Rhode Island Pitching to Bring ESPN’s X Games Back in 2017
GoLocalProv News Team
Rhode Island Pitching to Bring ESPN’s X Games Back in 2017
GoLocal has learned from two high level sources that Rhode Island is actively pitching the return of ESPN’s X Games to Providence for 2017 and 2018. The Commerce Corporation and tourism leaders have put together an aggressive package that includes rent free usage of the 195 land, the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, and a financial commitment of $1.1 million in incentives.
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SEE GRAVITY GAMES VIDEO OF PROVIDENCE BELOW
The location adjoins where the new pedestrian bridge is planned to cross the Providence River from Dyer Street and South Water.
Rhode Island was the launching pad for the X Games, originally named the Extreme Games, when then-head of the Rhode Island Sports Council, John Mousseau, recruited the initial games.
The first announcement of the games appeared on page B-6 of the Providence Journal in January of 1995 -- and the entire story was 135 words long.
“Six venues have been secured for the 1995 ESPN Extreme Games, a world-class competition to be held June 24 to July 1. Fort Adams State Park in Newport will host skateboarding, in-line skating and BMX dirt jumping and will serve as viewing site of the skysurfing competition. Near the Fort, a 60-foot wall will be built for sport climbing.”
The initial games were held at Fort Adams in Newport.
In 1996, the ESPN Extreme Games moved to Providence and drew a combined crowd of over 200,000. The games were heralded as an economic engine that provided an estimated $14.2 million to the Rhode Island economy. By all measures, the games were a success and the hours of broadcasts helped to fill the summer schedule for the newly launched ESPN2 and put Providence before millions of viewers. The games were a key part of the Providence Renaissance.
But by 1997, the games were gone to San Diego.
In 1999, a competitive broadcast product was launched in Providence -- the Gravity Games. The Gravity Games were owned in part by NBC Sports and were broadcast on the network. After three years, the Gravity Games left Providence for Cleveland, and by 2006, the games closed down.
National Press Critique RI's Embarrassing Tourism Campaign - 2016
New York Times
A world-renowned designer was hired. Market research was conducted. A $5 million marketing campaign was set. What could go wrong?
Everything, it turns out.
The slogan that emerged — “Rhode Island: Cooler and Warmer” — left people confused and spawned lampoons along the lines of “Dumb and Dumber.” A video accompanying the marketing campaign, meant to show all the fun things to do in the state, included a scene shot not in Rhode Island but in Iceland. The website featured restaurants in Massachusetts.
Boston Globe
After the slogan’s unveiling, the blunders just kept coming. A promotional video to accompany the campaign included a shot of a skateboarder in front of a distinctive building that turned out to be the famous Harpa concert hall, located almost 2,500 miles away, in Iceland.
The new website erroneously boasted that Little Rhody is home to 20 percent of the country’s historic landmarks. And officials needed to remove three names from its restaurant database, after realizing the information was so outdated that two of the restaurants aren’t open right now.
City Lab
“Cooler & Warmer.” It took me roughly 30 minutes of reading about Rhode Island’s new tourism catchphrase to realize that “cool” is a double entendre—as in, the occasional temperature of the Ocean State, but also “hip and awesome.” And I still didn’t quite get it? This was not a good sign. I may be dense, but lordy, was I not alone.
Time
The Rhode Island Tourism Division had to pull its latest video shortly after it was posted online Tuesday because it contained footage shot in Iceland. The three-second scene in question shows a man doing a skateboard trick outside of the Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik, the country’s capital.
IndieWhip, the company that edited the video, and the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, which hired the firm, have apologized for the error. “The footage in question is of a Rhode Island skateboarder, filmed by a Rhode Islander,” IndieWhip added in a statement.
Forbes
A Big Price Tag Puts a Target on Your Back. Rhode Island spent a reported $550,000 to develop the “Cooler & Warmer” campaign. Development costs for the Florida and Washington campaigns cost $380,000 and $422,000, respectively. That’s before the first piece of media was ever purchased.
My advertising agency brethren will argue you have to invest money at the start of the campaign to “get it right.” But from my perspective, the above numbers seem exorbitant for a program built on public dollars. And in each case, an angry electorate agreed.
Creating a great “place marketing” campaign is a difficult job. Don’t make it more difficult by ignoring the lessons from states like Rhode Island, Florida and Washington.
