It was great to see Amare Stoudamire win Best on Ground in last week’s edition but this week he (or his team) made the mistake of the automated blog post. Adding a note to his fans that was obviously written before Game 5 but it was posted after the Western Conference Finals had finished. (Phoenix lost)
This week’s Best On Ground goes to Kathleen Hessert for this tweet, are you ready for this game changer?
Video(on-demand & Internet) will be 91% of global consumer online traffic by ‘14 says Cisco. Get ready sports properties & media companiesWed Jun 02 13:34:31 via webKathleen Hessert
kathleenhessert
Just a quick post to understand the importance of branding your events. With so many channels available sometimes fundamentals of event branding can get lost.
Effective use of team’s logos and colour is crucial to your event. Your fans display their affiliation and pride in your team by wearing your logos & merchandise. BUILD ON THAT!
Any venue can quickly become “home-ground territory” which your fans will love to soak up.
Additionally connect your event with your online fans using hashtags like #jetsrally. Extending your event branding to your online platforms helps your fans to show support for your event. What you will find is fans will be engaged online both at the event and away from the event (at home or on the move).
Take a look what the NY Jets did on a very large scale with their Jets Championship Rally held in Times Square before their big game against the Chargers earlier this year when I was in New York on #SportsGeekTrip. Not only were the fans excited about the upcoming game (which they lost unfortunately) but when all the billboards started to change to Jets green the energy in Times Square was magnified. You could say the fans loved the branding of the event as they tore down the sponsor signs (as pictured above) and walked back to the subway with them, then again that may be Jets fans
What have been the non-game sports events you’ve been to? What made them special?
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An interesting post from Twitter blogs about the effect showing the effect the Super Bowl had on Twitter traffic. Twitter is a great outlet for sports fans to share their own special comments. A great job by NFL in their “Tag it #sb44″ promoting a specific hashtag for all social media platforms. They got a great response from NFL fans, look at the results from fans at the Tag the Super Bowl site.
One of the biggest challenges many teams face is differentiating themselves whilst adhering league brand guidelines. It was a common theme with the teams I met with on #sportsgeektrip.
Many leagues across the globe follow a similar digital model. League web sites are developed and team web sites are created under the league umbrella.
MLB.com, NBA.com, NHL.com,AFL.com.au are some examples of these Leagues that follow this “Umbrella model”.
(*edit thanks for comment: Essendon stand alone as an exception running independently of the AFL very successfully with EssendonFC.com.au)
If you take a look at team websites e.g. LA Dodgers Vs New York Yankees or Collingwood Vs Hawthorn you’ll see some team customization but they are locked into a League framework. The NBA follows a similar model but teams are using custom landing pages (or splash pages like the Mavs do) to offer fans special deals.
Other leagues like the NFL.com & PremierLeague.com have decoupled the League’s web deal from the teams.
What’s better?
The “Umbrella model” makes administration of League branding much easier and sometimes can lead to a better sponsorship deal as it is league-wide. However, it can be restrictive both creatively and financially to the teams who want to push the Web 2.0 envelope. From a technical prospective a league wide CMS (content management system) does reduce the need for in-house web staff for teams but many people who use these systems find them too restrictive. Leagues that abandon the “Umbrella model” face the problem of a potentially creating a tech gap between the have and have-nots. Some teams like those run by MSG (Knicks, Rangers, Liberty) help promote their teams outside the standard team’s sites through the stadium (TheGarden.com), then again with so many sports properties MSG is a unique business.
What are your thoughts?
Does the ability for league’s to secure deals outweigh a team’s desire to innovate?
Would teams do a better job if they could go it alone?
Would small-market teams struggle maintaining own website?
Yesterday I touredCowboys Stadium, I know they say things are big in Texas but that was ridiculous.
The screen alone cost $40M weighs as much as a full Airbus. The roof sagged 5 inches when it was first attached.
I was lucky enough to take the tour while the Cowboys were preparing for their playoff encounter against Brett Favre’s Minnesota Vikings. To simulate the the noise expected by Vikings fans they pumped crowd noise throughout the stadium. While standing in the end zone I recorded this, have a listen.
I wouldn’t be Sports Geek if I wasn’t impressed with the full-on DataCenter that is the heart of the stadium. Standard stuff from an IT point of view but everyone seemed very impressed with the Mission-Impossible style description “6 seconds to get out if there’s a fire, as the oxygen is sucked out of the room”.
I jokingly referred to Cowboys Stadium as the “Death Star” which I think Jerry Jones would like. Little did I know that is one of the names the locals have given it. Tours have been extremely popular with 150,000 people touring the venue in it’s first 127 days. It has a staff of 6,200 on game day and will host the 2010 NBA All-Star game and the 2011 Super Bowl.
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Edition 6 of #BODSW
Kathleen Hessert
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