The National Basketball Association is exploring selling a stake in its digital assets, which include its cable television network and Web site, to a media company, Commissioner David Stern said on Tuesday.
I do not claim to be a BIG MEDIA expert, but this seems very interesting to me. Just weeks after the NFL announced it would bring NFL.COM Operations in-house, and just days after the NFL TV Network aired its first live game, the NBA is talking about bringing on media partners - as part owners no less.
I applauded (in this blog) the move by the NFL. Working on a team site as I do, I firmly believe that the teams and the league need to work hands-on with our sites. No third party can develop content, features and functions as well as we can because we simply know our game and our audience better. That being said, there’s no question in my mind that in addition to our site content strategies, we need big picture deals as well.
Each of the 32 NFL team sites is a little gem in and of itself. Each has its own audience of loyal fans. But these audiences are not JUST local to the team’s markets. In fact, after speaking with a few colleagues at other sites, we are seeing a trend that indicates that MOST of our traffic comes from outside our markets. In Indy, we see 75% of our site visitors from outside Indiana.
Because most of our traffic comes from outside our markets, while most of our sponsor relationships remain local, we need help mapping and tapping the global media space. NFL.COM does a good job of creating original content, leveraging NFL Netwokr and NFL films and linking fans to each team site is. In my opinion, the more closely the league and the teams work together, the more efficiently we’ll tap the sponsorship money that’s available to our broader network of sites. Working more closely together will allow us to take leadership positions in things like fantasy football on-line.
I’m not going to issue an opinion on the TV part of things. I think the NFL has already demonstrated its mastery in this area. I’ll stick the the on-line world, which is so new, it’s difficult to know what the BEST thing is to do. The leaders inside each league have so many options before them it must be really hard to know which path to choose.
Here’s what NFL VP of Digital Media, Brian Rolapp says:
“In a rapidly changing digital landscape, bringing NFL.com in-house provides us greater control of our valuable content and enables us to strategically build the site as a media asset,” said Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s vice president of media strategy. “Fans can look forward to an even more entertaining, interactive and informative site built upon the expertise of the NFL and its other in-house media outlets such as NFL Network and NFL Films.”
Meanwhile, Stern says:
We believe we’re at a point where if we could … grow (the digital assets) even more, we’re prepared to partner to another enterprise’s benefit as well,” Stern said.
“To be engaged with a company like Time Warner or a company like Disney on either a digital scale is to engage partners who bring their expertise and the scope of their businesses in ways that we don’t have yet and might not even be the best investment of our resources,” he added
As I write this I’m not sure if the NBA and the NFL are thinking differently from eachother, or not. It could be that they’re both thinking the same thing. Both Rolapp and Stern have excellent track records in putting together big, successful media deals, but clearly the NFL and NBA have chosen different paths in the past, at least where the We is concerned.
Right now all the NBA sites are networked together and essentially work off the same design templates, whereas NFL sites are linked, but each team builds and maintains nearly 100% of the content. So where is this thing going next?
I can’t speak for either league. My opinion of the NBA doing a global media deal is positive. It makes sense to leverage partnerships in areas that exceed your expertise, especially when a partnership can reduce your risk and potentially make you more money. What I don’t like about the prospect of the NBA deal is that the prospective partners mentioned are BIG OLD media companies. To me that signals the NBA on-line strategy will not get down to the personal level very effectively.
I believe the biggest opportunties we have in digital sports marketing revolve around user generated content and personalized fan experiences. The only way we can personalize the experience for each fan is to capture personal data (click paths, demographics, surveys, purchasing behavior, etc.) and use this data to enhance the on-line offering. BIG OLD media companies aren’t good at that.
Personally, if we do any kind of BIG MEDIA deal on-line, I’d like to see the NFL do a deal with Google or Yahoo or MSN or even Amazon rather than Time Warner or Disney. We’ve already got the content. What we need are innovative, global distribution, on-line affiliate and sponsorship strategies that take better advantage of the vast NFL on-line audience and leverage the massive amount of data being gathered at the local level - through the club sites.
You compare the NFL to the NBA and hit the nail on the head. But what’s your take on MLB’s model? They’ve been great in driving revenue, however, will it be short lived? Don’t all the teams’ sites look almost TOO MUCH alike. I understand that there are tremendous economies of scale at work, but will it turn the fan off in the long run? Is the content becoming too homogenized with increasingly less creativity by the individual teams? I think other local sites (such as newspapers!) have an opportunity to cover their local MLB team the way the official sites don’t/can’t (not sure which…) anymore.
I don’t know how much MLB makes. I know I don’t personally like the look of my favorite team’s site (White Sox). But team sites don’t have to be great to get decent traffic. IAnd not every team is allowed to publish “behind the scenes” stuff that fans would kill for. So the players themselves, sponsors and media sites have a chance to capture that market if they’re willing to pay the players or take risks. On the other hand, the big “aha!” moment for me came when I realized there’s economic value in our team news. We make the news, but we’ve never been true distributors of it. Until now that is. The team sites that cover their own teams as if they were true media (albeit with positive spin) are the ones that are really dirving traffic. NFL teams in competitive media markets (like Philly and Boston) almost HAVE to be more than just “feel good and fluff”. The team website has the best chance to go “direct” and become a one stop shop for the avid fan…especially with newspapers in trouble, and the web gaining ground, seems like leagues and teams have a chance to eliminate a few layers of distribution by knocking peripheral media out of the game.