Is your company looking forward or back?

A lot of companies have spent their history building brands and products that brought them profit. But when it’s time to change your business models, there’s no time to waste. Established media companies seem to have a harder time with this than a lot of other companies. Sports media even more so, and this week saw two stark examples of sports media dropping the ball.

Late last week a dad at a Phillies game caught a foul ball. The stretch catch was caught on camera, as was the family celebration—followed by his 3-year-old daughter throwing the ball back. The dad reacted as perfectly as a dad could possibly hope to, and the video of him smiling and hugging his daughter went viral in a matter of hours. This was absolutely free advertising for Major League Baseball. It was a beautiful picture painting baseball fans as loving families who truly care about one another and know how to have a good time. But if you followed the links being emailed around that evening, you would have only seen a DMCA take-down message that the video was unavailable because MLB was enforcing their copyright.

The other sports media story revolves around the National Football League’s “blackout” policy. If a football game’s seats are not completely sold out 72 hours before hand, the NFL will not let the game air on local television. The theory is that people in the local area should be going to the game rather than staying at home consuming the product for free. So the NFL takes off the table what amounts to a three hour commercial for their product that the television stations pay the NFL to broadcast. This week’s story is that the Lions received a 24 hour extension to sell 1,700 tickets before the blackout would be enforced.

Both of these incidents reflect a profound misunderstanding about what sports is and how it can make money. In both cases, powerful advertising is being thrown away in order to protect revenue streams that are miniscule and rights that are worthless without revenue streams. These organizations are chasing old models that everyone agrees are disappearing, and they’re doing it at the cost of good will and future revenue.

Does your company cling to failing business models, knowing full well that you need to make drastic changes? It would be wise to get a second set of eyes to see where you’re going, and where you’re slowing yourself down. Knowing that you need a new business model to cope with tough times and rapid change—even deciding what the new business model be—won’t help you if when it comes time to execute that new business model your organization goes on reflex and spends all of its time defending the old models.