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You’re dashing to the mall on your lunch hour and frantically cyber-shopping between meetings. It’s the holidays, the time of year when you’re trying to pick the perfect gift for the rabid sports fan on your list.
Sports business executives, the people running the 35 college football bowl games, and the athletes themselves are in this respect no different from you and me—except, of course, that pro athletes’ desires are more often in the five- or six-figure range, and the bowl organizers are buying for a couple of hundred people at a time.
And then there’s Shaquille O’Neal. As he prepares to make his Christmas Day debut as a basketball commentator for TNT, O’Neal is once again playing “Shaq-a-Claus” for the Toys “R” Us annual holiday campaign for the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. For many years, O’Neal donated toys to needy children during the holidays; in 2009, Toys “R” Us enlisted him to participate in its own campaign for the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation. The campaign this year includes a personal video message from Shaq on the Toys “R” Us website and in-store materials such as a poster of O’Neal dressed as Shaq-a-Claus, holding a star atop a Christmas tree of children. (The toy purveyor will continue to collect donations through Christmas Eve.)
Analytics firm IBM Smarter Commerce shared with USA Today that electronics were “the most popular items sold on Cyber Monday, with sales up 26 percent over last year.” And where kids are concerned, according to a recent Harris Poll, nearly one in five shoppers is buying sports equipment. The survey, conducted in October, revealed that half of Americans plan on buying a toy this holiday season; among those buying toys as gifts, 19 percent will purchase sports equipment, ranking just below those who plan on buying handheld electronic games (20 percent). And perhaps encouraging for a demographic perceived as joystick-wielding couch potatoes: sports equipment saw the highest levels of planned purchases among households with kids 13-17 (37 percent), ranking below only games for consoles in that age group (62 percent).
Whether you’re facing pro bowl economies of scale or you’re just a normal Joe playing Shaq-a-Claus to your own family and friends, here are five categories of 2011′s hottest sports-related gifts.
Gear
Nothing is more basic for the diehard sports fan than the jersey of his favorite player, perhaps customized with his own name on the back. As they continue their quest for back-to-back Super Bowl victories, the Green Bay Packers lead all NFL teams in team merchandise sales through the end of November, with quarterback Aaron Rodgers at No. 1 on the jersey sales list and teammate Clay Matthews right behind him at No. 2. The Pittsburgh Steelers follow the Packers in team sales, with the Cowboys, Bears, and Patriots completing the top five. Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow is No. 6 on the jersey list and closing fast. Most standard replica jerseys on www.nflshop.com go for $84.99.
Packers fans, of course, can go even deeper in their support of the Pack this holiday season by purchasing shares of the team. The NFL franchise, conducting its first stock sale in 14 years, sold 1,600 $250 shares in the first 11 minutes the stock was available online. By the end of the second day, the team had sold more than 185,000 shares, raising about $43 million of the $143 million needed to renovate Lambeau Field (www.packers.com/community/shareholders.html).
Even a prolonged lockout can’t stop the stampede of basketball footwear and player-branded sneakers. Nike’s fall “Basketball Never Stops” campaign produced higher same-month shoe sales in October of this year than in October 2010 for Nike endorsers like Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James, according to SportsOneSource, while Adidas’s “latest quarterly earnings statement included growing sales of basketball footwear,” according to a company spokesperson.
