Considering the European scenario and the needs of Sport Organisations there, social networks would touch only one of the many aspects that should be worked on.
A much wider and comprehensive strategy is needed in order to translate traffic into monetisation, a strategy which takes care of both areas: Audience AND Monetisation.

Social Media can help in widening the audience and improving its quality in terms on engagement and interaction BUT Monetisation is another story.

To make online marketing efforts really successful we need data, we need to know who our users are in order to target them with specific initiatives, competitions, offers, content. You can’t do that in the long term via Facebook or Twitter: you can, with one off instance, but then?

Ever tried to post on Twitter only to find out that is was down? Do you really want to exclusively give up your relationship with your fans to external entities? What if one day you’ll wake up finding out that Facebook has changed its policy and you cannot interact with your fans in the way you used to?

Social Networks are incredibly powerful tools that need to work together with your web/mobile based applications, which need to be the core of your online strategy.

Strategy, strategy, strategy!

I’d bet that one of the two categories of items sold inside the shop would suffer, being targeted to two totally different types of customer that will unlikely end up buying both kind of items.
Probably I would also bet that the shop will shut down sooner rather than later for having ignored the needs of their customers.
Now look at the US leagues and the way they target fans:
NBA is usually oriented towards Content: news, videos, interviews.
MLB is focused on Merchandising: a lot of sales initiatives, a lot of ideas to approach the fan, being it father’s day, a birthday, the start of the summer and what not.
NHL is heavily keeping fans’ attentions on their auctions of memorabilia and customising their communication around the fan’s favourite team, while NFL is heavily promoting their Fantasy Football platform.
Every Sport Organisation has got its own needs and so their audiences: this should trigger a review of the Organisation’s online own goals, strategy and technology, which should be personalised and not a mix of everything, which is a step towards failure.
The starting point is the fan and not the Organisation itself: there are so many of them acting online like a one euro (one pound, one dollar) shop: generic, untargeted and self centred.
But it’s never too late to change!

As I am progressing through our road show and meet a lot of Sport Organisations, I realise that the big bottleneck is right there.

While in many other cases, industries and situations, there is no clear answer to the “big question”, in case of Sport Organisations the solution is right there.

One President of a League told me last week, showing me a nice initiative developed online: “this idea was great, and we had such a low response. The sponsor wasn’t happy”.

The initiative was really good, I must admit it.

But it was a drop of water in the sand: who was it directed to? To their audience right? But what audience? They have no interaction or engagement with their fans in their online presence, they never planned to create and grow an audience and neither have one.

Their website is a “read only” website, a brochure where fans have no place whatsoever.

And here comes the bottom of the issue:

A great initiative by itself doesn’t build a great audience.

It is a great, active, engaged audience that makes an initiative effective and successful.

Start developing your online strategy and the results will come.

Different situation for less popular sports though, where minor leagues are struggling in finding opportunities to find good deals for their championships and tournaments, at times having even to pay for being aired.

As many European Organisations are lagging behind in their online strategies compared to their US counterparts, online live streaming could be a great alternative, when not a complement, to their TV presence.

Will Richmond from videonuze.com has done a great job collecting all the main headlines regarding online broadcasting (live or on demand) events of 2009.

- PGATour.com to Offer Live Video Streams of Key Holes for Tour Playoffs (B&C)

- U.S. Open to Stream Almost All Matches Online (PaidContent)

- DirecTV Offers NFL Sunday Ticket via Internet in NY Trial (USA Today)

- “Live at Wimbledon” Streaming Coverage Announced by NBC (Sports Media News)

- Cablevision Subs Will Gain Access to In-Market Streaming of YES’s Yankee Telecasts (Multichannel News)

- MLB.com Streams Live Baseball Games to the iPhone (NYTimes Bits)

- NBA Playoffs to Stream on Android App (Online Media Daily)

- Speedtv.com to Stream Part of Le Mans 24 Hours (Multichannel News)

- NHL to Launch Daily Stanley Cup Pre-game Web Series (Mediaweek – reg required)

- Follow the Masters on Your iPhone (Electronic House)

- March Madness! YouTube Gets Live Video via Silverlight (NewTeeVee)

A few weeks ago I also wrote about collegefanz.com broadcasting one live NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) football game each week, while broadcasting 24/7 non live games and news on their website.

It seems 2010 will be even fuller of content for sport fans around the world while new monetisation opportunities open up for European Sport Organisations willing to catch up with their online audiences, overall very much neglected so far.

Any examples of live broadcasts by minor leagues around the world are welcome!

Alessandro De Zanche

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

I spoke to a few of them in the last two months about the importance of a carefully and strategically planned step to approach the online world, more focused on new opportunities and leveraging the latest technology rather than on prehistory (the read-only internet where websites were online brochures, mass targeting without distinction whoever landed on a certain page).

The key point here is not about just collecting data, but how we use the data also.

I’ll make an example using Behavioural Targeting, a product I worked on for years at Yahoo!.

One of the biggest issue we had was to persuade companies and advertising agencies that “Behavioural Targeting” is an empty word, with dozens of different providers and platforms making a different use of the collected data, hence the need, before making a choice on what provider to use, to have a high level understanding on how each platform is working (leveraging the data).

Leveraging the data is the key

I know it sounds geeky, but many Targeting companies are taking advantage of clients not being up to speed with technology, selling them a product that of Behavioural Targeting has got only the name.

Approach Product A: Sometime (a week? a month? six months ago?), somewhere on some page, Barry clicked on an ad about Cars, hence we assume Barry is interested in Cars so we will serve him Cars related ads.

Approach Product B: Two days ago Bill clicked on two Cars ads and searched for Cars related keywords, while today he visited a Cars related page. We do NOT ONLY know that Bill is interested in Cars, we know that Bill is HIGHLY interested in Cars NOW, so we can leverage this data by serving him Cars related ads.

Question: which of the two products will give me more Conversions? The one that generically targets users that have generically shown interest in a product at some generic point in time or the one that scientifically and methodically picks users with a high interest in a product in this very moment?

Same applies to Sport Organisations.
Strategic planning and goal setting allow to:

1. Designing tools, platforms, initiatives and practices that will collect the specific data we need.
2. Leveraging the data at the right time for hitting our goals, being it monetisation, audience building, or any other objective.

Alessandro De Zanche

There are some great examples of openness like i.e. the US Women’s Professional Soccer league that last March allowed players to use Twitter during the league’s inaugural game between Los Angeles Sol and Washington Freedom (this may be a bit too far in my opinion but at least shows the will to experiment and being transparent and open) or NBA teams like the Phoenix Suns, that have at least 18 different Twitter accounts encompassing the whole of their organization, from the team, to players, to dancers, to their PR and web development team and even one for their mascot, or the Cleveland Cavaliers, that have already been a subject of a past Fastbreak Digital’s post.

What is a shame to me is that apparently the focus with Sport Organisations and Social Media is mostly on what forbidding, where limiting, how much will the fine be. There is a gripping fear of what will go out rather than a volcanic excitement in realising the incredible potential to widen and engage new and existing audiences.

When will Sport Organisations instead start coming up with a Social Media strategy plan, taking advantage of all the available platform and tools and encouraging players, coaches, fans (within boundaries of course, nobody is denying the need of regulation) to engage online, making Sport events more personal and social?

Will Europe, that has been so far quite inactive apart from a few brilliant cases, catch up and take advantage of US Sport Organisations’ learning curve?

Alessandro De Zanche

2009, same city, same wall.
The (still young!) guy, now in his late 30s, is taking a stroll downtown. He doesn’t live there anymore and doesn’t have many chances to be around so the walk has very much the feel of a trip back in time.
For his astonishment the notice boards are still there and still getting updated, 30 years on!

In an era where social technology is changing the Internet and the way the world works, the ancestors of Facebook and Twitter are still there, on the same wall, and with updated content (photos, calendar of events, summaries of the group’s previous days out).

Amazing and sweet to see how decades haven’t changed anything in what used to catch my attention as a kid, despite dozens of online platforms and tools ready for use being available to Sport organizations and communities.

But nothing happens without a reason and while I was reading the board, a middle-aged guy came to post new material (the display is protected by a glass so only the person who in the Internet age we would call the “administrator” can change the content).

We started talking.

He told me about their passion as a community, the fact that the kids of the early members are now in the club as well, about the friendship and relationships that generated through skiing together through the years.
At a certain point, still not believing to what I had just discovered, a mix of mellow memories of my childhood and professional interest, I asked why they kept the notice board up through decades and never moved it online, listing all the benefits and advantages.

The reply was clear: they don’t want a profit or any financial benefit whatsoever and they have a strong link to tradition, they don’t want the community grow uncontrolled and getting out of hand and they are worried about monitoring what people post.

I understand his point of view, as there could be a few misconceptions around the subject.
Stepping into the online social scenario is not only for people that have as a goal monetization and revenue and most of the times, with a help of a few settings, the community is the best monitor of itself.
One of the main motivators for joining the Social technology revolution is pride and the increasing need of belonging to a group with a defined identity.

I told my new friend that a new approach wouldn’t mean that they would have to take off their historic bulletin board but that it would also allow people like me that have never met any of them to share my experience and say thank you for this memory trip through my teenage years.

Alessandro De Zanche

Michael Jordan

Let’s take for example Facebook and Twitter, nowadays with no doubt two of the most used (and abused) platforms and let’s imagine again the above conclusion: “they do it, we should do it too!”, with company A deciding to copy company B and create their own Facebook page.
Probably, before taking this decision, Company A should have spent some time reflecting on the fact that while Company B is a volleyball club with a young audience profile, typically spending time online and actively connected via social networks, Company A is a chain of golfing resorts whose clients are in their majority wealthy professionals, over 30, technology savvy but with a lower grade of active participations to social networks.

On the other hand, Company A’s audience would probably enjoy a much greater benefit by receiving a weekly newsletter on next weekends tournaments and time sensitive discounts on luxury merchandising.
Bottom line, technology is just a tool, an instrument at the service of Sport Organisations, key in supporting their strategies and achieving their goals, but last in the steps of their online presence’s definition:

1. Audience profiling.
2. Goals setting.
3. Strategy definition.
4. Choice of technology.

Michael Jordan, probably the best basketball player of all times, did very poorly when trying his luck in baseball.
So will likely Facebook or Twitter or any other platform matched to your online fan base if you don’t know their profile and/or haven’t got goals and a strategy behind.

Alessandro De Zanche