get it out on the market and convince the general public of it merits. And that’s no easy task when it comes to sports.
We, as fans, are deeply conservative. We like the games we grew up with, the ones we played ourselves. And there are huge cultural barriers; American football will never threaten rugby in popularity in Great Britain, and vice versa.
Still, there are examples of new sports making significant inroads into new markets. Like ice-hockey, which today is the second-most popular team sport in Scandinavia.
From an entrepreneurial perspective, hockey’s success has a simple explanation: it originally grew by exploiting a gap in the market. In other words, you can play hockey in the winter, when the soccer fields were covered with deep snow. And then there’s floorball, invented in the early 1980s and today one of the world’s most popular ball sports. Evidently, there was a demand for a fast game with fewer players on each side than a full soccer team.
So what are the odds for success for Swedish baseball entrepreneurs? To answer the question, I decided to cross-check my thoughts against some of the words used to describe the corporate culture of successful startups that were cited by CEOs in some recent Xconomy articles.
Here is my analysis:
—“Magical” and “vibrant”—No, not really at this stage. Maybe, if Sweden beats the Dutch Antilles and manages to continue to the next level in the championships.
—“Humble”—There’s nothing humble in hosting a world championship when you’re ranked 26th. I like that.
—“Competent”—If that were the case, you wouldn’t be in the 26th spot on the ranking list.
—“Passionate”, “energetic”, “focused”—Yes, yes, yes. What else can you say about guys who have regular day-time jobs and still find time to train and play baseball 20 hours a week. “Obsessed,” maybe.
