A lighthouse, an orchestra director, a coach on the court, a reference for its clubs: this is the role of a league.
So it should happen for a league’s online presence.
It is nonsense, in my view, to have the single entities (league and clubs) going on their own.

What’s the point of a club fully embracing the latest online technology, reaching out to its online fans and at the same time providing added value to its sponsors through the latest tools and platforms, while at the same time many clubs of that very league are lagging behind?
Or having a cutting edge league’s online presence while its clubs are displaying old and ineffective websites?

If we measure the success of a league with popularity, rights and sponsorships sale, not to mention revenue coming from tickets and merchandising, then we can easily understand that this can be obtained, for most of the leagues in the world, only if the whole association is moving as a single entity.

We are working on projects for a couple of leagues turning their online presence upside down and proposing the idea of a league’s network, so common in the US but so unknown in Europe.
The advantages? Huge list, but for this time I want to focus just on advertising: possibility of running advertising campaigns to a wider audience (as a network rather than as individual entities, so weighting more at negotiation stage but also being more appealing to advertisers), standardization of ad formats that can then run across all the clubs’ websites.
Integration of video ads within the video content.

In the last couple of years there has been a big buzz around Behavioural Targeting and Social Media, so sought after by Advertisers as they allow them to tap into Audiences offering products that are relevant to their potential clients.
Cars to car lovers, cat food to cat owners, rugby balls to rugby fans.

So what is the black gold for a league if not the possibility to leverage its niche, very defined audience, and be the link between Advertisers and their potential clients: the League’s own Fans?