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?

He is not talking about being tough and aggressive, but about sharing and giving.

I think this is very much applicable in many aspects of life, not strictly to business: I can see it as a very powerful way to aggregate people and generate solid and active communities in the Sport sector: the way we communicate with the fan base, the way we approach them and how we benefit them without expecting anything back.

And we will get back ten, hundred times more than what we have given: it’s the power of sharing and growing together.

Watch Tim in a recent interview:

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!

Lampard is showing me around

I gave my personal standing ovation this morning to Adidas and Chelsea FC.

Got an email from Adidas on behalf of the football club (the importance of a database and data collection on your audience, remember?), asking if I wanted to become Chelsea FC's 12th man…

Hell yeah! I thought and clicked on the link.

I inserted my name and surname, my nationality and there I was, full screen video, walking outside Stamford Bridge, cheered by fans, then inside the off limit area.

The press is breaking the news...

I was greeted by name by the staff at the entrance, who also showed me the newspaper of the day breaking the news of MY arrival at the club, and got a warm reception in front of the locker room by Ballack. While stepping in the “sanctuary” of MY new team, I noticed MY name on Ancelotti’s list, stuck on the door.

Once inside, Frank Lampard took me to my locker, where a Chelsea uniform with MY name on it was hanging from the wall.
Then off we went, on to the pitch, greeted by dozens of thousands of fans.

What an amazing initiative!

Goal? Promoting the sale of personalized official uniforms and creating a viral video engaging fans and creating involvement.

Petr Cech's welcome was quite warm

Technology? Nothing new, a widely used software can make your name appear on the fly on any pictures or videos, the video was shot with a handy cam: it was the idea to be absolutely spot on.

What a marvellous example that technology is only a medium: it’s content and creativity that make the difference.

And now… sorry guys I have to run: Ancelotti is calling me for training!

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.

I cannot think of a more complete tool to follow the tennis tournament on the go.

News, Players' profiles, Scores (matches in progress and completed matches), Schedule and Draws keep the most demanding fan updated in real time, while photos and videos add visual and editorial contribution, including footage of press conferences and interviews.

A comprehensive guide for the spectators at the two arenas includes maps, transportation and directions, seat charts and even a dining guide.

The application is built, hosted and sponsored by IBM.

Rafael Nadal

Another sponsor is American Express, bringing the Iphone user an online live radio which the user can contribute to by sending questions from the phone application itself and several collateral benefits for Amex members.

The cherry on top of the application is the “Tweets” section, which lists the official Tweeter US Open feed, plus a few celebrities’ too.

This great application works in parallel with the website, which is also fully “social networked”, with links to Facebook and Tweeter pages, posts, comments (which are searchable by geographical area), most popular stories and photos, plus downloadable wallpapers, widgets and various competitions, and the live video and audio broadcasts.

Next time I will need to show someone examples of online interaction and engagement, why hopping around the Internet collecting examples when the US Open online presence alone is a full and complete showcase?

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

MLB, which counts at the time I write 353,291 followers on Twitter, is one of the most active Sport Organisations in the field of online technology and social media.

Very unusual choice, the @MLB blog,  but only apparently. At first we could ask ourselves why would MLB somehow go “against the nature” of Twitter, which by definition is “a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices”.

If we “extend” it into a blog then it is not Twitter anymore. Why not having just a blog then? Or why not combining Twitter and Facebook where the latter allows longer text and display images in a more attractive way?

I think that MLB has done the right strategic choice here.

They probably thought:

1. We have a good fan base on Twitter
2. Our Facebook page hasn’t got a particularly big audience ( 37,000 fans, as opposed to NHL with 130,000, NFL with 155,000 and NBA 1,415,000 fans), which wouldn’t give us enough visibility even if we wanted to integrate our message through Twitter and Facebook together.
3. Building an audience from scratch on a separate blog (as an official MLB “voice” besides all the great individual blogs on MLBlogs) would take time and probably disperse energy and fans.

And here is the only apparently unusual choice of a “Twitter extension” blog.

I agree with this strategy as it is the smartest way to leverage MLB’s at the moment biggest social network, the 353,291 followers on Twitter, and integrate the platform with an “appendix”, but more than anything else it shows how a powerful and smart strategy makes the difference and technology alone is useless.

I like also the choice of MLB to explore new paths and solutions, even going against the ones that will shout out at the “violation” of Twitter’s nature (oh please…).

Didn’t we say it already a few weeks ago? The limit of Online Technology is creativity and personality.

Alessandro De Zanche

Festa Mayor de Gràcia

The amazing feeling of a community tied together by an ancestral bond, the magnetic energy coming out from those events have been a living sample of all those values that we can find in Sport and Online Technology.
Whatever I looked, wherever I was, it was full of similarities with a Sport event, even more: it was the prototype of the dream fan base.

It works in this way: for months, kids, teenagers, adults up to elderly members of the community spend a lot of their free time to plan a theme for the next “Festa”, trying to come up with the best idea for a “make up” of their street/s that will compete against other streets and neighbourhoods.

Festa Major de Gràcia

For months the whole community interacts, works together, exchanges opinions and support, builds decorations and artefacts that will be mounted and displayed during the celebration (I am posting a few images).

The teamwork climax of the community is reached with the “Castell”, the human tower: members of the neighbourhood build a human tower of even more than 10 levels by climbing on each others’ shoulders. As you can imagine the level of trust and collaboration has to be absolute: usually adult men are the foundation of the tower and act also as a safety net for the upper levels, while the age of the tower elements decreseases with the upper levels up to the very top, usually a very small child.

Castell in Sitges

What are the values I found in those communities during the celebrations? Here are my keywords: Openness, Sharing, Collaboration, Interaction, Communities, Networking, ‘Tribe’, Passion, Loyalty, Commitment, Desire, Involvement, Community, Belonging, Family.

Can you recognise them? They are the same core values shared by Sport and Online Technology.

Can we take home some learning from those amazing social events? We should.

Passion and loyalty don’t come only with victories, they come through a bond between people, between fan and fan, fan and players, club and team, club and city, club and region, if not nation.

Online technology today gives us the tools to build all this: it takes time, it takes a lot of hard work, but it also takes a lot of authenticity and strong values that tools and platforms need to be filled with, as otherwise they would just be cold, empty, lifeless containers.

The US BIG EAST Conference Athletics gives us a great example of legend/myth building with its sixovertimes.com website, building on top of an historic game while in parallel developing revenue opportunities with the sale of related, celebrative items.

My last thought on the train back last night was about Technology: nice to note that while it is becoming more and more powerful, opening doors and opportunities like never before, at the same time it is increasing more than ever the importance of elements like humanity, authenticity, personal relationships and contribution.

Alessandro De Zanche

Usain Bolt & Berlino the bear

Berlino the Bear is apparently the top celebrity of the moment. Berlin 2009 Athletics World Championships' mascot has been constantly at the centre of the attention!

First it threw himself in a hug with pole vault champion Anna Rogowska.
Next came a little dance-and-drop with javelin gold medallist Steffi Nerius, then he was even hoisted onto the back of discus champ Robert Harting!

Later came the poses with Usain Bolt, who showed off a t-shirt with the words “Ich bin ein Berlino” written on it in biro, followed by a 50m race down the back straight in the aftermath of Bolt’s 200m demolition.
The climax though was reached with the ride he gave new 400m hurdles champion Melaine Walker.
A new star has born and it potentially has all the skills to become a web star too.

Stamford the lion

There are some great examples of big clubs or companies using their mascot’s popularity as a bridge to their online audiences, making them become de facto spokesman of the team: it is a very efficient way to gain popularity and affection.

One of the most popular mascots in Twitter is Stamford the Lion, that constantly updates Chelsea FC fans with news from the club and the locker room.

Outside sports another top celebrity is Aflac Duck, the voice of Aflac Insurance Policies.

Aflac Duck

A mascot with an online role allows to set a different tone in the conversation with the fan base, giving additional flexibility to the Organisation’s online communication strategy.

I love when creativity takes off and brings a down to earth, friendly, strong and loyal relationship between Organisation and fans: isn’t what we are supposed to build anyway?

If you know of any local mascots and good examples of their online roles, please share with us!

Alessandro De Zanche