The sports and greater sports business world keeps getting more complex.
It’s normal for industries to evolve day after day and year after year, but it sure does feel like the sports world gets involved in every new trend capturing people’s attention. It’s the blessing and the challenge of being part of an industry that’s driven by passion, unconditional fandom, and an endless supply of stories, characters, and live events.
But that’s kinda the point of it all.
Sports evolves with the mediums because it intertwines with the means to the important ends of connecting with others and feeling part of a community. Sports serves as the keystone upon which conversations, stories, and relationships are built.
As the universe gives way to the metaverse and gaming (or, at least, interacting in video game environments all day), the sports world already looks to be part of it. Gamers have been buying up ‘skins’ for their avatars to wear for a while now, sports teams have their own esports teams across a number of game titles, and organizations are imagining complex venues inside games, complete with sponsor signage and all. But look closer and those key underlying principles come to light — playing games is a pastime to do while you’re spending time with friends. You wear the skin featuring your favorite team partly because it’s a signal to other gamers to engage if they also like that team, an invitation to connect and interact.
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The gaming ecosystem has also helped to usher in connection through related communities, backed by an array of diverse Discord servers and through other live audio rooms (like video games without the games) such as Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. If sports are among the original points of community and social connection, they can now give life to smaller, but highly engaged micro-communities. Just as gamers in Fortnite can come together because of their mutual love for the team, how can sports teams serve a similar platform?
If fans playing games can come together because of mutual interest in a given team, could sports teams do the vice-versa — help fans of the team connect with each other around additional interests? Fans of the team that play the same video game, or that have young kids, or perhaps those that are also CrossFit adherents, etc. etc.?
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We’re used to chasing big numbers in sports, but big communities don’t feel quite as special as they once did. And the world of non-fungible tokens — better known by the ubiquitous acronym NFTs — is serving to build these more exclusive, connective communities. In sports, they may become the new loyalty program — tracking/rewarding how fans engage, introducing those with similar passions and avidity levels an opportunity to connect.
Yes, there is the fiscal side to NFTs, with the community conversation often superseded by aspirations of making big bucks; creating financial assets more than communities. It’s not unlike the promise of gambling’s arrival to US sports. In the short-term it means big-money deals with sponsorships AND, the hope is, more engagement from bettors seeking to get an edge and to watch their wagers play out in real time. The long-term hope is that gambling can be an entry point for fans, as those buoyed by winning bets develop a genuine passion for the players and the team that helped win them money. And, vice-versa perhaps for teams, that existing fans become even more engaged as they learn to gamble.
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Many fans are learning about money lines and parlays through their favorite teams and team/league partner activations. Fans will likely soon learn about blockchain technology through sports, too, as ticketing evolves in that direction. Other fans are also learning about NFTs, DAOs, OTT, AR, and other new technology (even non-acronyms!) Sports will continue to be a key platform through which consumers try out new technology and learn new ideas that they’ll take with them to other parts of their life.
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Sports have been aspiring to transcend into lifestyle brands for years now. Look at the sports fan experience today — many will arrive at a game in the Uber or Lyft lot, they can order food [or even merch] to their seats often through a partner like Postmates or Doordash or even GoPuff. They’ll check the weather, make betting-like predictions, and (I’ve even seen) purchase and manage insurance plans all in the team app. For years, many in the west have expected Facebook or Instagram to become more like the super apps of the east such as WeChat and Alipay. Could sports apps start to head in that direction, too, with more of fans’ lives orbiting around their favorite sports? (You can read a good article about ‘super apps’ here if you’re interested)
The pinnacle is when one’s team becomes part of their identity, such that they wear the brand (in the physical and/or digital worlds) and feel a part of a community. This same feeling is starting to prevail in communities that form and germinate from fans of influencers, be they musicians, YouTubers, TikTokers, etc. In the influencer world, fans show they’re part of the club through buying subscriptions, emoting digital gifts, and, yes, purchasing NFTs. Many NFTs are now laden with experiential benefits, too, such as attending a Gary Vaynerchuk event, getting face time with their favorite influencer, access to exclusive events or merchandise, and more. Which influencer’s NFT will come with tickets to a game or series of games, or access to exclusive team swag and experiences? Influencers could be a viable entry point for fans to further connect and engage with the teams they love or could grow to love, too.
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Athletes were among the ‘original’ influencers. And they are starting to seize the opportunities presented to them in the increasingly influencer-focused economy. Leagues and college programs are facilitating athlete success on social more than ever now. They want to turn their athletes into influencers with the hopes they’ll reach and cultivate more fans. Many leagues and teams already work with the traditional influencers, but they’re starting to realize there are powerful social and digital influencers who are already on their payroll.
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The past year has ushered in rapid evolution of new ideas and technologies in sports and beyond. The majority are still wrapping their head around the opportunities that lie with blockchain, NFTs, influencers, web3, metaverse, and super apps and super brands, and the accessory mediums that pop up within and around these areas.
But, as becomes more clear every year — as things keep changing, the foundations that make the sports business great only get stronger. There’s passion, connection, community, and identity. I don’t know what 2022 will bring for sports, but I have little doubt we’ll all find a way to cheer and take it all in together.
On episode 208 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Blake Zimmerman, Director of Social and Emerging Strategy, Texas Tech University.
Listen to episode 209 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Blake Zimmerman, Director of Social and Emerging Strategy, Texas Tech University.
Not enough time, not enough people, not enough budget and resources.
No matter the size and scale, pro or college, American or abroad — the next department that says they wouldn’t love to have more time, budget, resources, and people will be the first (okay, there are some exceptions).
But bigger isn’t always better — except when it is. And smaller and more agile isn’t always better — except when it is. That’s why it was so enlightening to learn from Michael Murtaugh, who has spent time in college athletics marketing at a number of levels, most recently at Iowa (a B1G school with a relatively massive budget and department) and today at Montana (a Big Sky school with a relatively smaller budget and department, compared to its FBS counterparts). Both schools are D-I, both have passionate fanbases, and both have talented student-athletes that achieve in their sport and their studies. But when it comes to marketing programs and resources, Murtaugh and his team at Montana must be more mindful of how they spend their time and use their resources. The team is leaner and the initiatives perhaps a bit more scrutinized. However, both school A and school B face challenges; they’re just — different.
“I’m glad that I’ve been at both levels…I think there’s a lot of value in each [experience]. I don’t think one’s better or worse than the other. They’re just different and you just have to figure out what’s important to you and what matters to you,” said Murtaugh, who also spent time at Arkansas State, Western Kentucky, SUNY Brockport, and even an internship at Clemson. “You talked about having a lot of people at Iowa — .the department is probably two and a half times the size of the one here in Montana — so sometimes things might take a little bit longer to get implemented just because of the layers, where here you talk to one or two people.
“Now there’s good and bad to that because on the way up you’re like, well, did you think about this, this and this? And you’re like, oh, I guess I didn’t. Whereas if you’d had less people you might make some errors because things hadn’t been thoroughly checked through, so then you have to say oops, won’t do that again.”
There are the pluses and minuses of the bigger departments and budgets. But one truth is that more resources means the athletic department gets to take more swings. When you shrink the ledger, each investment becomes that much more of a big deal. And therefore each decision must stand up to more scrutiny. If everything’s important, then nothing’s important. And if you try to execute every idea, well, nothing gets done. For college athletics marketers, there is a constant balance at play. Because there are so many sports, so many fan segments to reach and engage, and a mandate to make every sport and event the best possible. For Murtaugh and his colleagues, it means they have to identify and focus on what matters most.
“It’s really trying to figure out what is important. What should we be focusing our energy on? Because if we’re focusing our energy on like ten different things, we’re not really doing anything. And so what good is that?…,” he said. “And so it’s like, what are some of the things that are fads that it might be nice to know this now, but six months from now, it’s going to be nothing again. Do we spend our time on that?…You just have to kind of try to figure it out along the way, see industry trends, see what other people are doing, see what other people are having success with.”
Murtaugh also discussed how that mindset permeates their strategy 24/7/365. It’s not just about each game, each season, and each academic year. The volume and the speed of college sports necessitates always staying (or trying to stay) a couple steps ahead.
“What are some of things that we just cannot do without?,” Murtaugh asked rhetorically, reinforcing the equation of economy. “But what are some of the things that we want to do in the future?…Let’s start putting a plan together so when we’re talking in March and April of next year we’re hitting the ground running. So [come] summer we’ll be ready to go and we won’t have any downtime because we’re already going to have our kind of our marching orders because we already know where we want to go.”
Regardless of size, resources, or any number of variables, all organizations could benefit from the scrutiny and planning Murtaugh preaches. Plans, preparation, and certainly execution cannot happen in a silo, however. Cross-team coordination is becoming more valuable and expected than ever. Part of it is aligning goals, to be sure, but something else is at play here, too — a convergence around content. While there are different skillsets and tactics that permeate each aspect of a college athletics department, content is currency for most — telling their story, conveying their messages, and winning over their customers — content amplifies and is often the foundation of those efforts. Murtaugh talked about the various hats college sports pros have to wear, regardless of department. It’s not always ideal, but it’s often out of necessity (and increasingly so).
“Marketing departments are kind of becoming game operations/content creators. In my opinion that’s a different person…it’s a different brain [and] mindset,” Murtaugh explained. “So to be hopping back and forth from one to the other — I think that can be a little bit taxing and I think that’s why you’re starting to see some people [specialize]…
“I don’t think that we’ll ever be at a point where we’ll be able to have you just do [one thing], because I do think that there is some benefit to having multiple positions, but who’s the one that’s saying enough is enough? Like, alright, I’m already doing this and this and this. I don’t want to do this either, but it has to get done and you’re the only person that can do it.”
Back to the main idea at hand — that ubiquitous challenge of always wanting for more resources — because many of Murtaugh’s notions come together here. It’s about making each other better, the whole ‘sum of the parts is greater than the whole’ principle. There sure will be times when we have to wear the less familiar hats, but when we work together, align goals, and maximize the skills and resources at disposal as a group — that’s how an athletic department (or any organization) operates at beyond 100%. Murtaugh summed it up perfectly:
“You get so much more accomplished when you’re a bunch of we’s instead of a bunch of me’s.”
On episode 208 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Michael Murtaugh, Assistant Athletic Director, Marketing and Community Relations, University of Montana Athletics.
In November 2021, Instagram released a new way to collaborate with other users and to create organically viral content themes across the platform. It’s the ‘Add Yours’ sticker, which Instagram describes as ‘a sticker that creates public threads in Stories.’ To use it, just select the sticker when creating your IG Story post and enter the reply prompt for fans. Then, when fans reply their avatars will be seen on your original Sticker and a new sticker with the same prompt will be seen in each fan respondent’s Story by their followers. It’s still fresh, even for the rapidly evolving world of social, but use cases and ideas are beginning to bear fruit in sports social and beyond.
One of the first campaigns to take off came from a call for users to post a picture of themselves and their pet and, in exchange, a tree would be planted. Because of the meta nature of the Add Yours sticker — each reply to the sticker creates another degree of separation from the original post, kind of like an old-fashioned chain letter — it became unclear who was responsible for all those trees, which numbered approximately 2.3 million.
While tons of Instagram users found themselves connected by a love of pets and/or dendrophilia (a love of trees), the opportunity is also powerful in sports, where fans are connected by their passion for the team. Duke Men’s Basketball recently tipped off their 2021-22 season in a much-anticipated Champions Classic matchup against Kentucky at Madison Square Garden. And since their millions of fans around the world couldn’t join them at MSG, the team used the Add Yours sticker to help the community feel connected.
They posted two Add Yours stickers in their Stories, one calling for fans to share how they were watching the big game, and another inviting fans to post their game night outfits. As each fan posted their own Story in response (which also reposted the same sticker), the movement grew and more fans participated. The Duke account itself could only see the first-degree respondents, if you will, but each subsequent response to the responses (is your head spinning yet) begat more participating fans, growing the initial flake to a snowball — err, collections of snowballs — of Duke fandom.
Bundesliga football [soccer] club Borussia Dortmund similarly activated their worldwide fanbase but took it a step further in resharing some of the responses sent their way, kind of like retweeting a fan’s reply, but in IG Stories instead. And it got even more meta when a fan reposted their repost to share their excitement about the team sharing her post. (This new IG feature can get comically meta). The club asked fans to share their gameday moment and they clearly got several great responses. They picked out a few of their favorites to repost to show fans they were listening. But consider the movement they started — but instead of tons of dog and cat pictures like the example cited earlier, it was a viral chain of Borussia Dortmund passion.
User-generated content (UGC) is powerful in sports, where fans were accustomed to cheering in unison at arenas and stadiums, they now channel their collective roar on digital platforms. The Adds Yours sticker is one way to help fans connect with each other, but it’s an accelerant and firestarter for UGC. It’s not the most effective method for the brand or team to collect and reshare the best UGC. Some organizations try their best to curate and collect UGC through hashtags (and then DM each user to get permission to use the content), but others are increasingly turning to more effective ways to collect and clear content from fans at scale using new technology.
Greenfly’s +Engage product is empowering teams, leagues, brands, and more all over the world to invite fans to submit photos and videos, which come into the organization’s Greenfly channel automatically organized for review and download (And cleared for use). Some are also using +Engage to collect fan data, source creators, and activate sponsorships. Check out a few examples here, here, and here. As Instagram’s new sticker makes clear, some of the best content creators in sports are fans, and there’s an increasing array of opportunities to activate that fan-generated content, with the right strategy and solution in place.
Listen to episode 208 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Michael Murtaugh, Assistant Athletic Director, Marketing and Community Relations, University of Montana Athletics.
Listen to episode 207 of the Digital and Social Media Sports podcast, in which Neil chatted with Erin Hodges, Digital Communications Manager, Colorado Rockies.
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