I'm watching LIV golf today, but it may not be for the reason that you think. I'm watching LIV golf, because it's a great business lesson. It's a great lesson for entrepreneurs!
In addition, anyone who knows Greg Norman's story cannot help but be sympathetic to his role as a leader in LIV golf.
Thanks to Greg Norman, known as The Shark, twice as many players may be able to make their living playing professional golf as used to be able to make their living playing golf! That's a pretty big benefit for the common man, certainly for the common man who can play golf.
BUSINESS
What is the business lesson? It's that professional sports do not have enough competition.
There are too many great players today, and too few places to get paid to play their chosen sport. There are great football players that don't get to play professional football. There are great basketball players who don't get to play professional basketball, and there are great baseball players that don't get to make a living playing professional baseball.
Right now the XFL is competing with the NFL and LIV golf is competing with the PGA. This is great for the players.
BASKETBALL
But what I'm most concerned about is professional basketball. Who is competing with the NBA?
There is a tremendous supply of fantastic basketball players who can handle the ball like a point guard and can dunk the basketball. This is because basketball is the easiest sport to do around the world, and it is the most fun for the most people around the world. All you need is a ball and a hoop. It is truly the most worldwide sport! There is minimal equipment, and it only takes one person to play. Soccer is right up there as a worldwide sport as well, but it doesn't quite have the highlights, it doesn't have the dunks, the alley oops, and the TV close-ups.
In economics, what's the obvious thing to do when you have an oversupply of something? Create another distribution channel!
At the same time, create a better product!
By far, the greatest basketball I have enjoyed watching during my lifetime was Phi Slama Jama (TM Houston) by the Houston cougars, and Showtime by the Los Angeles Lakers.
We can't play this kind of basketball today because of the three-point line. Today, because the three-point line is so valuable, players just walk from three-point line to three-point line. There is no run and gun basketball anymore. Not all the time, not every play, not like there used to be!
The solution is to play 4-on-4 full court basketball. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX. Most people can't process playing four-on-four full court, because they can't break outside of the box. But the mathematics are absolutely clear.
By removing one player from each team, and playing four-on-four, instead of five-on-five, you open up a lot of space on the court, which means more offense and less defense!
Mathematically, one big player takes up about 38.5 ft².
Two such players take up about 77 square feet! That's a ton of room for players to dribble through, run through, or pass the ball through.
Think of a car sitting on a parking space. That parking space is probably around 77 ft². So that's how much room you open up! All this space is particularly important when you realize that today's basketball is a game of inches. It's literally the player's hand being able to reach out and touch the ball to steal the dribble, or block the pass, that is so important on defense.
77 ft² of that defensive space is going to be gone when you play four-on-four full court! Thus creating a wide open offense.
Today's social media is all about highlights. A new league, a new TV show, TV tournaments, online tournaments, and other projects, could all be done with a social media giant. The fans could be turned into the cinematographers. The fans could be turned into the publicists. The social media giant could put advertisements at the end of every highlight, right after every dunk, right after every alley-oop!
In economic terms, players would play for free, and the marketing department would work for free, if it was all set up right, because people love basketball that much. 4-on-4 dunks are better than 5-on-5 dunks! It can all slowly evolve into a paying business for everyone who needs to get paid.
This is the way to compete with the NBA and to make money doing it. It's innovation at its finest. Playing basketball 4-on-4 would result in fast breaks for almost every play. Four-on-four would result in run and gun basketball! Every play would be exciting, not just the last 5 minutes of every game.
Copyright (c) 2023 BradMD (Brad Hennenfent, M.D.) All rights reserved. This blog post is part of an ongoing treatment and script for TV shows, online videos, for digital videos of any format, of reality TV shows or sports tournaments as shows, focusing on playing fewer than five people per team when playing basketball. The original blog for this is all at:
