationals experience, while we had three players with one Nationals campaign under their belt, the rest a mix of Mixed Div experience and newbies.

In the first week, we lost to this team on universe point, so there's been a massive change in form over ten weeks. We were missing a few regulars last night, but the key problem was summed up perfectly by Mark...

"We always start out so well, then people stop committing."

And he's right. Every Monday arvo I go through a few dollars worth of text messages trying to scrape together a team to make the trek down the Western. But we've been doing it on a weekly basis for the last three winters for the sake of development, so it's all for the better, right?

Not really. We've never had the same team two weeks in a row, so while we're exposing some new players to a level of play a notch or three above pickup, we've become pretty stagnant as a club on field, a fact not made any better by the fact we're not fronting up to Mixed Nats this year. Last night I counted up how many people we've had pull on a jersey for Ballarat teams (BUUF, The B-Town Massive, Eureka Goldigaz) since 2004.

Ninety.

Ninety players have worn the navy and white over the years, and yet we barely manage to have 9 or 10 from week to week. So where have they all gone? I can't remember the exact numbers but here's an approximate breakdown...

- 20-something are now playing elsewhere
- 4 are overseas (all in Japan, oddly enough)
- About 15 were one-offs (fill ins at league)
- 20-odd could be considered current players
- ...and 24 have gone altogether

Twenty-four players have played more an a couple of games for Ballarat, and are now gone from the sport altogether. A fair few of these players showed some real potential, and I believe would be at Nationals level by now if they stuck with the sport...Rendell, Leah, Steve, Erin just to name a few. They ended up leaving for whatever reasons, but it all boiled down to the fact that ultimate was just too much to commit to.

So it got me thinking on the drive home, we need to have a crack at getting a league going in Ballarat. We're facing a huge exodus of experienced players at the end of the year (Mark, Dave, Sizz, myself and Maria are all graduating and most likely moving out of town) and the club will need to rebuild. Last time we tried to get a league going (2005) it fell by the wayside because the key players lost interest, therefore so did everyone else. Last year was difficult, because hosting Mixed Nats and our WUCC team ate up most of everyone's time, but this year there is nothing on the cards after Mixed Nats (early October) so it's the perfect time to do it.

So where do our teams come from? Obviously we'll have to split up the team we have into smaller teams and get them to recruit from there. Here's what it might look like...

Team 1 - Church Street. Existing team of juniors from the Creswick area. Led by Tarrant.
Team 2 - 2007 rookies. The crew of new players who are regulars at pickup games. Led by Dan.
Team 3 - Team IBM. Myself, Doobie and Sammy work there, all we'd need is to get three workmates each along and there's our team.
Team 4 - "BUUFcoy". Get Sez and Spanka to lead the charge and get our old players back into the fold.

When it's broken down like that, it seems almost too easy. 70% of the players are already around, we just need a structure, timeslot and venue to make it happen. Of course once the league is going then recruiting for us becomes a lot easier. Rather than asking players to come to a "state-level" league or tournament, we are asking them to have a run around the park with friends.

Let's make it happen.

The introduction to the new Ballarat Ultimate blog...

So what if this is a blatant rip-off of the Brisbane Ultimate Disc blog?

Despite the proximity to Melbourne, the frequent traveling and the use of Myspace, Facebook and other stuff, the ultimate scene in Ballarat seems to be pretty sheltered from the rest of the country (Western Australia excepted). So taking the Queensland lead I thought I'd set up a blog to fill the rest of the disc community in on what the hell happens in our portion of the earth.

So what's currently happening?
- The Heads Of State boys are training hard for their NUFL campaign
- BUUF is recovering from their 3rd place finish at the Boycott City Challenge
- Church Street League Fighter Lighter are tearing it up at Youth Nats
- Social trainings are on hold for the holidays
- Everyone is starting to consider their Mixed Nats activities

A phone call to Dan reveals that Church St have a 4-1 record after today. The first game was against top seed In-Tents, where the score was 6-3 at time cap to In-Tents, and Church St scored the next four in a row to win. Other wins came over Chatswood (also double game point), Darwin and ACT. The last game of the day saw a loss to Panic! At The Disc.

The hot topic in the coming weeks will be Mixed Nats and who will be going. The Victorian squads are virtually settled with what looks like at least 4 teams (MUCUS, Honey Badgers, Station 59 and Team Gary) formed. There's still rumblings of other teams for the time being but nothing in concrete. The VFDA are proposing a league qualification format to give a much needed boost to the Thursday night Box Hill league, which ends the prospect of a Ballarat team. With guns Dan and Mark already playing for Station 59, plus most of the rest playing at AUG on the Gold Coast the week before, Ballarat was going to struggle to have a team anyway.

Along comes a brilliant concept - Country All Stars. Ultimate is slowly starting to thrive in regional centres (not counting Newcastle and Wollongong - they're virtually suburbs of Sydney) such as Ballarat, Townsville and Bathurst. The thinking is to create a team of players from Ballarat, Geelong, Bathurst and Dubbo to give a few players from those regions exposure to top flight competition. Their biggest problem - how to qualify? Odds are the team will have to nominate themselves as a "Victorian" team, watch as the other four eat up the allocated spots, and wait and pray for a wildcard. We'll have to wait and see.

Also we'll have to come up with a better name. Bozza's already suggested "Bogan United". Someone else said "Sheep Jockeys" but they didn't realise New Zealand were invited and it might cause some ripples. Any suggestions for a better name?


Hopefully there'll be more contributors than me to this blog, and maybe I'll provide some competition to JdR's "loldisc" posts. Who knows.

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