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#THEMOSTPOPULARTEAMSINPROFESSIONALSPORTS.

As a writer-turned marketer, I can say that fans are absolutely fascinating. Much like politics, it’s almost impossible to hold a conversation with the extremists.

But who are the fanniest fans of them all?

Check out this list of the top ten sports franchises in the world (via Forbes, which lists the most valuable, and Bleacher Report, which lists their most popular teams here.)

1. Manchester United: The team has 659 million fans, according to the Guardian.

2. Dallas Cowboys: Jerry Jones has helped make football a religion in Texas.

3. New York Yankees: Other sports refer to their most dominant teams as “The Yankees of _______.” As in “Primorac Kotor are the Yankees of water polo.”

4. Washington Redskins: The team’s owner may be hated, but the team itself is wildly adored.

5. Real Madrid: This soccer club has one of the world’s most popular athletes, Cristiano Ronaldo, so it only makes sense that it would be among the most popular franchises.

6. New England Patriots: Few teams have dominated the NFL in recent years quite like the Pats. The team is also so popular it covers an entire region—New England—rather than just a city.

7. Arsenal F.C.: The soccer club hasn’t been as dominant recently, but it still boasts 13 First Division and Premier League titles.

8. New York Giants: In a city lucky enough to have two NFL teams, the Giants are the perennial favorite (and defending Super Bowl champion).

9. Green Bay Packers: The smallest NFL city boasts one of the world’s most popular and storied franchises.

10. Los Angeles Lakers: This franchise cultivated its popularity in the 1970s and continued to dominate throughout the “Showtime” era of the1980s.

For more on how some of these and other teams perform in the social media space, check out “7 Sports Teams that are Scoring Big with Social Media.” 

#WHYSPORTSMATTERS by Jeff Hwang.

Amidst the drama surrounding last month's takeover bid for Disney (NYSE: DIS  ) , Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSK  ) took some time out to do a little business.
Yesterday, the nation's largest cable operator announced a multi-year deal with the National Basketball Association to carry NBA TV. Starting next month, it will offer the 24-hour channel to its 21 million-plus customers, as well as NBA highlight packages as part of its video-on-demand service.
For Comcast, the benefits are twofold. First, NBA TV will help it compete with satellite providers EchoStar (Nasdaq: DISH  ) and DirecTV, both of which already carry the channel. Second, it adds video-on-demand content as well as HDTV programming. The search for content is a main driver behind Comcast's bid for Disney and ESPN, one of Disney's most valued assets.
Bigger picture, the deal further highlights the role of sports content in television. Just this week, in a dispute with Viacom (NYSE: VIA  ) over rate hikes, EchoStar pulled Viacom stations off the air. Since Viacom owns CBS, EchoStar was effectively threatening to deprive millions of college hoops fans of NCAA's March Madness -- something that benefits neither company (much less their customers).
Bigger picture still is the increasing role sports content plays in the general media. Sirius Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI  ) is also turning to sports, hoping that content deals with the NHL and NFL, among others, will help differentiate it from larger and healthier XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: XMSR  ) .
Whether any of this pays off in the end remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: If content is king, sports clearly has the ear of the court.

#HOWTOBELIKEABILLIONARE by Brian Richards.

Warren Buffett's philanthropy is well-publicized; the man will end up giving away nearly 99% of his wealth to charity.
As I've written before, Buffett's charitable pledge is larger than the sum total, in inflation-adjusted terms, of the donations made by Carnegie and Rockefeller combined. In a word: Wow.
Millionaires making good
But while Buffett is an extreme example of philanthropy, he's not alone.
The always interesting Conde Nast Portfolio recently published its "Generosity Index," a list of the 50 most generous U.S. philanthropists. The list is like a who's-who of Corporate America success stories. Take a look at some of them:

Donor	Business(es) That Made Them Wealthy
Warren Buffett	Berkshire Hathaway
Bill Gates	Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT  )
Eli Broad	KB Home (NYSE: KBH  ) , SunAmerica / AIG (NYSE: AIG  )
Pierre Omidyar	eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY  )
Michael Dell	Dell (Nasdaq: DELL  )
Dan Duncan	Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD  )
Sheldon Adelson	Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS  )

Source: The Conde Nast Portfolio Generosity Index, November 2008 issue.

All of these people (1) created lasting businesses, (2) owned substantial portions of those businesses, and (3) donated large sums of their wealth for philanthropic purposes. (The table should also tell you that insider ownership is very, very important in small companies.)
Don't roll your eyes yet
Let me point out the obvious here: Of course these are the most generous donors in America ... they have the most money to give away!
So, to recap: Vast philanthropic donations require vast sums of wealth.
That statement's not as useless as it may seem. In fact, according to a 2007 article featured in Portfolio, "People do give more when they become richer ... but people also grow wealthier when they give more."
Giving money makes you money?
Portfolio chronicled an eye-opening study, the conclusion of which seems counterintuitive: Giving makes you wealthy.
The study, from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, looked at philanthropic behaviors and household income, factoring in age, religion, education, race, and other such factors.
While a higher income resulted in higher charitable donations, "more giving doesn't just correlate to higher income; it causes higher income." [Emphasis mine.]
The path to prosperity
The brief explanation for why this happens is that giving "stimulates prosperity," but that sounds too vague to be useful. So, let me offer a more detailed armchair hypothesis.
You see, giving is emblematic of other personality traits that allow givers to get ahead. In particular:

1. Givers are smarter with their money than non-givers. Donating to charity demonstrates knowledge and confidence about one's personal financial situation and, more specifically, shows a level of tax smarts. That undoubtedly explains some of why the billionaires in the above list are so generous.
2. Givers tend to be generous in other aspects of their life. It's not a stretch to conclude that generosity would be a trait that employers and colleagues find desirable, and that that could result in higher overall pay and success generally.

What you can do today
Giving makes you wealthy. That's a powerful conclusion, and it's one we're paying close attention to at Foolanthropy, The Motley Fool's philanthropic campaign.
Aligning our charitable efforts with our core philosophy -- that with the right tools and information, every American can take control of their financial destiny and make sound decisions with their money -- Foolanthropy is focused on curing financial illiteracy among the young, the poor, and the needy.
This year we have partnered with a tremendous organization called DonorsChoose. I encourage you to read about our mission to eradicate financial illiteracy, and I also strongly encourage you to donate -- not only will you get the intangible value of having done some good, you'll get a heckuva tax break (no doubt a key motivation for billionaires' generosity).
Who knows -- perhaps giving will even stimulate prosperity in your own life.

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#HOWBILLGATESWANTSTOREADYOURMIND By Jack Uldrich

A computer capable of reading your mind may sound like science fiction, but it's rapidly becoming reality. Researchers at Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT  ) are now using relatively inexpensive electroencephalography (EEG) caps to measure the brain's electrical activity, then applying sophisticated algorithms to decipher this data into something meaningful enough for a computer to use.
The list of possible applications is almost endless. Sony (NYSE: SNE  ) has already patented a similar application, hoping to provide an enhanced experience for video gamers. I'm sure that Microsoft is interested in doing likewise, to keep future versions of its Xbox competitive with Sony's PlayStation and future iterations of the Nintendo (OTCBB: NTDOY.PK) Wii.
Longer-term, such a technology might be able to simplify our interactions with computers. For example, it's been suggested that by measuring a person's concentration level, a computer could tell whether its user was confused and needed assistance. (Hopefully not from anything so annoying as Microsoft's notorious animated paper clip.)
The technology might also help a variety of household items. For instance, if pressing a button on a TV remote is too taxing for the average citizens of the future, they could merely think their way across the spectrum of channels. I just hope my two kids never get their hands on such technology -- the fights over what they want to watch would be horrendous.
Mind-reading technology could also complement advances in robotics. Researchers at the University of Washington, right in Microsoft's backyard, have already demonstrated that they can rudimentally control a robot by thought alone. Bill Gates has made no secret of his intention to make his company a major player in robotics, and if his software can be used to make iRobot's (Nasdaq: IRBT  ) Roomba (or any other robot, for that matter) more flexible and adaptable to its user's needs, the possibilities could be pretty exciting. If nothing else, this new technology should give Microsoft investors some interesting food for thought.

#HOWTOBECOMEABILLIONAIRE by Tim Hanson.

Every year, Forbes releases its list of the 400 richest Americans. The year's list was particularly notable, because you had to be at least a billionaire to be included.
As you might expect, a significant number of the folks on the list made their fortunes by investing. That subset includes Warren Buffett (worth $50 billion), Carl Icahn (worth $12 billion), and Jim Simons (worth $7 billion).
So here's important lesson No. 1: You can make a lot of money if you learn to manage your portfolio like a pro.
Easier said than done ...
Of course, that collection of billionaire investors offers no clue regarding what strategy is most likely to make you a billionaire. Warren Buffett is a dyed-in-the-wool value investor. That strategy has helped him achieve annual returns greater than 20% for more than 40 years on the back of investments in boring companies with competitive advantages at value prices, such as GEICO and Washington Post. That investment tack continues in his company's portfolio today, with Tyco (NYSE: TYC  ) , Costco (Nasdaq: COST  ) , and CarMax (NYSE: KMX  ) among the company's current holdings.
Jim Simons, though, can point to greater than 34% annualized returns at his Medallion fund since 1982, net of what are believed to be some incredibly stiff fees -- though I've heard rumors that this has been a very tough year for Renaissance. He favors a mechanical strategy based on computer models that are constantly refined by an army of Ph.D.s.
So while there is no best strategy, important lesson No. 2 is obvious: You gotta dance with the one that brung ya.
Say what?
Colloquialisms aside, all of these investors are astoundingly successful because they've figured out how they make money best, stuck with their strategy in good times and bad, and refined their best practices over time.
Buffett was mocked during the technology bubble when companies that he avoided and professed not to understand as well as others, such as eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY  ) , were zooming to the moon. But they've come back to earth, and Buffett's still doing just fine today.
Icahn has a reputation as a corporate raider; he's made a lot of money instituting changes at underperforming companies. Although Icahn's recent efforts at Lear (NYSE: LEA  ) and Biogen Idec (Nasdaq: BIIB  ) did not end as well as he must have hoped, don't expect him to go soft. He's worth $12 billion. Why mess with success?
And Simons doesn't try to analyze businesses as Buffett does, because that's not where his expertise lies.
Mimic the masters
The secret to successful investing, then, is not found in any single strategy, but rather in picking the strategy that's right for you and executing it faithfully. As lauded NYU finance professor Aswath Damodaran writes in his book Investment Fables, "Each strategy has the potential for success if it matches your risk preferences and time horizon and if you are careful about how you use it."
That's it. That's the secret. Because if you get too cute -- chasing hot sectors, buying high and selling low, and giving yourself only six months or less to master a given investment strategy -- you're simply setting yourself up for failure.