Mario Rossi owns an ice cream shop in Rome, but he is running out of business.
He chose to open his liquorice-ice cream-only shop based exclusively on his flavour of preference.
Apparently the majority of ice cream lovers haven't got the same taste and the shop is deserted. Mario rather than focusing on his customers' taste is still convinced that liquorice ice cream is the best in the world and blames the negative situation on location and economic downturn.

Ice cream at the baseball game

Pietro Bianchi owns an ice cream shop on the same street as Mario, just on the opposite end.
He carefully analyses the flavours of choice of his customers (among the 12 flavours on display) and regularly tops up the production of the most requested ones, also adapting the order flavours are displayed in, giving better spots to the most successful ones.
He also realised that customers were often standing outside the shop, sometimes having the occasional chat, sometimes proper, intense conversations. He decided then to provide an area with tables and chairs so his customers could spend more time in the shop, have the chance to relax while exchanging opinions and, last but not least, buying more ice cream.

With time, Pietro learnt that walking around tables and listening to his customers he was also gathering very valuable insights about his products and in more than an occasion he changed the recipe of a flavour to adapt it to what his customers really like.

This (silly?) metaphor is perfectly adaptable to any Sport Organisation’s online strategy: only those who learn to analyse their audience base, “listen” to their fans, understand what they need, give them the opportunity to interact with each other and with the Organisation itself (being it a league, team, athlete or a company) will successfully grow their audience and their monetisation opportunities.

The alternative? Get stuffed with a liquorice ice cream nobody is interested in, see your fan base developing far from you with no advantages to you, being it from an audience perspective or financial.
Even worse, miss the opportunity to engage with them, leaving the relationship with your fans based on results and victories which, as you well know, is a very dangerous and ever changing situation even for the most successful of the Organisations.

Alessandro De Zanche