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PRINT GETS MOST SPORTS AD MONEY; AIR SPONSORSHIP INCLUDES TENNIS, GOLF, FOOTBALL ONE-SHOTS BY SPALDING, WILSON
and Wilson, for example, two leading equipment makers, manufacture baseballs, golf clubs, tennis racquets, football outfits, just to mention a few items.
2. Participation sport fans are spread thin over the country, require pinpointed advertising effort in sport magazines, next to sport sections in newspapers. One golf club maker puts the number of golfers at four to five million, with an average of four or five visits to the green a year for each player. He feels it's wasteful to reach this relatively small group of people via mass media, apparently had never looked into spot radio or TV.
3. There are so many companies in the business that no single one is large enough to make a "big splash." In the general sports field there's Spalding. Wilson, MacGregor-Goldsmith, and Rawling. Fishing gear manufacturers, who have the most lucrative segment of sporting goods business, split the take five ways: South Bend. Pflueger. True Temper. Shakespeare, and Airex. Even with 25.000,000 anglers licensed, competition prevents any of the five from getting much of a slice.
4. The traditional 40% mark-up doesn't leave enough "fat'' for a substantial advertising budget.
These may be sound reasons, as far as they go. But apparently forgotten by the sporting goods manufacturers is the fact that their market has bloomed saleswise, just in the past 10 years. A decade of higher living standards
and sporting interests generated among former G.I.'s during World War II have lifted the sporting goods business into an unprecedented boom. A thorough. full-scale promotion of sports among average consumers could bring additional millions of sports fans into retail stores, SPONSOR believes on the basis of its analysis of the sporting goods field.
There's been no such bold thinking in the industry, however. Instead, this is what manufacturers are doing currently on the national level.
Spalding lines up a special, handmade network of some 35 radio stations each September to broadcast tennis matches from Forest Hills. New York. A play-by-play description of the National semi-finals and finals and of the Davis Cup finals (when played in this country ) are broadcast all over the country. It's a natural for Spalding— their tennis balls are used in all
matches, have been for years.
Chief Spalding competitor. Wilson, similarly has sponsored the All-Star Baseball and All-Star Football games. The most recent broadcast activity by Wilson was its sponsorship of the National League Football Championship Game in December 1950. via TV network. Film commercials produced by Sarra. Inc. featured dramatic sport events from the lives of top athletes like Sam Snead, Babe Didrickson, Johnny Lujack. and Ted Williams.
But Spalding's big push is a series of ''Sports Show'' ads, humorous cartoon treatments of famous or interesting facts about sports. They're drawn by cartoonist Willard Mullin. include such bits of information as: "A tennis ball has been timed at 85 m.p.h. . . . a puck off a hockey stick from 60 to 80 m.p.h. ... a thrown baseball at 98.6 m.p.h. and the initial velocity of [Please turn to page 65)
Retailers have used radio successfully: Marshall Field, V/BBM, Chi.; Atlas, WWDC, Wash.
30 JULY 1951
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