Dave's Blog - Wakeman Consulting Group

Who’s Guarding the Game?

College Football Playoff expansion rumors are flowing. 24 teams, baby. More is better. MORE! The SEC meets next week in Destin. This is a topic that will certainly be on the table. The Big Ten wants it. The ACC wants it. The Big 12 wants it. Greg Sankey…doesn’t. He’s set a line at 16. Sankey […]

Vanity Fair Used to Be a Party…

I’ve been a Vanity Fair fan for years. A long-time subscriber. I read Dana Brown’s book on the Graydon Carter era in one sitting. I have a fondness for the magazine and the things it represents: glamour, intelligence, Hollywood. I’m not someone throwing rocks at an easy target. I’m a fan who wants to know […]

From Flailing to Focused: An Extraction Economy Manifesto

From Flailing to Focused You know the feeling. Things feel okay. The numbers look fine. Your board isn’t panicking. But there is something you can’t shake. A weight. An unease. A sense that the foundation isn’t as solid as the spreadsheets suggest. You’ve moved the numbers around. Highlighted different metrics. Told a new twist on […]

Blue Dot Fever

“Blue Dot Fever” is everywhere. The New York Post. Twitter. TikTok. Everywhere. The seating charts are damning. Whole sections unsold. Blue dots just staring at you. A lot of folks will tell you this happens all the time…those are folks on the primary side. Other folks will say this is a sign that customers have gotten […]

The GWS Giants Don’t Need a Rebrand. They Need a Real Strategy.

The GWS Giants are reportedly considering a name change. “Greater Western Sydney” doesn’t pop. The club president says that people don’t identify with it. It doesn’t support the brand. He’s not wrong about the symptom. He is wrong about the solution. When someone says, “Let’s rebrand!” Your answer should always be, “No.” The Vessel Is Empty. […]

The Opposite of Extraction

The extraction model has a shelf life. I wrote about it this week. You can read all about how the World Cup is the point at which the extraction model in sports may have broken down. I’ve covered it here. The pricing that assumes infinite elasticity. The buyer treated as a mark. The number must […]

When Sports Broke?

You can only push people so far. That’s the sentence FIFA cannot say out loud. That’s the sentence that On Location may be whispering internally. The host cities don’t want to admit it, not yet, not while there’s still time to hope a wave of visitors is coming. But it’s the truth. The extraction machine […]