Posted By:
Bruce Dorskind
We were sad to learn that the Sports Museum had closed its doors.
It offered a wonderful selection of sports history, unique exhibits
and the opportunity for its visitors to participate in real time interactive exhibits.
Whilst we were contacted by the Museum to "loan" or donate some
of the rare baseball items from our collection, we chose not to.
We believe that the Museum had three problems-and a $26 admission
price was not one of them. Movies are either $13 or 14 a person in Manhattan
Any good restaurant is likely to be $60-75 a person.
There is still plenty of money in New York. New York has more households
with million plus incomes than the next three cities combined. There are great sports
fans here. We live in a town where the medium household income exceeds $125,000
Problems
1) Location- on Wall Street was away from Museum Row and from the
City's shopping district. There was little in the way of street traffic
2) They did not spend sufficient dollars on marketing and brand awareness
was low
3) They did not co-promote with sports teams, sporting goods retailers and companies
like Nike who could have driven thousands of visitors to the Museum
Success in The Big Applie is about buzz, marketing and location. We may have suffered
a few set backs due to Wall Street's problems- but New Yorkers are resilient and move on- and with the
right marketing approach and more convenient location there is little doubt the Museum could have succeeded.