Sport and Technology have never been so close.

Engagement, interaction, community, belonging, involvement, loyalty are just a few of the core concepts that are common to both Sport and online technology.

San Francisco 49ers

This is why I am closely following an amazing story happening in San Francisco, California.

After 63 years of history in the NFL and 5 Superbowl wins, the city of San Francisco is risking to lose the 49ers in favour of Santa Clara, CA.

The owners of the team and Santa Clara’s politicians are all up for the deal that would guarantee a brand new, state of the art, stadium for the 49ers, while on the other hand San Franciscans and San Francisco’s major are fighting to keep the team.

63 years of history, tradition, culture, tightly interconnected between the city, its people and the team, risk to be wiped off by a move dictated by financial interest: but are we sure that financial benefits on paper will meet the favours of the fan base and will not translate into a catastrophe for both the 49ers, that moving to Santa Clara would lose most of their audience and the city of San Francisco, that would lose not just a football team but a piece of its history and culture? Not to mention the cost of 900 million USD to finance the whole project.

In this context is where the hand of Technology appears, stretching towards Jeff Kruger. I don’t know Jeff personally, but I would like to analyse his challenge from an online marketing perspective.

He has thrown all his passion, love, sense of belonging and affection for the team on the table and created a website, savethe49ers.com, where he is providing information, blogging, hosting forums and links to articles on the subject. In his own words: “This site is for anyone who understands that keeping the 49ers in San Francisco via a new stadium is of critical importance. It’s not about football. It’s about the growth and standing of the city, its people, history, diversity, and the long-term viability of the greatest city in the world”.

The Internet as an instrument to send a wake up call to a city and a community.

Now, let’s step back a second and analyse San Francisco’s challenge in a way that we can all get some learnings from.

There are two types of approach that can be taken (I am talking theoretically for discussion purposes without knowing what Jeff is doing specifically):

The generic approach:

A Facebook and a Twitter page will be setup, creating an opportunity to grow an online community around the subject; the savethe49ers.com blog will be regularly updated but also the author will comment on other external blogs with links to the savethe49ers.com website, increasing the number of visits, a video could be designed focusing on the relationship between San Francisco, its people and the team through history, culture, and a glorious past. The video could be virally spread across multiple channels, touch people’s emotions, grow that voice “Save the 49ers!” so loud that the team’s owners and politicians will not be able to ignore it anymore.

The effective approach:

Wait a second: didn’t we mention Tradition, History, Culture, 63 years of life and 5 Super Bowl wins? Are we really sure that Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and company will cover all our target audience and help to reach our goals? Answer: most likely it will not be enough and will have to be matched in parallel by other online actions aimed to the older part of the audience.

As of April ’09, Facebook’s users’ demographic profile say that over 54% of them are below the age of 24 and over 80% are younger than 34. It is true that the 35-54 segment is sky rocketing with an over 280% increase year on year but it is also true that if we want to count on the people that lived those successful and epic times of 49ers’ history we will have to focus on other directions, in parallel with the previous approach of tapping into the social networks where the younger target segments of the Save the 49ers spend a lot of their time on.

Take away: know your audience, perform a market research if needed, understand its demo and psychographic profiles and ONLY THEN formulate a strategy, followed by an appropriate choice of technology.

Only with a “scientific” and sophisticated approach your online presence will be productive and successful.

Alessandro De Zanche