Is there much behind the hype?

Comment

Comment by Rob Lewis on October 31, 2008 at 8:54am

Thanks -it looks very promising and seems rather more innovative than other areas of cricket - interesting that is the sponsor that is tkaing the lead using sport as the vehicle rtaher than sport leading the sponsors :-)

Comment by Jeremy Beynon on October 31, 2008 at 3:27am

From a cricket perspective I have just come across this: http://standardbank.socialmediarelease.co.za/

Looks like a great platform being set up in South Africa.

Cheers
Jeremy

Comment by Rob Lewis on October 23, 2008 at 12:02pm

Something that fascinates me is that although there has been a lot of academic work carried on fan typologies and personas over the years do sports marketeers ever use this type of profiling in their day job? Or is marketing still stuck with typical demographics? and is marketing 2.0 another way of starting all over ? or could it incorporate some of the previous work - certainly from the point of view of creating offers, landing pages and microsites, even blogs, there could be some traction is tailoring content and then adapting it in collaboration with different types of fan. At the moment (and I may be very wrong) it seems to me that the social sites only encourage the avid fans. Yet I know from Pat's work that focusing on fans away from the stadium/city is high on the list of priorities. But are these still considered avid fans? ie do they need the same content and interaction? and what about others?

Comment by Rob Lewis on October 11, 2008 at 5:33am

That sounds like a really good idea - I think the UK is still under -developed in the sense of sites that support rugby on anything other than a news/comment level. The clubs I believe still under invest in fan support (although I must say their off web efforts in developing communities through schools and youth are very powerful in enthusing the younger generation who then bring their parents to the game so to speak. Much of the investment in community by the bigger professional clubs seems oriented to eventual monetising though sale of tickets and merchandise as it does to altruism. On the fan orientation of a social site for rugby I think there is so little dedicated to creating fan communities that such a site would have a good opportunity. My caveat would be that in the UK the current rugby blogs and comments on blogs in the usual media (BBC etc) do tend to be of the supporter 'rant' and sniping against other supporters as opposed to a genuine sense of creating a shared ethos about the game. But again that may signal an opportunity for a site which tries to create a more common ground and link together people with the same interests in the game and the various clubs. I think there is enormous potential outside the top pro league clubs to build this. Another area I think which clubs miss is the 'wiki' idea of creating a club history and nostalgia where fans can combine to create the history and hall of fame type content which clubs tend to ignore or pay lip service to because its not easily monetised.
I wish you all the best for your venture and would be happy to be a sounding board for any of your ideas

Comment by Gino Ferrario on October 10, 2008 at 11:50pm

I am currently in the process of launching a website dedicated to web 2.0 for rugby. It has both news and a social network component. It will be focused to the community rugby as opposed to the professional teams it will also be team/player focused as opposed to fan focused. In the future we will be looking to open up to the unofficial team blog arena much like the SB Nation sports blogs here in the states. We are rolling out in North America first and the next rollout will be in the PacRim and then the UK. We feel that going into Australia before the UK has a better chance of creating bigger numbers quicker. First, I would like to get your feedback on how well you think this might be recieved in the UK? And to answer your question does investing in the fan increase the value of the brand? I say absolutely it does. I am also a fan of sports and have blogs that I go to for my teams. I have the ability to speak with fans across the country who share a common intrest and people in the same area that are fans of the same team (I am a St. Louis Cardinals fan living in Houston, TX). We also get together during games in town and would have never met except for the blog we visit.

Comment by Rob Lewis on October 8, 2008 at 4:44pm

I suppose my straightlaced commentary would be along the lines of how much do you moderate or control the main site? And to what extent are non franchise related sites for fans more popular? In the UK most fans would do anyting other than use the corporate web site because they feel alientated from those in control. And in addition,most people in Europe I have spoken to feel moderation of fan messages (apart from market nresearch surveys and occasiobal plenary meetings) is almost a waste of their time which could be spent on more value adding activities such as managing sponsors and corporate hospitality. I suppose the issue has to be in the calculus of sporting organisation value - how much does one invest in fans versus how much does one invest in the corporate/sponsor side of the business that doesn't need s'ocial media' as much as it relies on face to face sales? That is to say, the net presentt value of corporate money outweighs that of loyal lifetime fans. Another way of saying this would be theat certain markets - e.g. corporate money -are more competitive than the amrket for fans. So while investment in fans maintains status quo, des it really increase the value of the brand? (This is meant to be a provocation!)

Comment by Pat Coyle on October 8, 2008 at 2:55pm

At the Colts we've noticed some interesting things. First of all, our Fan Forum, which is about 5 years old, has a loyal group of folks who like to talk about Colts football. We don't get a lot of criticism of the team from our loyal fans. Not lately anyway. We do get fans from other teams who like to join the board and stir things up. That's usually OK. Overall, the forum generates approx 25% of all page views on the colts.com site. While that's a large number, I've heard some NFL teams generate over 65% of page views from forums. Wow! How can you NOT have a forum on your site?? All the fears about bad stuff being said about the team, or even inappropriate content being posted by fans seems to be unfounded. Yes, things happen. But you deal with it and move on.

On our social network site things get a bit more interesting. First of all, I found it curious that our loyal forum members wanted NOTHING to do with the social net when we launched it last year. I suppose this is human nature. Many of them were concerned that we would take away the board to which they'd grown accustomed. We decided not to do that when we witnessed a distinct audience using the social net. Further, the social net is quite different from the board. We see a lot of community building going on...folks meeting offline and forming friendships. They talk about a lot more non-football stuff on mycolts.net. The can upload photos and videos and decorate their pages...much more room for self expression and self acutalization...also a lot more concern about copyrighted content. In fact, copryright infringement by fans is a bigger concern (to us) than profanity...this is as a result of the fact that most fans aren't aware of copyright law. They're used to grabbing images and videos (which they don't own) and pasting them or forwarding them wherever they like. They can't do that on our site because we don't want to get sued...this was a sticking point at first, and has likely led to our community remaining smaller in size than it might have been.

Anyway, fans have shown a desire to be visible. The connect with other fans. They want to feel closer to the team and community helps them get there. We feel that it's a worthy investment...if fans feel closer to eachother, they're more likely to remain loyal to the club...which increases their lifetime value.