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Kathy Heslop, director of promotions at electronic-media publishing and technology company Serious USA, explains the reasoning behind launching an officially licensed 2005 Manchester United DVD Card Collection and why rights issues in the deal were somewhat tricky.  Serious has already partnered with some of the leading consumer, sports and entertainment brands in the world, including the NBA and NFL and movie houses, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Brothers, creating unique consumer products. These have been aimed primarily at the billion dollar global sports and collectible trading card market, as well as the multi-billion dollar corporate gift, pre-paid currency and premium card markets, with currency applications being added to the cardz.
The intellectual property behind CD Cardz, came to the fore in various iterations around the world in the form of some 60 patents and a few working examples of the physical card. Serious, also an early patent filer, developed the best version of the card both physically and from a software perspective and was first to get a product released into public retail channels.
The cardz have what is called a 'seating ring' or 'centering device' on the underside of which basically allows the non-standard CD to sit in the singles tray of any optical disc tray, without moving around. When the draw is closed, the disc is perfectly cantered and thus suits the mechanical process which then follows in order for the software to launch.
Serious' first ever release of soccer cardz - Euro 2000 CD Cardz in 2000 - saw the industry really kick off. Alongside existing business card applications at that time, Serious felt that the use of the card as an entertainment vehicle was the best iteration of the product's potential. After the launch of its Euro 2000 Cardz, which subsequently outsold all other CD-Rom publishers in July 2000, (including Microsoft, Hasbro and Mattel), Serious’ dominant publishing position in this space started to grow. Good consumer value, exciting content and ‘getting to store’ is what creates revenue after all.
The power of the Man Utd brand Therefore having built a market for CD Cardz, the natural progression for Serious was to segue towards DVD and what better way to start than with a collection for a major Premier League soccer club. The development of DVD Cardz has not seen the end of CD Cardz, but is merely an expansion of the existing product line into another widely used digital medium and one that is compatible with PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles too. Therefore choosing to launch DVD Cardz with the biggest sports brand in the world - Manchester United FC - has ultimately cemented the gap between old fashioned soccer stickers and the contemporary video gaming industry.
Manchester United estimates that the club has a minimum of 71m worldwide fans. Meanwhile, The Economist magazine suggests it is nearer 450m fans globally! It is estimated that there are at least 31m fans in Asia, most notably in China and Japan. Manchester United claims 220,000 official fan club members and 700,000 subscribers to its website (producing up to 1.5m unique web hits a month).
With all of this success, (akin to a major US league or a ‘NY Yankees’ size team), one would expect that Manchester United merchandise and brand would be saturated through over-promotion, with an over-zealous commercial licensing team selling rights indiscriminately. This however was not the case and Serious had to approach the club to agree a deal, which was then very carefully orchestrated and overall became rather complicated due to rights issues. Rights issues "Digital rights had fallen into a world of confusion during the dotcom days and subsequently licensing in general had became more complicated, with licensors selling brand-association as a stand-alone commodity," explained David Brown, president of Serious. "Once Serious had gained knowledge of the convoluted publishing rights situation at Manchester United, we were then able to negotiate and execute a deal, the net result being this very powerful tech product and the first ever commercial release of a sports DVD Card collection."
Initially, Serious commenced a deal with the media company which owns the rights to Manchester United's video productions and then it moved on to a separate image deal, finally returning back to the club to seal a direct deal, for use of its logos etc. Nike owns merchandise rights for Manchester United and in fact most Manchester United products come from Nike, but because the DVD Cardz are largely a video-based product, Serious was required to do a deal with the publishing company holding the video rights.
Serious has found that the club's commercial department is well organised and that the staff are very experienced, being careful not to over-promise and therefore as a result, are able to deliver what is agreed. Whilst Serious might not get the interaction with the players and the club that it aspires to just yet, it has equally found that Manchester United is visionary and proactive when it comes to finding business development solutions, or in engineering relationships that will ultimately enhance a fan's enjoyment and experience of the club.
The 2005 Manchester United DVD Cardz Collection has only just started hitting the shelves in time for the festive season, but already Serious is getting fantastic feedback. As a result, Serious is now receiving advances from other soccer clubs around Europe and can guarantee that it will be releasing more DVD product in 2005 to accompany the Manchester United collection and thus create a solid and exciting soccer catalogue. Manchester United FC statistics can be found in this month's Infostrada Sports' Databox
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