With all due apologies to our friends who do a nice business selling toothpaste and soda pop, we're really happy being in the sports business. A lot of trees were killed this past year as the sports and business media wrote the death knell for athletes as endorsers. Interesting that we didn't see too many of those articles after 40 million people watched the U.S. women capture the World Cup. Or while Mark McGwire was busy crushing Roger Maris' home run record. Or when Maurice Greene and Hicham El Guerrouj respectively broke world records in the 100 meters and the mile, track and field's most prestigious events.
Truth is there are great sports moments happening everyday around the world.
Some of them are played out on a global stage while others take place on school playgrounds, drive- ways and city streets. If our competitors wish to walk away from that emotion, so be it. Frankly, we're not sure how this is all going to fall out either. We do know that the potential for selling consumer products over the Internet has caused everyone in our industry to revisit some very basics tenets of their business models and that is always healthy. No promises, but we think some neat stuff is going to happen, and we plan on being part of it.