Jon Mugar, creator of The Basketball Tournament, said he can't stand business pitches that start with "This is X meets Y," and maybe that's because none of the proposed ones really fit his model. Mugar does like the description on the Mashable website: "March Madness, street-ball, viral marketing and 'The Hunger Games' " with a "big, fat pot of gold at the end."
At its core, The Basketball Tournament is a nationwide, open, single-elimination, winner-take-all, five-on-five competition featuring high-level has-beens, wanna-bes, and hangers-on, with life-changing money on the line.
But the event is also a social media vehicle: Teams must gain fan votes to make the field. Vote for the winning team and you could earn a part of the million dollars, too, TBT promises.
And it's a real-life fantasy league, with fans potentially becoming players, coaches or general managers the following year.
The diverse range of players, from known names to nobodies, would provide numerous documentary-style storytelling possibilities as well, Mugar figured.
Plus, TBT gives players a chance to get noticed by an international team or even the NBA. Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said it's only a matter of time before the next Rafer Alston, who made it to the NBA after playing on the And1 Tour, gets noticed in the TBT Tournament.
Whatever the pithy pitch might be, ESPN bought it after Mugar and his investors paid nearly $2 million for a trial run in 2014. This summer, eight TBT games are being televised on ESPN or ESPNU as 97 teams from around the country compete for $1 million.
"We certainly saw promise in the concept from the start," ESPN director of content strategy and acquisitions Dan Ochs said. "There's a lot of things that are at the essence of the format that we got excited about quickly."
For years, though, TBT was none of that. It was just an idea in Jon Mugar's head. And as for what it will be next, well, TBT's future is TBD.
The team
Two weeks ago, Mugar was in Los Angeles, where he had risen from an unpaid intern to a producer in the comedy television world, before giving it all up in 2011 to make TBT happen. He sat about halfway up the stands in "The Eagles' Nest," a Division II basketball arena that was hosting TBT's West Region finals. Though his tournament now includes 97 teams, four regional sites, a million-dollar prize and a contract with ESPN to broadcast eight games, Mugar was not beaming with pride.
Instead, he was anxious. Even when ninth-seeded 7outz knocked out tournament favorite Grantland on a shot with two seconds left, Mugar hardly reacted. The basketball fan in him was exhilarated by the upset; the marketer in him regretted the loss of a celebrity-driven team sponsored by Grantland.com, and the business owner in him rapidly calculated what the dramatic end meant for his dream.
"There are so many fears," he said.
That is what happens when you leave your job and get your best friend to give up his, secure millions of dollars in investments — mainly from friends and family — and have advisers put their reputations on the line, all for an unproven idea. It is what happens when dreams have a chance of becoming reality.
Mugar first discussed the idea in 2010 in emails with Dan Friel, a childhood friend who ultimately left his job as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Louisiana to help. In 2011, Mugar added experienced advisers and brought in Hoop Group to run basketball operations for the tournament.
He began meeting with potential sponsors and broadcasters in late 2011, but failed to find a satisfying partnership over the next two years.
One of his advisers, Tony Ponturo, who had been on the other side of the pitch table many times while leading Anheuser-Busch's sports marketing department, said he was surprised by the advertisers' and broadcasters' risk aversion.
"Let's not lose confidence in what we have," he advised Mugar. "This is an industry problem."
Mugar realized he was not going to get the respect and interest he desired until he proved the value of his idea. In the fall of 2013, he began telling people he would hold the inaugural The Basketball Tournament the following summer.
The product
"Thank God," Mugar thought to himself as he saw Marshall Henderson, the brazen bomber from Ole Miss, strode through the doors of a small Philadelphia gym, shirt hanging over his shoulder, and heard him yell "Let's play some ball" minutes before his team was to tip off the first TBT last June.
When Mugar launched the 2014 tournament, he was worried no one credible would sign up, especially when one of the first registered teams was James and the Dudes. When the field filled out with ex-pros and college alumni, Mugar began worrying that none of the teams would show up to play.
Once the games got underway, he felt better.
Before that first game was over, at 9:27 that morning, Mugar got an email from someone at ESPN. College basketball analyst Len Elmore was at the event watching his son and had contacted some of his ESPN colleagues to tell them about the quality of play. Now, a member of ESPN's programming division was reaching out. The two sides quickly came to an agreement to broadcast the tournament final on ESPN3.
That led to further talks with ESPN, ultimately leading to a deal last year to broadcast eight games this summer on either ESPN or ESPNU.
"We were interested in seeing them take the idea from that idea on a piece of paper to something live and they did and they did an amazing job in year one," Ochs said.
Mugar and his investors saw almost no return on the $2 million they put into the 2014 tournament, but they had achieved their main goal: getting ESPN's attention.
The future
With ESPN on board, Mugar felt comfortable upping the prize money to $1 million, ballooning the field from 32 teams to nearly 100 and setting up regionals in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia.
The four remaining teams from each of those sites are playing in Chicago along with the defending champion Notre Dame Fighting Alumni, in what TBT has called the Super 17, which started Thursday as the Notre Dame alums took on the Midwest Dream Squad.
Even as TBT finally makes its over-the-air debut this week, uncertainty remains about what type of product it will become.
Andy Dolich, an adviser and longtime sports executive, said, "people want to understand things in less than a nanosecond" these days, and TBT's multidimensional offerings have left sponsors struggling to define it.
Vin Martelli, another of Mugar's advisers, said the business has the potential to reshape sports.
"What we are really doing is creating a new way for millennials to consume sports," he said, allowing them to pick which teams make the tournament, to serve as players, coaches, general managers, even marketers and bloggers. "Fantasy sports for real," as Mugar wrote in the summary of his business plan early on.
Though the potential for serial storytelling remains, TBT is now almost purely a sporting event, one that draws its drama from the huge stakes and diverse group of players.
Mugar has gone out of his way to create a professional scene for the games, complete with top-notch team logo designs and uniforms, which are provided free to each team. There is no entry fee; teams pay only for transportation to regionals. Mugar also splurged on a 75-foot long banner displaying the tournament bracket.
The banner's design is reminiscent of the one used in "The Karate Kid," and as in the movie, winning teams will watch their placard get advanced to the next round.
Somewhere in the building, Mugar will also be looking on, hoping his idea survives and advances, too.
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TBT on TV
Saturday: Quarterfinals, 4 p.m., ESPNU
Aug. 1: Semifinals, 2 p.m., ESPN
Aug. 2: Final, 3 p.m., ESPN
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