Our Website staff does a very good job (in my opinion) of covering the Colts. We post several new stories each day. We send photographers to the sidelines and to community events. We send video cameras into the locker room, etc. And we’re rewarded for our efforts with pretty decent traffic.
But despite our advantage over other media outlets (in terms of access to players and coaches), we can’t compete with mainstream media, like ESPN, when it comes to breaking the hard, football news. You see, our team policy is fairly strict in its mindset to sharing news about players. We can’t have an opinion, except positive ones. We rarely break the news about player signings (and never about injuries), even when we’re the first to know.
All this is pretty normal in the NFL. Why would we want to be contreversial on our own site? We certainly don’t want to provide “locker room fodder” for the other team to get motivated against us. Yet it does present a challenge. Fans want (and expect) the team site to give them an insider’s perspective to the team. They want access. Fans want to engage with the team in any way they can, and they want to be noticed. If we gave them what they wanted, we could drive more traffic to our site and make more money for the team. So what’s a poor web staff to do??
Happily, it dawned on us that we can “take what they’re giving us.” We can’t publish our insights or our opinions, but the fans can publish theirs. In fact, they already post opinions to our forum. They call into sports radio shows. They tell their friends, etc. And if we give them the chance, they’ll tell do even more that this.
We’ve come to realize there’s an opportunity to let fans do the talking, and still generate the valuable traffic we want. That’s a big reason why we are building the Colts Fan Network - it allows us to expand the amount of user generated content on our site…and allow fans to create the content that, we hope, will attract even more fans to visit and soak it up.
We believe this platform will allow fans to enrich their own Colts experiences. The more they participate in the community, the more connected they will feel. They will feel like insiders. And because they will be driving traffic to our site, we’ll have a way to monetize the platform, to make money for the team, and to continually expand and improve the community itself. As we do all of this, our sponsors will have new ways to connect with our fans as well.
The Web helps us to see that we’re actually maintaining a digital ecosystem that includes the team, its fans and its sponsors. It’s all very symbiotic. And very exciting. Very soon I’ll be able to post more informaiton about the launch itself. Stay tuned.
