Motricity Research found that 79% of sports fans have used their device for watching or following sport this past year and 87% of fans check on a sports content during an “inappropriate” time (e.g during a meeting or a date).

We really don’t need research to tell us this though. Any sports fans out there, and there are a lot, know that their Smartphone has become the default for news and views. The difficulty for brands is how to harness this portal into a sports fan’s world, without ruining their experience.

Just ‘being there’ isn’t enough, you’ll seem like you are trying to butt in without really knowing what you are talking about! Wherever fans are, whatever ignites their passions varies. They may love the action, the statistics, the debate or the cut and thrust of the season as it develops.

Genuine sporting insight will allow your brand to make the most of these differences. The variety of demographics even in the small subset of football fans who attend the matches mean that personalisation of content and delivery is imperative to join the conversation successfully. It might be tricky to get right but the rewards warrant the effort.

Sports Revolution invests heavily in understanding the fan because we deliver effective media platforms and can advise clients on content as well as media.

If you’re a brand, link up with companies like us that understand fans, produce unique content in an easy to use way and become part of the conversation. Showing you know and share their passions is far more likely to gain deeper engagement

2012 is an exciting year for sport, over the next few months expect many more ‘shock’ statistics about how Smartphones feed our sports fanship.  Don’t miss out….

Richard Peters, Director of Insight, Sports Revolution.  @sportsrevrich

Sports Revolution has partnered with some of the most innovative app developers to bring Fan Engagement to a whole new level. Newcastle-based Screenreach have built an app that turns a smartphone into a remote control, linking your mobile to live events such as the recent Newcastle-Everton game – where nearly 5,000 fans at St James’s Park battled the ground’s poor mobile signal to successfully vote for the Fans’ Man Of The Match over the mobile internet, and get rewarded with a 20% voucher for the Club shop into the bargain.

The engagement numbers reach into multiple thousands for other early-adopter mobile offerings also. Southampton FC recently ran a successful debut campaign using AR (Augmented Reality) courtesy of Blippar. By blipping (scanning) lamp-post banners around town and on the way to the stadium, fans had the opportunity to put themselves – virtually – into a huddle with the team players, save the image, and link to the Club shop and ticket office, all over the mobile internet. And again, fans responded in their thousands to the added-value, innovative and involving marketing from their Club.

But the stadium is just the start, and we recently launched mobile fan channel Qustodian Sports in the UK – using mobile technology successfully piloted in Spain by such notables as Atletico Madrid, Adidas, and Euroleague Basketball. Fans download the Qustodian app for free, and profile their likes and dislikes online. They then receive multi-media messages into the Qustodian app – often containing short video clips – with a mix of content from their club, fan-site or national team, and commercial messages from sponsors and advertisers. But here’s the kicker: fans get paid when they look at the commercial messages – and it’s real money, payable into their bank account or Paypal, or donated to the Bobby Robson Foundation. Membership has grown to nearly 20,000 in only a few months since launch, showing fans can’t get enough of a good thing.

While it’s still early days for fans’ adoption of mobile as their game-day medium of choice, these early fan-app innovations clearly demonstrate that mobile is a must for the Future Fan Engagement strategy of right-holders and advertisers.

Martin Copus, Exec Director, Sports Revolution Digital   Follow @copusandco

Since when has technology been a panacea? What can we learn from social media – another example of technology-driven engagement that’s still working hard to convince all? Here we take a quick look at what’s needed to bridge the gap between the untapped potential and the unbridled power of the Connected Stadium.

First of all, what does everybody want? Sports fans want what they’ve craved for years: a big, quick, content-pumping pipe running right through the thick of the action – no more info-blockage. Rights holders want to choreograph a more personal, participative and profitable fan journey – in an age of fickle fan-ship, an increased sense of stadium pride and ownership amongst fans will help insulate attendance against poor team performance. And brands want to upgrade from branding to brand experience through digital – the stadium becomes a flagship store where event-enhancing apps drive preference and word of mouth. The Connected Stadium proposition seems sound. So, what about the product?

The in-stadia experience is typically the focus of the Connected Stadium offering. Kick-ass wifi opens up a mouthwatering array of new opportunities. On the ‘utility’ side of the street, you’ve got everything from cashless payment and concession queue management to intelligent security messaging and realtime merchandise stocktaking.

Over on the fun side, you’ve got instant replays, better in-play betting, datatainment, half-time gaming, voting and the opportunity to throw an electric augmented reality blanket across the whole venue. The stadium becomes a pulsing source of second-screen stimulus. Smartphone heaven. Time to take the tablet? Don’t forget sports fans over index against ownership and usage thanks to their desire for constant content.

There’s another thing that sports fans can’t get enough of: social media. Stadia are captive, willing and app-literate ‘detonation crowds’ waiting to be fed with the content they want and want to share across ready-made networks. This year’s Superbowl was held in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex – a Connected Stadium. Despite excellent content being made available for download, fans shared 40 percent more data than they received.

The social angle means the in-stadia experience is the tip of the iceberg when in comes to Connected Stadium reach and revenue potential. Yes, brands want to be in the action, but scale of engagement will always be as important as depth. No brand’s sponsorship budget is focused on live attendees. It is vital that rights holders see the Connected Stadium as a pebble in the pond, not the pond itself. This puts big pressure on content. As social media has shown, it’s got to be good to be shared.

Rights holders and brands can learn from the app market. Successful apps keep it simple. They do one thing well. They focus on utility or entertainment. They feed off a razor-sharp insight and deliver on a need. A ‘cool idea’ isn’t enough, no matter how intuitive the interface or elegant the code. Connected Stadium success requires a deep understanding of fan behaviour manifested in simple digital assets, with a healthy dose of in-stadia media promotion.

And we’re not just talking about die hard fans. It’s time to get to know any and every target demographic in the stadium, from family big-day-outers with merchandise on their minds to exec-box-suits wanting that epic photo memory to share. What kind of a fan are they? Why are they there? Is it the sport or is it the event? Will they arrive early? Would they be so immersed in the game they would not use their phone – surely the success of in-play betting shows everyone has a sweet spot? Will they stay in their seat at half time? Will they leave early? Where will they go after?

Understanding the answers to these questions and many more, for each target audience and sport, is crucial to realising the massive potential of the Connected Stadium. Not as a stand-alone experience, but as part of an integrated marketing plan, built around the right content, delivered at the right time, promoted in the right way. The socially-supercharged stadium will, like social media, challenge the sports marketing industry to dig deeper, get creative and act on fan feedback.

Finally, I agree with Dan Markham, VP International Media Distribution, NBA, who talks about how the stadium experience sits at the heart of a rights holder’s product. Let’s remember that in this social age, quality and quantity are possible. As long as you remember that when it comes to the Connected Stadium, the stadium is just the start.

Josh Robinson, Director of Creative and Integration at Sports Revolution, was writing for The Leader. Follow Josh on Twitter @joshrbnsn28

Can the passion that sports fans have for their teams be redirected commercially via social media?

When sports fans and social media come together, you get a ravenous appetite for content in a super-transactional space. Rights holders who embrace social commerce by selling tickets and merchandise make the most of the opportunity, such as the NBA store in New York, which has its own Facebook page. Others are using new social assets, such as Uefa’s PlayStation-sponsored fantasy football app, to create sponsor packages. This allows them to monetise their social fan base and their unparalleled knowledge of what their fans want.

So-called macro social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have had tremendous commercial and marketing success. Can ‘micro’ social media platforms, linked to sport, duplicate that?

Most of us have a big bag of “warm interests”, such as bands, brands and TV shows, and then a pocketful of “hot interests” – the stuff that’s core to who we are. Specialist forums such as WWE’s Facebook page or Footballfancast.com fall into the hot category. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: 59 per cent of sports fans say they’re bigger fans since engaging with their team through social.

What prominence will social media have in the marketing mix this summer, around Euro 2012 and the Olympic Games? Is one more suited to social media than the other?

Both are vast and intense social experiences, riddled with opportunities. Let’s see if non-sponsors use social as the obvious way to share the limelight. Will the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games manage to enforce its very specific social media restrictions? (The International Olympic Committee’s social media guidelines restrict Tweets, blogs or social media postings that “report on competition or comment on the activities of other participants” and those that do not “conform to the Olympic spirit and fundamental principles of Olympism”. The first of which is very difficult to avoid, the second very difficult to define.) Will Danny Boyle use social to break down the walls of the opening ceremony at the Olympics? And which will trend harder: the Euro 2012 final, with its team fan bases, or the men’s 100m final, the ultimate sports spectacle?

Do the demographics of sports fans suggest social media marketing can work better than in other markets?

Social feeds on our innate desire to belong – a big part of why sports fans congregate – in stadia, in the pub and in social media. Sports fans over-index against social media usage. Those accessing sports information daily from smartphones grew 76 per cent last year in the US (comScore). Social media is the saviour of sports sponsorship, giving rights holders and brands a new place to learn what their consumers want. Social is the key driver behind a new era of sports fan engagement.

Does social media marketing in sports have the ability to build brand awareness beyond the traditionally associated products such as beer, cars, soft drinks, gambling etc?

There are naturally “social products”, such as beers and mobile phones, where sport and social are a natural fit. But every consumer is a sports fan at some point – even if it’s just during Wimbledon. Look at Procter &Gamble’s “proud sponsor of mums” – it’s not what many would associate with a “sport campaign”, but it uses sport and social to great effect. But social media is not a panacea. If your campaign isn’t fed by strong sports fan insight, just like any other channel, it won’t work.

Whilst the broadcasters fight over who should show the match, LED advertisers are already reaching everyone who watches it.

The news that landlady Karen Murphy has won her court case makes for interesting reading. For those that don’t know the story, Ms Murphy has been using the cheaper Greek Nova service to show EPL Football in her Portsmouth pub and Sky and The Premier League are not happy about it. This is a complex case that will run and run, bringing up many issues. The one issue I want to focus on here is, that if this ruling does mean half a dozen different EPL channels in the UK, what does that do for advertisers?

These unmonitored audiences outside of the licensed territories do have a value though, and probably cost nothing to the advertiser.  Arguably, advertisers on those channels benefit as they will get UK reach for free, and for anyone who has watched Sky Sports in a bar abroad will know that Sky’s advertisers get extra reach too. You can understand why broadcasters want to get involved

However, what if you really want to reach everyone watching football in the UK? Up until now, booking spots on Sky and ESPN would have it covered.  This may not be the case in future. You could place ads on all of the relevant channels, but that will send the cost and wastage spiralling.

There is another alternative to reach every UK football viewer: it is a much cheaper cpt that TV advertising on Sky and ESPN, guarantees you reach every fan in your market regardless of the channel they are watching, online overage is included, and as an added bonus you get coverage across the rest of the world effectively for free.

Step forward LED perimeter board advertising – wherever that game is broadcast you’ll be in the action. While the legal teams thrash it out behind the scenes, the clever money is guaranteeing coverage everywhere, it’s not too late to join in…

Richard Peters, Head of Strategy & Insight

richard.peters@sportsrevolution.co.uk

Sifting through the numbers there are a few sites out there that have an enormous amount of players, but very few page views, suggesting that data acquisition may have been the goal. Entice the player in with a great offer, get them to sign up, sell their data. If the players get bored and go elsewhere, it doesn’t matter, because the revenue has been realised.

What about the sites with a large number of visits from their pool of players? Maybe a daily visit to one page, indicating that a deeper relationship is being developed. This could be because a subscription was paid and the player wants their money’s worth, or it could simply be that the game is engaging and the players want to come back. Great for publisher brand building and good for sponsors too.

The third option is the sites that high page views compared to the numbers of players they have. High visits are a by-product of this but some sites can boast 200+page views per player per month, an astonishing amount that cannot happen by accident. Those sites undoubtedly make their money primarily from display advertising – the more pages viewed, the more ads served, the more revenue.

All the above are perfectly legitimate business models – publishers should consider what features their games should have to fulfil their model, and advertisers/sponsors should consider which sort of games they should associate with. The only golden rule is be straight with the players from the beginning, and games can benefit everyone involved.

Connecting fans through dual screening has been talked about a lot over the last few years but what is the potential for brands and for businesses? By using existing in-stadia technology (LED perimeter advertising), our army of Twitter followers and our “real fan” platform FootballFanCast.com, we ran a live blog experiment and the results were encouraging for both brands and the future of the project.

What is a live blog? A hosted real time chat room including up to the minute commentary from the host, comments from fans, quizzes, questions and competitions.

Queue a televised match between Manchester United and Aldershot Town for the Carling Cup Fourth Round (Sky Sports 2). With a little push via in game advertising on the LED perimeter boards and our online media channels we were able to create a forum where fans interacted in real time.

To get sports fans to interrupt their viewing and engage with a second media is a hard thing to do but when they do it the engagement is deep. On an isolated campaign for a brand many people were not aware of we had approximately 1,000 new visitors to our live blog, they stayed for over 40 minutes and shared the event over 150 times via social networking sites. This tells us there is a desire for fans to share opinion in real time.

There are many benefits for brands associated with hosting these events for fans, such as increasing brand awareness, engagement and brand loyalty. The potential for brands to give something back over and above a simple display advertising campaign is something we are really excited about and it is one of the ways we aim to enhance the fan experience. In the coming months we hope to add the ability to interact via mobile as well, with fans’ man of the match and other linked solutions.

It’s a new and novel approach and one that many will no doubt appreciate. We can see gaming, car and drinks brands being keen to host these sorts of events.

Although the initial experiment was an isolated event it shows there is bags of potential for this sort of real time content to compliment real time events.

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Just in case you’ve missed your Mashable updates, here’s the scoop in a Tweet-size sentence: The social graph is the moving map of connections across the social web. The interest graph refers specifically to connections made around shared interests.

Kind of in the same way that ‘marketing’ refers to all comms channels and ‘sports marketing’ refers specifically to comms that leverage people’s interest in sport.

This shift of attention towards interests as social glue, rather than friendship, would seem like a good thing for the sports marketing industry. The interest graph throws a spotlight on the power of shared passions to bring huge crowds together, regardless of whether or not they’re friends. Just what marketing likes: engagement and scale.

The interest graph is nothing new, it’s just got a new place to live.

But, do not rest on your laurels. Now every dorm-room coder, internet entrepreneur and social-VC will be looking to build the next Pinterest. Attention will quickly turn to ‘the big interests’  to build around. A 10-minute google will reveal sports fans as the most content-hungry and social of them all.

When building social communities around interests, digital know-how is only part of the solution.  Too often we see award-winning digital agencies deliver immersive applications that despite dazzling user-experience, intuitive functionality and enormous budgets, go next to nowhere. They prioritise production over demand.

If you want to engage a crowd, knowing what they want and need is critical.  Sports marketers on all 3 sides – rights holder, brand and agency must remember that deeper-than-ever-before audience insight is where successful social stuff starts.

Here’s the sell.  Spend some time with our Insight team who live and breathe what it really means to be a sports fan…and where the opportunities to really connect lie.  Come and talk to us about our portfolio of ‘social assets’ that are built off sound sports fan insights.  See it all in action in StadiumLab.

Interests are getting even more interesting!

Sports marketing can learn a hell of a lot from the basics of the app economy.  It’s all about rituals.

Apps offer us cute little ways to ‘solve life’s little problems one app at a time’ or grab some simple fun on the run.  The most successful apps dig deeper and stick to doing one thing well.  They find very specific everyday needs and desires and place a solution in the palm of our hand.  What time is my next train? Where can I get a good burger?  Which of my friends are nearby right now?

The app economy is a marketplace where only the most intensely insightful products rise up the charts.  These products feed on our behaviour, our patterns, our rituals.

Sports marketing, particularly sponsorship, is built on the idea of tapping into people’s passions.  Passions give a brand traction, often on a massive scale.  This is all well and good if it’s only reach you’re after.  But, as we all know, big reach just isn’t good enough anymore.  Sports fan ship gives us the opportunity to go much deeper.  To do what apps do – infiltrate everyday life and offer solutions where they’re welcomed.

To do this, we need to do what the smartest app makers do.  We need to break the fan journey down into bite sized moments.  Before, during and after the match isn’t enough.  We need to map fan rituals – those habitual hot spots where there just might be a way to make a special moment easier or even better.  And we need to do that for every kind of fan, from die-hard devotees to family fun seekers.

- 67 of 100 self-proclaimed ‘F1 Fans’ said the main reason they watch the race is because it’s on a Sunday afternoon and they find it relaxing.

- 73 of 100 premiership match-goers can’t bring themselves to throw away their old tickets even though they never look at them again.

- 77 out of 100 female Wimbledon attendees put ‘chance to dress up’ in the top 3 reasons they head for SW19 each year.

Imagine the fun you could have with these insights.  Learn from the app approach.  Work harder to uncover what work’s best.

Sports Business International February

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