Sports Marketing 2.0 | Pat Coyle

On the Web, nobody knows your a dog, or a 140 pound weakling…or even a football team. As the Internet continues to “democratize” everything, I see an opportunity for sports teams to beat big media companies on the digital front. But we’d better get serious about it fast, or they’ll eat our lunch!

On this note, three articles caught my attention this weekend:

1. Sports Illustrated combines strong journalism with digital push to keep its brand relevant with coveted young males: launches mysi.com, buys Fan Nation, Takkle to combine with SI.COM and their magazine…predicting 50% of brands profits from Web by 2013. (Brandweek)

2. Newspaper giant, Gannett, developing a “pro-am” journalism strategy model with professional writers and newspaper readers combining to make citiizen journalism a bigger part of their business…and it’s working…digital revenues are the only part of the newspaper business that’s growing. (Business Week).

3. Budweiser spending $30 million per year to produce its own content web site (bud.tv) - moving money away from TV where it’s having trouble finding you men. (Business Week).

Who cares what these big brands and media companies are doing?

We’ve never thought of these businesses as competitors, but on the Web, they are. In each of these examples the digital strategy revolves around user participation in the online product. Ultimately, the Web experience will grow more personalized, and users will find themselves in comfy little “communities” where “everybody knows their names. Which serves to strengthen the offline product too.

The good news (for teams) is that the Internet levels the playing field and gives little guys the firepower to compete against the big guys (in terms of reach). The bad news is that the Internet levels the playing field. It gives the big guys the dexterity and nimbleness to compete, relationship-for-relationship, with the “little guys” on the “local” front. That’s our turf!

I can’t speak for all sports teams but here’s how this makes me feel: thanks to the Internet, we have the opportunity to BE the media. We make the news…so why shouldn’t we distribute it too? (Say it can’t be done? We can’t go direct? Tell that to Michael Dell, or the NFL Network for that matter).

But how do we do it? In the NFL, I’d say we need to combine our efforts. The league and the teams need to coordinate. NFL.COM is a big brand already, but it could be even bigger if it worked more closely with the teams. We need to organize and integrate our databases so that fans have a consistent experience across all sites and so that we can better understand the lifetime value of each fan. We need to share best practices…35 sites are smarter than one, even if that ONE is NFL.COM. We need to leverage TV even better on the local level. We need a SERIOUS fantasy offering.

The team level is where we can learn the identities and build relationships with all of our fans, worldwide, not just the ones who live nearby or who buy season tickets. The league sites and the team sites could combine knowledge and resources to deliver a much better experience for the fans than any “third party” media could ever hope to deliver.

The time is NOW to get serious and pursue these opportunities. If we don’t get in the game and let our Web writers to cover team new in a more timely and complete manner, and if we don’t find new ways to engage sponsors in this “fan channel”, then we may end up buying ads from Bud one day (instead of the other way around). Sounds silly, but this Internet thing has shifted the balance of power and turned plenty of industries upside down…why not sports?

To compete and defeat the big guys, we should study their actions and try to understand what they’re up to. They’re building brands. They’re creating “voices” for their sites. They’re looking to engage people and build community. They’re combining top-notch, professional jouranism with passionate, user generated content. They’re throwing stuff against the wall to see what will stick…And they’re doing it on a grand scale and at ever increasing rates of speed.

What sort of experience are we offering?

Giving fans / consumers “immersive” expriences online should be our goal. Team Websites should be developed as ‘experience environments”. The better the fan experience, the more they’ll come back, and the more money we’ll make. If we only care about transactions, we won’t be working on the experience.

What will our online biz look like in 2013 if we don’t make any strategic changes?

Big media and big brands are experiencing major changes in their business models. Maybe I’ve been watching too much “Animal Planet”, but in the dry season, as the water hole shrinks, things can get pretty ugly for the plant eaters.

I predict the NFL will need to face these forces soon…and I predict the wave will hit teams within the next few seasons. Happily, we are well positioned to lead the way if we make moves now. If we wait, we may never have the same leverage (look at what Craigslist and Monster.com did to newspaper classified ads. 30% of newspaper revenues up in smoke).

While we continue to focus our efforts on finite inventory (local, stadium revenues) we ALSO should be opening our eyes the the Tsunami of new opportunity that is swelling in the digital realm. It’s one thing granting budgets to the Web dept., it’s another thing adjusting strategy to allow the Web to become what it could be…whatever that is.