Top footballers, NBA players, Hollywood megastars. They are all in the Harvard class of the Dutch professor Anita Elberse to learn how to get even bigger in the multi-billion dollar business of sports and entertainment. “There is still quite a bit of stretch on the wages of a football player.”
Today, a top athlete or celebrity is not just a gifted athlete or talented entertainer, but a walking brand that can leverage its value through smart entrepreneurship. But where do you learn that?
This is possible in class with Anita Elberse (48), professor at Harvard Business School. The Dutch teaches sports stars and Grammy winners the basics of marketing strategy, finance and negotiating deals. ‘For some it is all new, others are already advanced entrepreneurs. Like Gerard Piqué from FC Barcelona. He leads a global investment firm that, among other things, bought the Davis Cup tennis tournament. But he can still learn new things. ‘
“That’s why they come to my course,” says Elberse via Zoom from her home in Boston on the American east coast. ‘They are already in a fairly privileged position, but they want to be even better prepared for the next step. I actually let them inspire each other. ‘
Elberse has delineated its expertise at the intersection of entertainment and sports, two billion dollar industries that are increasingly difficult to disentangle. She analyzes the business side of dazzlingly successful individuals and organizations. She has published papers on Beyoncé, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Lady Gaga, Maria Sjarapova and LeBron James. And she already informed football multinationals such as Real Madrid and Ajax Amsterdam on a business basis.
As interest in her work grew, she created an exclusive program where celebrities and professionals from the world experience four days of campus life for $ 10,000. “It went like a snowball,” she says.
The idea was to ‘sprinkle’ some ‘talent’ among the business people. Among other things, she convinced American Football player Brandon Marshall for the first time, who turned out to be good friends with top basketball player Dwyane Wade who signed up the following year. He is so influential that colleagues Chris Paul and Pau Gasol wanted to get involved. That in turn attracted the attention of the footballers. It created a network effect: everyone wants to belong and experience the ‘full Harvard experience’. Since then there has been a waiting list.
Blockbuster strategy
Elberse started out by studying the entertainment industry of film, music and television, but moved increasingly towards sports. This is logical, because it is one megalucrative ecosystem, in which marketing a sports competition is very similar to producing a series. ‘A league like the NFL is a sports company, but actually more of a media company. That’s where the income comes from. Of course something is happening in their stadiums. But what really counts is what happens on television. ‘
Above all, it is a world of insane investments in the battle for eyeballs, but business that makes perfect sense. Elberse is convinced of the ‘blockbuster strategy’ and has also written a book about it. The best investment is to gamble on one massive blockbuster hit. “Many in the business tend to be on the safe side and would rather make five $ 40 million movies than one $ 200 million movie. There are never any guarantees. Yet the latter proves to be the most economically useful, because if it hits, it can make up for everything. ‘ It is the strategy of companies such as Netflix and Disney. “Netflix mainly invested in rights to older series and films, until it paid $ 100 million in 2013 for the production of ‘House of Cards’, which resulted in spectacular growth.”
PSG club owners told me, “We want to bring the magic of the NBA and NFL to Europe.”
From Barcelona-PSG in the Champions League last week, the match of the unparalleled Kylian Mbappé, she has only been able to enjoy a few highlights. But you should no longer convince Elberse of the success of the Parisian model. PSG proves that the blockbuster strategy is also in effect in sports. Elberse dedicated one of her case studies to the club from the French capital and spoke extensively with the Qatari club management. Since their takeover ten years ago for an estimated 70 million euros, the club’s value would have climbed to 3 billion. Commercial turnover climbed from EUR 26 million to EUR 366 million.
The ‘spark’ was the investment in the record transfers of some of the best players in the world, such as Mbappé and Neymar today. But it does not happen by itself, says Elberse. “You have to build an organization with a flywheel of sponsorship, merchandising and other ways to generate income and sustain those transfers and salaries.”
The Qataris bought a club, but built a brand with the potential to become the Yankees of Paris. ‘They said to me,’ We’re trying to bring the magic of the NBA or the NFL, where sports really are a spectacle, to Europe. ‘ They do this, for example, by playing players on social media, or through their innovative deal with Jordan, a basketball brand. But they do know how to make something cool and transfer it to football. You suddenly see them wearing brightly colored shirts, something you never saw before, but now other clubs are copying it. ‘
A blockbuster strategy also requires blockbuster rewards, on the screen and in sports. ‘When you invest so much, it makes sense that you choose talent with a proven track record. Knowing that the whole world wants to watch football, it is not surprising that salaries for football players are going up. And they are not that absurdly high, especially if you compare with what is common here in America. ‘
“There are baseball players with contracts worth more than $ 300 million, while the average basketball player earns 25 million in a career of four to five years. The average footballer does not even touch that. That’s not because basketball is more popular worldwide, but it’s more commercially developed in the US and maybe China. So there is still a lot of growth possible in football. ‘
Own brand
Elberse – always in black jeans, sneakers and black blazer – is becoming a bit of a brand itself. Her Instagram profile with more than 100,000 followers is full of celebrities who take pictures with her. And every year of the exclusive course comes a professional video on YouTube.
Elberse grew up in a suburb of Utrecht. In her youth she played football at a high level, up to the national selection of the U-17. But her academic talents turned out to be even greater. In 2011, eight years after her arrival at Harvard, she became one of the youngest female professors ever to hold a tenure at the prestigious business school at the age of 38.
What binds superstars is that they are winners who constantly want to improve. I recognize that in myself.
Does she now know if there is a magic formula for reaching the top? ‘That’s the billion dollar question.’ Elberse recently made a study about BTS, the mega-popular boy band from South Korea and the standard bearers of the K-Pop. Big Hit Entertainment, the studio behind the group that went public in Seoul last year, told her they cracked the code and could replicate BTS’s success with another group. “They still have to prove that, of course.”
‘Success is a combination of factors. When it came to talent alone, all youth academies in football were super profitable. It is also hard work and a mindset to overcome setbacks. Grit, as they say. And happiness is a huge factor, far greater than most realize. But you also need a strategy, you have to look ahead. Especially if you want to stay at the top for a long time. LeBron James is a huge man and so he left ahead of you and me, but he has consistently invested in himself. He is said to invest $ 1 million a year to maintain his body. This way he can keep going at the age of 36. Even though he still spends 90 percent of his time on basketball, he has the DNA of a businessman. ‘
But above all, they are winners, says Elberse. They beat the odds. They build a career in spite of everything. That is what millions or billions of people on the globe want, but it is only given to a few. What binds them is that they are winners who want to continuously improve. I recognize that in myself. Don’t look back, don’t lean back. ‘
Anita Elberse (48) was born in IJsselstein near Utrecht, studied in Amsterdam, London and Los Angeles and has been a professor at Harvard Business School since 2003. In 2011 she was appointed one of the youngest female professors ever. She teaches MBA students about the business of media, entertainment and sports and founded an exclusive course in which superstars and top athletes learn business skills to market themselves even better.