MLB Postseason: Two Surprises?

The MLB postseason is right around and the corner and who would have thought with the moves the Detroit Tigers made at the deadline that the Kansas City Royals would be leading the American League Central with three weeks left in the season. Also before the season began, did anyone give the Seattle Mariners a chance to making the postseason? I sure didn’t. I laughed at Robinson Cano when he left the Yankees for the Mariners but I guess he knew what he was doing. The Mariners are in the second Wild Card spot as of today with the Tigers right behind them. I can guarantee you the first Wild Card team is scared to death if they have to face the Mariners in the lose and go home game. Felix Hernandez is the reason for that. Let’s take a look at the Royals and Mariners and their chances of making a run in the postseason.

NBA Launches Tumblr/Pinterest Pages for Playoffs

Pinterest. Tumblr. NBA Playoffs? One of these things is not like the others… but in order to extend their social media presence in time for the 2012 Playoffs, the NBA now has pages on both Pinterest and Tumblr. These campaigns will support existing Twitter and Facebook campaigns.

The main purpose of these extensions is to increase attention to the playoffs through photo sharing. The league sees this as a worthwhile endeavor to use their “rich library of content to drive further engagement.”

Color me skeptical; I’m all about extending social media engagement wherever possible, but when I think of the NBA, Pinterest and Tumblr is largely incongruent. The main demographics for these two social media sites are hipsters and women. Unless I’ve missed something, I don’t think these are the most active supporters of the NBA. Expanding the league’s social media footprint to as many people as possible is a great idea, but this might be too large a jump. (Facts to back my assertions up courtesy of MarketingPilgrim.com: 68% of Pinterest users are female, compared to 38% of NBA fans) Noble idea, unlikely reward.

This being said, the NBA also plans on trying to push a great deal of e-commerce through both platforms—this is about the only way Pinterest makes sense to me, although they’re going to get to offer a bit more than another outlet to buy league apparel to get (let alone keep) the attention of users. Whether that’s possible has yet to be seen.

What do you think? Is this a brilliant business move on the NBA’s part, or a flop-campaign in the making?