I just recently joined the Indianapolis Colts staff as the social media marketing intern. My first assignment has been to do research on pro sports teams and see what they are doing to engage their fan base through the use of social networking sites. I took a look at every one of the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL sites to see what functions they are offering their fans. Through this process I made some interesting observations about how sports teams manage their websites and how proactive their web teams are about social networking.

Having grown up on Facebook, MySpace, and newschoolers.com I figured that every sports team would have a forum or some kind of online community. I was surprised to find out that the NFL, with 6 of 32 teams having online communities, was well ahead of the other leagues. Site like MyColts.com, BroncosCountry.com, and WeAreVikingsFans.com are pioneers in world of sports and social networking. The LA Lakers, the Phoenix Suns, and the Portland Trailblazer have also engaged their communities through social networks. These sites invite fans

to create profiles, upload photos and videos, communicate with one another on message boards, and even create their own blogs.

Another interesting observation was that European soccer (football for our international friends) clubs don't have social networking sites but tend to have a stronger presence in mobile communication. I have some guesses as to why this might be. I believe that Europeans are more inclined to surf the web on their cellphones then American are.

This is because our friends in Europe have become much more comfortable with their cell phones then we have in recent years and high speed internet access has been limited in most homes. They have been tirelessly text messaging (SMS) for about 4 years now, while text messaging has only recently began to gain popularity in the US.

It will be interesting to see how mobile phones connect fans and clubs in Europe. I am sure there are many lessons American pro teams can take and apply to the American market as our fan base becomes more mobile savvy.