General Sports Business – Page 3 – Digital and Social Media Sports

Fan Development, General Marketing, General Sports Business

Turning Casual Into Lifelong Fans: The Opportunity and Challenge for F1

The rise of Formula 1 in the US has been remarkable. And the sport’s path to primetime — their media rights deal went from $5 million per year in the US to nearly $100 million when the next deal was signed — is an illustration of how sports can develop fandom.

It’s perhaps a bit reductionist to say ‘Drive to Survive’ in summing up the league’s explosion in popularity in the States. The Netflix docuseries had a significant effect, to be sure, but it’s what happened before and after that created fans of the sport, not just fans of the show.

A milestone that preceded Drive to Survive was Liberty Media’s acquisition of F1, completed officially in early 2017, which took a sport with an air of luxury and a fanbase mostly in their 50s and older and instilled a culture and sense of urgency to reach a younger and more diverse demographic. Drive to Survive may have felt like a culmination of that increased openness and focus on content, but it was the confluence of factors that arose alongside the Netflix show that put the growth into full throttle.

“What really kickstarted a lot of this content creation and testing out new formats was around 2020 when we had free time essentially to do whatever we wanted to do, and we had time to think,” said Nirupam Singh, who has spent years working with motorsports and today helps motorsports teams and business with sponsorship development. “That gave a lot of content creators and new people who wanted to binge that show the perfect opportunity to speak about a new topic that they had no clue about, but they were interested in, and they went and created new content around it on TikTok, Instagram, all these platforms.”

The pandemic and Netflix for days, the rapid rise of TikTok, the onslaught of creators in every interest area in the world — the elements were all there for fans to discover and then dive deeper into whatever caught their fancy. And for many that meant consuming more F1 content and more creators serving that demand. The teams inside Formula 1 also seized the opportunity, emulating some of the best practices of American sports leagues that had been crushing the social and content game for years.

“Now that F1 saw what the NBA and the NFL are doing, a lot of that stuff was then copied over and translated to what we can do in motorsports,” said Singh, who also works with tech companies on their marketing and email campaigns. “So the teams will look at it, the social media admins will look at it and they’re going to try and replicate something similar.”

The F1 teams are doing their thing, too — the content is hitting and the fan engagement is growing — they’re in that upper part of the hockey stick growth. And the American way is kicking in in more ways than just content, it’s also coming in the form of monetization. It’s all flying high now, but F1 also faces a challenge that all sports leagues face, maximizing the revenue today without sacrificing the fans and opportunities of tomorrow.

“Now everyone is seeing this amazing sport, and the sport has a lot of reach and level of success that every single sponsor and everyone involved wants to capitalize on. But that’s the problem,” said Singh. “They want to capitalize on it, not maintain it. So as soon as they got the fan now all bets are off and [it’s like] ‘Okay, we made as much money from you as possible, [now] ‘Bye’.

“That’s what I want to really avoid; how can we maintain and keep these fans over a longer period of time, because you don’t just become a fan by watching one thing, you become a fan over time, seeing it multiple times, and then you start finding like-minded people…

“There needs to be better strategies and better systems in place to nurture these fans over a longer period of time. These fans, if you talk about demographics, are much younger now. The age of the fan base has shifted from being 50+ to much lower, 18-35, so these fans are going to grow up with this sport over a longer period of time. So how can we maintain that so that as these fans grow up, they can pass down this passion of theirs to their kids and to their peers?”

There’s a lot to unpack there in the impassioned plea from Singh, who can recall days growing up when being a motorsports fan put him squarely in the minority. And if fandom isn’t cultivated, it can disappear as quickly as it came. Pull out the key factors Singh alluded to — repeat exposure and reliability, finding like-minded fans — community building, and passing that fandom from parents to kids and from old to young — generational fandom. Some of that the sports leagues and teams can affect directly, but things like community building, creators and personalities leading such community, parents plopping their kid in front of a grand prix, water cooler conversations — that’s in the hands of others and all the leagues and teams can and should do is set them up for success.

The new sports fan is different, too. While those of us who came of age in the ’90s or earlier mostly came to sports from, well, the sport, there are so many more avenues to elicit interest and fandom now. Many sports leagues have embraced all these tangential interests that emanate from the platform they have — fashion, gaming, music, and even just the drama and intrigue that surrounds the sports and athletes themselves. There are more fan segments than ever and such diversity of affinities and interests can be both a blessing and a curse.

“Because the fan base is now so large, there are so many different levels of interest and personalities and people that find certain things interesting and certain things they don’t find interesting,” said Singh. “So it’s a unique challenge, that’s for sure. And I’m sure the NBA and the NFL have the same issues and they’re all tackling the main issue there — how do we keep these fans and attract more fans down the road?”

There are more types of fans and pathways to fandom than ever before, and that’s great. It’s also a challenge for sports organizations to try and wrap their head around all these unique fan segments, communities, and sub-communities — there is no single or linear fan journey. There is no single story to tell or content to create and it can be intimidating to concede that we don’t have all the answers and don’t understand the factors behind every fan’s affinity. The sports that thrive moving forward will be those that foster open frameworks, that provide a platform for an ecosystem to develop and thrive. The factors that coalesce to drive fandom will continue to evolve in the future, but what keeps fans engaged — the community, the connections, the conversations — will stand the test of time.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH NIRUPAM SINGH

READ THE SNIPPETS

Content Strategy, Digital, General Marketing, General Sports Business, Social Media ROI

The Art and Science of Winning Fans: Strategies for Driving Engagement, Growth, and Revenue in Sports Marketing

There was a pivotal moment early in Dan Gadd‘s career when he was with the Chicago Bears. Social media emerged and the Bears had content crushing on its website that presumably would also crush on social. But then it didn’t.

“We had to take a step back and go, wait a minute, what’s going on here?” said Gadd, who today is the SVP of Growth for the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA. “There’s a different audience out here. This is not the avid group [visiting the website], this is just people who have followed the account because they’re a fan of the team, but they’re not paying attention to us on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. They may be tuning in on Sundays, but that’s about it. And all of a sudden, a group of us kind of went, ‘Hey, there’s a bigger opportunity here because these people don’t come to our events, they’re not on our email lists, they’re not coming to our website — we don’t really have contact with these people and if we can get them thinking about the team more we have a chance to actually strengthen the fan base here.’ So we went hard at work at basically building out content buckets and just testing a bunch of stuff…”

There was a different audience out there. One that paid attention to the team, but in a different way than the existing diehards who regularly visited the official team website. And that appreciation of understanding the audience first — what moves them and why, what commands their attention within the crowded feeds and why — has served as a throughline for much of Gadd’s career, from multiple NFL teams and work with big brands to his post today with one of the most successful teams in the continually rising WNBA.

Marketing is about evoking something from consumers/fans/audiences — a feeling, a desire, an action. The fan journey is not necessarily linear, but the formula for fan development and activation involves a set of feelings, desires, and actions. And over nearly two decades, Gadd has led teams to understand the big picture, the forest among the trees. I recently spoke with him in a wide-ranging conversation chock full of insights, articulating the models that best prevail in today’s competitive, part art, part science-driven environment.

Don’t Make Ads, Make Content

There was another epiphany in Gadd’s career — not so much an epiphany, but a determination to not blindly follow the status quo (the dreaded ‘the way things have always been done’) and challenge long-existing paradigms. When Gadd was at Taylor Strategy, after previously working with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Chicago Bears where the content, really, was the marketing (the beauty of sports), he realized the Mad Men era of advertising was still the way brands functioned in the 21st century, focusing more on the brand than the audience they were trying to reach. Gadd tells it beautifully, so let him take it away:

“The creative agencies, and I still think there’s a lot of this in the industry, were using processes built for TV advertising that go back to the 50s, and they were using them as content processes. So it was like, ‘What is our brand messaging? What is our brand equity? What is our product differentiation?’ And that was the start of the creative process. Then they basically were producing ads and then they would post them on Facebook and Twitter, and then all the brands were saying, ‘Oh, organic reach is dead.’ No, the content’s not content, it’s advertising…

“It kind of hit me. I was like, ‘Well, if I’m going to go down, I’m going to go down telling clients what I think they need to hear instead of what they want to hear.’ So I came back from [a holiday break] and, I don’t know if this was a coincidence or not, but there was a brainstorm on a brand that I wasn’t on yet, Tide, who was just getting into the NFL sponsorship space that year. And I threw out an idea around the Draft and I wrote it out exactly the way I would have done it if I was in the NFL. I mean, this is what you need to do. They bought it and we signed the top 40 prospects going into that NFL Draft and the deal was the contract went into effect if they were the first pick for a team. So we got their first post and that thing went absolutely haywire.

“It was the start of the ‘Our Colors’ campaign (for Tide) in the NFL. And we dominated the other brands in that Draft and that kind of turned everything around for me. Like, okay, I’m now going to go in and I’m going to put the best things I can [in front of clients], I’m going to sell the things that are going to work in this space. I’m not going to keep putting things in front of clients that I don’t believe in. But I had to build out a communication model on how are you going to now tell people that are built on these other processes that you have to flip all this?

So I started building out models like the creative process has to start with research and insights. You can’t jump right into brainstorming and it can’t start with questions like ‘What is our brand equity’ and ‘What is our brand message?’ It has to start with ‘What are people interested in?’ Otherwise, it’s not going to work in this space.”

Fan Activity (or Inactivity) Can Inform Everything

There are constant feedback loops from the countless fan touchpoints (and data) in today’s age. Every content piece that pops can inform another phase of the fan journey and department in the organization — and vice-versa. In Gadd’s time with the Atlanta Falcons, there was a culture of collaboration that realized such a utopian view of execution, which Gadd has now brought to the Atlanta Dream. Each anecdote Gadd told in our conversation carried pragmatic insights and principles that can guide the best teams and leaders moving forward. Take it away, Dan:

“We had to go from just creating great content and trying to grow the fan base and do all these great digital executions to how can we drive as much revenue as possible?,” said Gadd, recounting his time with the Falcons (part of AMBSE, which included Atlanta United and Mercedes-Benz Stadium) “The couple of us rolled up our sleeves and said, ‘Well, we know we can crush these cost per view metrics with paid social, let’s see how good we can get on the lead gen side and drive people through a funnel essentially and help the ticket team out’…

“I was in collaboration with (UX Manager) Austin Klubenspies and [Digital Strategist] Greg Urbano looking at our UI/UX, and I talked to Greg about, you know, ‘Hey, what is Google saying in terms of what’s happening on our site when they get to these pages?’ And then I would be talking to Eric about, Hey, we need to either tweak this on this page, or I need another graphic, this one popped and we got 30 leads in two hours, I need another graphic that hits on the same nerve. Then we’d get reports back from Warren Parr the ticket sales director, about, Hey, how this batch of leads is doing this or this batch of leads is doing that; okay, we need to get a little more information on the page because they don’t know what they’re getting into. So the back and forth on that stuff was just unbelievable…”

It’s pretty cool when silos are truly broken down and each team member — it is a team — knows how their efforts affect other team members across the array of fan journeys and touchpoints. Content and fan experiences connects to marketing and community which connects to fan development and sales and partnerships.

“There’s a system to this where we’re looking very much at how much reach and entertainment can we provide and attention can we have people spend with our content?” said Gadd, speaking about the principles that guided him with the Falcons and today with the Dream. “We want our content team to push the best content they can, but then we’re using paid ads to come behind and retarget and do all the intentional ticket sales or retail sales pieces.

“We’ve got it basically as a four-part engine. We’ve got to have the best content possible that goes out and earns people’s attention. Then we got to get the retargeting. We got to find the hand-raisers who watch these videos for ten seconds, who interacted with something, who came to our website, and then create all these and get as many of those people as possible — if the content’s doing its work, we should have huge retargeting audiences, which we generally do, and then we push as hard as we can on the paid social side to use those retargeting audiences and drive them through the ticket sales funnel. And our ticket team is in love with it. And then we look at like, what are the conversion rates on the sales calls? And we keep tweaking products until we get it right.”

Finding the Why

There’s an old analysis technique (which originated with Toyota) called The Five Whys. While it initially existed to solve problems, the framework is useful in many scenarios. It’s also a close relative of the typical toddler whose repetitive ‘Why’ questions can often lead to meaningful revelations. When you employ the Whys for a given piece of content or a marketing execution or a partnership activation — it ends up leading to some constructive conversations and insights. Gadd didn’t necessarily preach The Five Whys, but the understanding of how each piece fits together, how each decision should be based on some true belief, and the importance of a common goal — these are key tenets to what continues to drive Gadd’s success as a leader.

“I think the biggest thing is you can’t have a team if you don’t have a common purpose. One of the things we’ve talked about, between ticket sales and marketing, is we are absolutely driving ticket sales, but the bigger brand goal is to drive demand, and that’s something both ticket sales and marketing can do…

“I think one of the key things when I got to the Falcons was we did a couple things to make sure that everybody had the same goals. So we did a thing called Finding the Why, where it was an approach to content, and we made sure every content creator went through finding the why. And it had four key factors…The number one factor was to be a people expert, not a platform or technology expert. Every one of our content producers — and we still talk about this, everywhere I go this will be part of it — to create consistently good content, you have to understand what moves people. That is the magic of being consistently good in the content space. So we make all of our content producers responsible for what is happening. And we’re looking at metrics not to be data geeks, we’re looking at it to understand what’s happening with people when they view our content. But they’re all responsible for trying to build things that earn people’s time and attention.

“So those kinds of things to ground the team and have a common purpose…we want to have as many creative differences and creative ideas, but we want them all going in the same place. We want them going to the same goals of how are we moving people? We’re not producing content because we like it, we’re producing it because we want these people. So we have to understand these people to like it and we have to understand what moves them.”

Engagers are Hand Raisers

There’s an old saying that a salesperson is so good they can ‘sell ice to an Eskimo.’ This is meant as a show of praise, but look at it from a different perspective and you may ask why the marketing team is delivering Eskimos as leads to the sales team in the first place or whether the ice company needs to look at its content or events to not focus so much on individuals for whom getting ice is not an interest.

Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s instructive to think about what we can learn about someone when they engage with content, or who we have in mind when developing the marketing or themes of game presentations and promotions. How can we identify and serve fans and give them what they want, rather than convincing them that what we come up with is what they want? Gadd walks through this wonderfully:

“I think one of the things that we’re having the most success with is [to] generate as much attention and interest as we can with the social content and find those hand-raisers but then come behind it — and one of the best things that we’ve done is started to build out these really great game experiences. So it’s not just single-game tickets. We’re now building experiences around them.

“The one that we’ve had the most success with right now is a product we created called Daughter Date Night. It has been a great seller for us, now this is year two. And when we create those retargeting audiences and find all those hand-raisers and put this in front of them, it’s magic in terms of the sales. And it’s been something that we can really leverage, especially in games where we would otherwise have a hard time selling. Now all of a sudden we’ve got an experience…

“It’s always what is the value prop that is not going to just bring people in to the database, but is actually going to get us people that come to that game? Then the next year, Adam Boliek and his team are calling those buyers and trying to see if they can buy a five-game package or a ten or whatever. We talk a lot about what is the value that we’re putting in front of people to make them take behaviors that we want, and I think experiences is one of them. But also really attractive five game and ten game partial plans; we have a lot of discussion about that. Our theme games, our halftimes, our giveaways — all of those things we’re trying to really build out. We have a matrix for every game and it’s like, okay, what is everything that’s going into this game? And how do we make sure that every game is a very sellable game?”

Putting it into Practice

All of the above articulated a clear framework to understand your audience, create demand with that audience through content and engagement opportunities, and produce a compelling product for that audience. But how do you know where to start? It’s easy to say everybody within a given radius of the arena is a potential game goer and everybody in the world with an Internet connection could become a fan of the team. But that content-to-conversion pipeline benefits from a greater understanding of the target audiences; sure, it’d be great to catch all the fish in the sea, but it sure helps to know the fish you’re after and the best bait for them (an oversimplification, but, hey, it’s an analogy). All that to say, and to reiterate a key tenet espoused by Gadd — be an expert in your audiences. And, therefore, know who you gotta study up on (and why that audience is one worth going after). Gadd does a wonderful job of tying many of the aforementioned ideas together, referencing some of the early work he and his team did with the Dream.

“We did a big market research piece when I first got here and the whole thing was aimed at who are our potential fans? Who are the people that are willing to either change allegiances or adopt an allegiance to our team? Who is willing to come in? We looked at questions like, ‘Would you be willing to come to an Atlanta Dream game?’ And then kind of dug into who those people were, what their interests were, what their background was, and what other behaviors they’re taking.

“So, long story short, we’re kind of looking at this inside-out strategy of the next group out from our current fans is, okay, who are the other basketball fans in Atlanta? And then I think the next ring out from there, and we have some really good data on this, is anybody involved in the youth athletics space. So everything that we’re doing from an organization, even in the community is ratcheted up towards like, Hey, gotta we’ve got to have a value to these audiences and we got to build out a value prop across the board… if we’re doing it right, we can look at what are the conversations that those communities are into, and we can start a tailored content [plan] and get in front of them pretty quick.”

Remember the show Seinfeld? (I hope you do, if not — get to Netflix and binge it ASAP!). Well, one of the neat parts about the show was the moment at the end when all the plot elements would come together and the viewer experiences a magic moment of clarity, when things meet together. While it’s not a perfect analogy here, there’s a similar feeling of something like nirvana, when all the dots connect and the full picture reveals itself. Chase that feeling in developing strategy. Define the sun of the solar system and mix the art and the science to make magic.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH DAN GADD (tons more good stuff not covered in this piece!)

READ THE SNIPPETS

General Sports Business, Social Media, Sports Media

Insights: How Ben Koo and Awful Announcing Navigate the Changing World of Sports Media (and Media in General)

It’s a tough time for the media business. You may have heard. Headlines of layoffs and closures or consolidations in the greater media industry appear way too often. Amidst the ebbs and flows of news and media brands over the years, Awful Announcing has continued on, serving a sports media and business niche, even as competition for attention and the whims of social platforms change the game.

I recently interviewed Ben Koo, CEO, Editor-in-Chief, and primary owner of Awful Announcing and its sister site The Comeback. I often hone in on a theme or two in podcast interviews in these posts, but Koo covered so many interesting topics, let’s touch on a handful of big subjects:

Surviving as Social Media Platforms Discouraged Outbound Traffic
The Polarization and Hot Takes that Social Media Encourages
Understanding Public Sentiment When a Minority Drives Internet/Social Content
Measuring Success in the Multi-Platform Media World
Content Aggregators and Mooches
The Present and Future of the Media Industry

Surviving as Social Media Platforms Discouraged Outbound Traffic

Social media was a boon in the early days, a significant source of referral traffic (I’m old enough to remember going to ESPN.com and browsing for the best stories to read). Then the platforms realized the best way to drive revenue was to keep users on their sites or apps as much as possible. The trend has only gotten worse for publishers and now some algorithms even penalize posts with outbound links.

For sites like Awful Announcing, each algorithm tweak and drop in referral traffic can have a meaningful effect on their business. Koo and his team have to figure out how to balance feeding the platforms with content that’ll drive engagement while still giving fans a reason to click through to the site.

“We’re trying to do more in video,” he said. “We’re trying to be smarter about headlines where we get people interested, but we don’t give away the full story; we’re putting out the most interesting thing about what it is [while] hoping that people want to see more…

“Since Awful Announcing is creating content for a specific audience who’s thirsty for more details it’s not as big of a problem. But it’s still kind of discouraging because we think more people want to [discover] our content, and when it’s being throttled down, just because of new initiatives algorithmically, I don’t think it’s serving the users of those social platforms who have opted in to see our content but are randomly seeing, like, the For You page for Twitter [full] of crypto bots and what have you and Facebook meme pages. I hope it’s a trend that reverses.”

Awful Announcing knows they produce unique content and there’s an audience out there that wants to consume it. It may be more difficult for that audience to discover them and their content, but AA knows if you reach them, they will come (a bastardization of the old Field of Dreams quote, eh?). Koo said their originality, cultivating relationships between the writers and readers, and dedication to expanding their platforms are all key to continued survival in this new era.

Here’s Koo: “I think original content and original voices and being accessible on more platforms, which is something that we’re slowly kind of prioritizing more and more, really good quality voices, and being on more platforms, whether that’s a TikTok, Instagram, we’ve been promoting our content a lot more on Reddit, because I think some people have kind of moved from Twitter to Reddit in terms of content discovery…

“We’re putting in a lot more energy into trying to be at the places where people are because the existing traffic mix has decided that it’s not good for them for other people to drift away from those social media platforms. So we need to be on more platforms. We need to have more original voices. We need to have direct relationships, not only from the site to people, but also writer to readers — so more people following their personal accounts. It’s a major effort and it’s going to affect everyone in media, so we’re trying to figure out the best we can.”

The Polarization and Hot Takes that Social Media Encourages

Social platforms and their prioritization of engagement to reach users have also profoundly affected media across all mediums. Content that elicits a reaction tends to get amplified, and we’ve seen that theme translate to countless debate shows and the rise of hot take artists, with some viewers/readers questioning the authenticity of such dedicated devil’s advocates. It would be easy for Awful Announcing to lean into it, but taking polarizing stances just for the sake of ‘engagement’ is not something Koo and his team want to be about.

“I think it would probably be long-term negative if we were just trying to be dishonest with our opinions for the sake of chasing it…,” he said. “People like to kind of chirp a little bit that we have favorites or this and that, but I just don’t see that. I think our reputation is generally neutral to positive with some nitpicks here and there.

“But we write so much content it’s impossible [to avoid]. I mean, we pissed off Stephen A Smith at South by Southwest. He said last night we should kiss his ass. And then he says Awful Announcing, first off they do good work most of the time, and then he went into [it]. But it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him complain, and it just comes with the territory. I think we do a pretty good job having opinions, covering the space, but not succumbing to the temptation of just hot takes for clicks.”

Understanding Public Sentiment When a Minority Drives Internet/Social Content

Awful Announcing still does lots of work related to its eponymous theme — identifying the bad and good (and otherwise notable) in announcing and sports broadcasting. But talk to any social/digital media professional and they’ll remind you that the vocal minority on Twitter and other social platforms and forums are just that — a loud minority. So while we may get seduced to think a couple dozen comments, let alone a single anonymous commenter, represent the opinion of the masses, the vast majority of the public is not expressing their opinion on these platforms. And even those who do speak up are predisposed to a polarizing take (you generally don’t go on Yelp to give a slightly above-average review, it’s either because you loved it or hated it). Awful Announcing can uncover some of the truth by watching trends and having diverse individuals and perspectives within their ranks.

“[Thinking about] where does the real sentiment lie — one thing is it’s good to have a good group and a diverse group in your own newsroom and on Slack. Kind of like, ‘Do we all hate this person? Oh, there are 3 or 4 people who don’t, and seven people who do, that’s interesting.’ So that is always helpful. I think if we were to put a Twitter thread or a Facebook poll or whatever on just about anyone — Tony Romo, Gus Johnson, Joe Buck, you’re going to get a big cluster of people who are fans, a big cluster of people who are some type of neutral and a big group of haters.

“Announcing is super subjective…Having a good newsroom with diverse opinions, being fair when we do write an opinion piece or critical piece, or putting other people’s comments — like people hated how this person called the end of the game. Another thing is just trends. So sometimes we do polls and we get 4000, 5000 replies and we’ll say ‘Rank the four NFL A booths that are not Amazon.’ So ESPN, ABC, CBS, FOX — which one’s your favorite? And if you saw Romo and Nantz a few years ago when that thing was at 40%, where there are four options, and then a few years later they’re in second or third and they’re at like 20% there’s a trend that we can kind of talk about that more people are getting annoyed with Tony Romo.

Measuring Success in the Multi-Platform Media World

Everything gets more data-driven with each passing year. Writers once were (and at some publications still are) beholden to page views and subscriptions from their individual stories. That’s what pays the bills, and paying the bills, at the end of the day, is pretty much all that matters. There is some nuance for Koo and Awful Announcing, and metrics have evolved a bit for them to define successful content. As someone who loves a good long-form Wright Thompson article (and who lives with data in my day job), it’s good to see the value and insights in different types of metrics for Awful Announcing where, yes, page views matter, but it’s not always that simple in the chase for continued success and revenue.

“We are making investments in video and hiring and whatever, but we are probably more locked in to page views because that’s just what keeps us paid,” said Koo. “We do like front page home page traffic as a big indicator where someone either typed into their [browser] AwfulAnnouncing.com, or they read a story and then clicked on the logo or the home to see what else they could find. Pages per visit is always encouraging to see if we’re doing better there. Time on site helps us with advertiser retention and higher programmatic ad bidding. When people see that people are on here, they’re seeing your ad units for 45 seconds or 2 minutes or three minutes as opposed to 17 seconds.

“[On social media], retweets, impressions on Twitter — how much did this tweet about an article or a piece of video get seen? Generally, as long as we’re profitable and growing, we’re happy. And I try to not have our team too focused on a million different statistics, but I think for us, we’re a little bit different because we’re not part of a larger entity.”

Content Aggregators and Mooches

We’re in the age of aggregation. There are lucrative newsletters based on aggregating headlines and summarizing articles. There are countless social media accounts making hay from lifting a notable quote or anecdote from a robust story by a publication (not to mention the Dov Kleimans of the world, mostly just reposting others’ content). News breakers like Adrian Wojnarowski and Adam Schefter are as well-known as ever, but their ‘bombs’ are merely the first spark for a conflagration of derivative articles, columns, podcasts, and posts. Some question the ethics of professional aggregation, but the bigger issue may be how it affects the ROI of putting resources into original reporting. This excerpt represents a small portion of the discussion with Koo about the themes within aggregation (including a great story involving the Bishop Sycamore story and subsequent documentary), as he touched on how the existing paradigm affects his business decisions around original reporting.

From Koo: “I think as long as you’re referencing where the quotes are from, that’s kind of fair. You’d like to see some links if they use it in an article…

“[Original reporting] doesn’t monetize that well. Every once in a while — we did this story about Kevin Brown, the announcer, getting suspended by the Baltimore Orioles. That story was great. We got a lot of traffic, [and] we do have 2 to 5 original reporting stories, where we’re trying to scoop something, per month, I’d say. Some of them get not that much traffic at all…Whenever we think we have something, we go for it, and as long as someone’s interested and wants to do the work, we go for it. But is there a monetary return on that work? You know, that’s where it’s good to have institutional backing, subscriptions, stuff like that. Because from an advertising standpoint, it’s hard to justify. But we do it because it’s important.”

The Present and Future of the Media Industry

Awful Announcing is nearly 20 years old. In this media environment, that might as well make them a gray-haired lady. So Koo and his team have surely been doing something right over the years. Sitting at the helm of the business for most of the site’s lifetime, Koo has seen much of the media crumbling around him while Awful Announcing keeps going. So it was interesting to get his take on where the greater media and publication industry is headed and what will separate the survivors from the rest in the years to come.

“Niche things that have subscriptions and events seem to be doing well. I think what hasn’t done well is scale for the sake of scale, and that’s like BuzzFeed merging with a bunch of things. I think Vox Media got really big. Complex just sold to a new place…you have basically seen all of these jobs that have been taken away and infrastructure at companies chasing scale for people who were not creating content. I look at us and every dollar that comes in, almost every dollar, a huge percentage goes to people creating content.

“I’m not seeing media as a great investment…even the successes in our space, which are few and far between, if you look at the price tag and what they thought they were going to be, they don’t really [turn] out as big successes, to a certain degree. So yeah, content’s going to be in an interesting place because it definitely helps to have money given to you to become something big and notable and influential, but do the economics work for investors to get their money back? A lot of places have come and gone…”

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Thanks to Ben for his thoughtful and articulate conversation on several compelling topics! The media paradigms may be evolving, but there will always be stories to tell, conversations to start, and content to consume, no matter your interest.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BEN KOO

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College, General Marketing, General Sports Business

How to Create a Distinct Entity around a Sports Partnership: The Duke’s Mayo Bowl Story

Pick a college football bowl game. Any will do. What is the ‘brand’ of the bowl game? Does it have a distinctiveness that colors the perception, even a personality, that’s consistent over time?

The Rose Bowl has its pageantry and the Sugar Bowl has its New Orleans location, but for most of the decades-long history of the dozens of bowl games and their various sponsors over the years, there wasn’t much distinctiveness to speak of. But when Miller Yoho rejoined the Charlotte Sports Foundation (following a stint earlier in his career), he and the team there had a hunch a strong brand could help them stand out and, in doing so, set a foundation to raise all KPIs for the bowl game they ran in Charlotte — today known as the Duke’s Mayo Bowl (previously the Belk Bowl, among others). Because while bowl games are by definition an annual ephemeral entity, creating something distinct can be lasting.

“We’ve taken the long approach in understanding brand building is important,” said Yoho, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, which runs the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, Jumpan Invitational, and other Charlotte-based sports events. “People have seen our strategy for the Duke’s Mayo Bowl — [that] started in 2014 when it was the Belk Bowl, understanding that no one was going to buy a bowl game ticket in October, so why not just be a part of the college football ecosystem? Why not have fun? Why not make jokes? And by doing that, people developed an affinity for the game and it became a destination rather than being matchup-dependent.

“Now we’re still very matchup-dependent, but TV tune-in, things like that — people see the Duke’s Mayo Bowl as something they want to see. And we do have fans coming because of how much fun we are, how we wink at the camera and do all that.”

There are so many bowl games crammed together in December that they can start to blend together, so Yoho and his team sought to be a purple cow amidst the herd. To put the game on the map — which would attract attention, drive more value for the eponymous partner, and increase the platform of the bowl game and the organization behind it overall.

There’s a delicate dance, however, in developing a brand for the bowl game that necessarily comingles with the title sponsor. Because while title sponsors don’t hold those spots in perpetuity (see the history of most any bowl game and the shifts in sponsors over the years), they are right there on the marquee of any and all bowl game brand accounts. The trick is finding those intersections, the north star for any good partnership, and building a relationship of trust and collaboration.

“[The Duke’s Mayo team] is aligned in what we’re trying to do,” said Yoho, who noted that Duke’s Mayo already has strong brand recognition in the south while they aim to increase their growing platform as a national brand. “They understand our mission, we understand theirs. It’s aligned. They push us…There is that constant healthy pushing to be the best possible. They understand and we understand [that] we want our games to stand alone. We want in the crowded bowl season marketplace of 40 other sponsors, we want Duke’s Mayo to be unique, and we want the Duke’s Mayo Bowl to be unique.”

Yoho continued, addressing the harmonious coexistence but distinctiveness of the Duke’s Mayo and Duke’s Mayo Bowl brands.

“Now, you do have two different brands,” he said. “You have the Duke’s Mayo brand and the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. There are places they intersect and there’s places where they probably are not on the same train track — but the train tracks run parallel. I shouldn’t be doing something that they deem inappropriate in the same way that they’re not going to speak about the game in a way that isn’t going to relate.

“So there’s a lot of healthy conversations and dialogue. We meet year-round weekly just to talk through things and activations. And we’re blessed in that they’re like rocket fuel to everything we do, they provide the substance to make all the marketing fun.”

At the most basic level, both entities seek to reach and engage college football fans. That’s who the Duke’s Mayo Bowl wants to attract to buy tickets, tune in to watch, and consume their ancillary content; and to meaningfully reach that audience is why a brand like Duke’s Mayo invests in a bowl game sponsorship in the first place. As Yoho noted earlier, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl is just the name of an annual game until the opponents get announced. Yoho and his team can’t affect those teams, but they can create a brand that gets fans and players of any team excited to get selected for the Duke’s Mayo Bowl by building an appealing brand and reputation. It all works together, too, in that creating a valuable and distinct brand produces a valuable platform for a partner like Duke’s Mayo.

It starts to sound pretty simple and logical in those terms, and Yoho’s remit is clear in that the best thing he can do is create a distinct brand that’s attractive to the broad college football fan base.

“There’s a lot of trial and error and discovery and now it’s become secondhand in terms of understanding, like, all we have to do is understand what college football is, which is probably the most chaotic and flawed of all sports and constantly changing, but lean into that and have fun and understand that it’s also because of that it’s beautiful,” said Yoho, articulating the thinking behind the Duke’s Mayo Bowl’s approach to personality, content, and social media. “I would argue college sports is probably the closest you come to religion in terms of just how you feel in a stadium — so lean into that. A

“And by doing that, it’s the long term payoff of you create a brand that people relate to. And then if you have a brand people relate to…[and then] out of left field [it gets announced that] you’re playing in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl [fans are] excited because they know that it’s a brand that’s fun, it doesn’t take itself too seriously and they’re going to show up and have the time of their lives. So that’s the payoff. It’s a ten-year bet, but it’s paying off.”

The beauty of building a sweeping brand, too, is that it transcends social media and makes all the other elements of the game, and its activations, come together organically. It’s all too common for ‘brand’ and ‘personality’ these days to get narrowly defined as social media copy and content; heck, sometimes ‘voice’ merely considers the tone of your tweets. But look around the Duke’s Mayo Bowl — what you see on the broadcast, the fan experience, the interactive activities around the game — and the consistency stands out, compounding the effectiveness of everything they’re trying to do.

And make no mistake, this all looks like fun and games (and it IS fun and games), but there’s a point to it all. It’s the synergy of putting all the elements together in harmony that leads to outsized results for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, its Duke’s Mayo Bowl, and the title sponsor with a twang (Duke’s Mayo, iykyk).

“There is the sponsorship fulfillment and we’re crushing it in that,” said Yoho, discussing the core objectives for his efforts. “Like, I think everyone sees Duke’s Mayo as a household name — and it was before in the South, but it’s expanded, and in the South it’s penetrated even more, and that’s due to their trust and awesome and incredible team.

“But also the payoff is the people going to the games, the engagement, what they’re doing, and creating a spectacle where the football game is still the most important thing, the people are suiting up and going — but we also created an environment where it is fun to go to. It’s different, it’s unique; it starts with social, but in the end, if you go in and people are chugging mayo and whatnot, it’s part of what we’re doing all the way and everything’s aligned.”

The terms ‘sponsorship’ and ‘partnership’ often get used interchangeably. But make no mistake, the best outcomes come from partnerships. From relationships that aren’t a transaction that results in an agreed-upon activation, but a collaboration that starts with a foundation, but builds upon it — through teamwork, through exchange of ideas, through reacting and evolving activations — working together to achieve results that benefit all sides. Look closely enough and you can start to tell them apart — the Duke’s Mayo and Duke’s Mayo Bowl is undoubtedly a partnership. That truth comes out in the way Yoho describes the year-round meetings for two games all year (the Duke’s Mayo Classic and Duke’s Mayo Bowl), the mutual trust and alignment of goals, and the results fans see culminate each year with the famous ‘mayo dump’ that serves as a symbol of all those conversations, strategies, and elements coming together.

Said Yoho: “I think everyone has seen this is, I would say, the epitome of what brand marketing via sponsorship should be. And what’s happened for them and what’s happened for the game.

“That’s what happens when you work in harmony together.”

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH MILLER YOHO

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Fan Development, General Sports Business, Sports Media, Sports Technology, Streaming and Video

The Infusion of Intellectual and Financial Capital is Transforming Sports Business But Developing and Reaching Fans Remains the Key KPI

Picture the stereotypical owner of a sports team. Back when you were growing up, it’s probably an oil tycoon, maybe wearing a cowboy hat, glad-handing in a private box at the stadium, with plans to pass on the team to their children some day. It was either buy a couple of yachts and a fleet of sports cars or buy a sports team.

But that has largely changed in the last decade or so. Sports teams are now multi-billion dollar entities that attract some of the most sophisticated moneymakers and moneymaking institutions in the world. And with the new equation, stuffed with more zeroes and commas than ever, the level of innovation, analysis, and disruptive investment is more accelerated than ever.

It’s in this dynamic new era that JohnWallStreet resides, analyzing the biggest questions, trends, and themes that are driving the greater sports business industry forward and are on the minds of the industry leaders shaping this evolution. Corey Leff, the founder and editor of JohnWallStreet, articulated the new normal in sports, in which teams and leagues are investment assets that demand the same level of innovation that has shaped the other multi-billion dollar businesses in the world.

“Forever sports was just like a hobby that rich people did,” said Leff, who worked in equity research prior to starting the newsletter and sports business advisory resource JohnWallStreet. “And these weren’t investments, these were largely teams that were passed down. But as the valuations, which corresponded with media rights [deals], have skyrocketed over the last 15 years, you’ve had a different class of owner come in because who can afford to buy $2 billion teams.

“With these enormous purchase prices, you get this different class of owner that’s taking a different approach and making sports business a lot smarter and are thinking about things like the fan experience and how to improve and integrate sports tech. So that’s opened up this whole world of venture and investment and all the things that we write about now.”

And then the million, nee, billion dollar question becomes, Leff noted, “To generate any semblance of return on them, we have to monetize them. So we need to do a better job than we have in the past. I think it all goes together.”

While the massive valuations have largely been driven by increases in live television rights (more on that later), a variable area ripe for growth in the tech-infused, increasingly connected and mobile world, is fan experience and fan engagement. While your parents and grandparents may mostly recognize the game on the field or the court, there is so much more new and novel about going to a game. Sure, you can get still get a hot dog and peanuts, but now you can also get a signature dish from a local restaurant favorite from a renowned chef — and order and receive it without leaving your seat. Forgetting the tickets on the kitchen counter is a relic of the past, it’s all mobile now. The game listed on the ticket is still the ‘main event’ (don’t worry, Red Zone is on in the sports book on the concourse) but you might really be going for the postgame concert or the pregame beer-tasting event. Needless to say, some things have changed since those halcyon days of years past. Things had to change, fans have too many other options on which they could spend their discretionary dollar or enjoy a night out.

“There’s a broader trend of fans going less and spending more on those experiences and looking for that premium experience,” said Leff, whose daily JohnWallStreet newsletter involves deep dives analysis and interviews on sports business stories, topics, and developments. “So that’s not where this conversation or even the trend we’re talking about started about why they initially started trying to improve the fan experience, but it’s all on the same kind of wavelength.

“Right now that’s what fans are looking for. They’re looking for that one night [to be] memorable, this is the night of the year type of experience. And that’s why they’re spending a couple grand to go to Taylor Swift. It’s all about memories, Instagram, social, creating experiences that stand out and are not just one of a million.”

The competition to attract fans to come to the games is just one battle, however. The greater challenge at hand is the rapid evolution of the heretofore endless spigot of cash coming through media rights deals. It used to be so easy — just about every household spent their entertainment hours consuming programming one of a few cable bundles and both leagues and networks enjoyed virtually unfettered, lucrative access to every fan.

But now that built-in audience can no longer be taken for granted. The number of households in the traditional cable bundle is only going down from here on out. Those regional media rights deals are increasingly being replaced by direct-to-consumer platforms or smaller deals. But this paradigm shift can be both a feature and a bug. Because while broad reach may get a little tougher, many teams will have more direct relationships with more fans than ever before.

“I think reach has become an increasing focus for sports properties, recognizing that the everybody’s not in the cable bundle anymore,” said Leff, who recently published a piece on the possible rise of FAST (Free ad-supported television) platforms for games. “There’s like 35 million people that now are outside the pay TV bundle. So I think there’s just an industrywide focus on reach.

He contnued: “I think there’s an increasing shift to understanding or trying to understand who fans are, and if you can understand who fans are, then you could start focusing on what’s the lifetime value and increasing the lifetime value of those fans.

“So we’ve seen these integrations, an increased focus on data and data insights over the last couple of years, but we’re still in our infancy; it’s still at the data aggregation and understanding data part of the process. Like, I don’t know that we’ve actually gotten to the part of the process yet where it’s actionable and driving new revenues.”

Driving new revenues is the end destination, of course, even if we’re still charting the path there. Because while massive reach it’s still available, it’s increasingly happening across different platforms. The fragmentation is part of the new normal, a side effect of the dilution of the cable bundle. Teams and leagues are reaching more fans than ever, all across the globe, but that doesn’t mean making money off all those fans will be easy. Leff and I talked about the unparalleled volume of fans of European football clubs, for example, who may have more individuals in the fans identified as fans — but, for a number of reasons, don’t drive anywhere near the revenue per fan of what, say, the NFL does (playing a sport that is largely confined to two countries in the world).

There is no prebaked paradigm for maximizing the revenue of each fan for a truly global sports team. As NFL and NBA teams increasingly seek global brand status, the Premier League clubs are just about there — but don’t quite have the revenue to show for it yet. There’s latent value for each fan, though, even more so with more direct, more increasingly necessary relationships. Leff noted the importance of being able to direct identify and engage fans.

“Especially these teams with global followings,” he said, “if you could put a per dollar value on what each of those fans are [their valuations would be much higher]. The problem right now is that, say, you got a gazillion fans, but you don’t know who any of them are, how do you go about monetizing them? The answer is you can’t.”

The backbone of monetization, as you’ve read (or already knew), has been the games, and It will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future. But it’s obvious the models by which games are monetized are evolving. There are still lucrative linear rights deals for many, but there are also streaming deals, direct-to-consumer offerings, a la carte purchases, and more. And there’s a generation of potential and emerging fans not accustomed to plopping themselves in front of the boob tube for three hours to watch the full game. They’re still fans, but it’d be naive to think the business models that have prevailed for decades won’t have to evolve along with the changing nature of fan engagement.

Leff addressed the narratives around the coveted and sometimes misdiagnosed young fan cohorts. “I think that younger generations will watch longer form content if the content is good. I don’t necessarily just believe that…,” said Leff, who has a six-year-old daughter himself. “There’s no doubt that it’s hard to fit [long live games] into people’s schedules these days. Everything’s more competitive, so you have to make it more attractive…I certainly do not subscribe to the idea that Gen Z’s are not sports fans; that’s a ludicrous idea. There are certainly sports fans, they just consume media in a different way…”

While traditional TV ratings seem to (remarkably) keep going up for live sports, most survey and behavioral data about Gen Z and Gen Alpha sports fans indicate they tend to prefer and consume more highlights and social media versus the traditional live broadcast. Herein lies another challenge, monetizing sports fans in the same ways when their consumption patterns change. There’s no magic formula that says one sports fan of your team = ‘x’ dollars per year in revenue, let alone lifetime value. But all the questions are moot without new ideas, experimentation, and flipping the innovator’s dilemma on its head, and being unafraid to disrupt paradigms that were so lucrative (and still are) for so long.

“Even if we put the monetization to the side, isn’t it about building that [fan]?” said Leff of the monetization of highlights and non-live consumption. “At least as I see it, for a six-year-old girl, it’s building the next generation of fans and fan engagement. [My daughter] doesn’t watch Sports Center like I did. I’m not sure that the ten-year-old or 12-year-olds are watching Sports Center, but they’re flipping on Roblox, so why not have the highlights airing inside the Roblox game?…

“in the context that I’m talking about, at least, it’s about talking to the next generation of fans. You’re not thinking about how to make the most money off of them today.

“You want to make sure that in 20 years, your team valuations are still going up because you still have a fan base.”

The reward for winning in sports (business) is as lucrative as it’s ever been. At the same time, the competition for discretionary dollars from fans and brands is only getting more fierce. The one constant has been, and will be, the fan. The fan is the sun around which everything else orbits. Without the fan, none of all this talk of innovation, experience, media models, and paradigm shifts matters. So while we continue to chase the almighty dollar today, nothing is more important than ensuring we’re cultivating the fans of tomorrow. It’s that emotional investment that will pay off on the fiscal investment in the long run.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH JOHNWALLSTREET | COREY LEFF

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Brand, General Sports Business

Stories of Integrated Communications in Sports and How It Helps the World’s Biggest Sports League Ascend

No function of a sports organization has changed more in the last decade than communications.

That’s not a bold statement, it’s just facts. In the earliest days, the newspaper reigned supreme, and ‘public relations’ emerged to facilitate and encourage newspaper and magazine stories. After print came radio and TV coverage. Then the internet and social media arrived — teams, leagues, and even fans had their own platform. Many leagues have their own TV networks to go along with the countless websites, social channels, and apps that teams have, coexisting with third-party and fan-led media platforms. It’s a lot.

With that evolution, PR became strategic communications, which coalesced into integrated communications — every department connected. Everybody’s in marketing, everybody’s in communications; every tentacle of a team or league has a story to tell and a platform to tell stories.

But just like the old aphorism that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (‘synergy’ for the buzzword-inclined), the inverse is equally as important, and not in a good way. The communications leader, with whatever title they’re toting, must serve as the conductor of a well-oiled orchestra, bringing harmony to form a cohesive, cross-channel story.

“What I’ve learned over the years is if comms needs to be the central clearinghouse for everybody’s going to do to support a particular thing — a news event, an announcement, a campaign — that’s great, we’ll be the scribe and we’ll put it all together, but we’ll make sure everybody is aware of what other people are doing,” said Jon Schwartz, a veteran of sports and brand communications and marketing, with experience at NASCAR, the NFL, Mastercard, the XFL, and more.

“[Nowadays] you’re seeing these efforts to put messaging and campaigns out in the marketplace are through the lens of integrated marketing and communications and the use of the PESO mode…PESO (stands for) paid, earned, shared and owned. So everything sits under that from marketing communications to lead generation to podcasts like this, to brand journalism like we just talked about, to earned media and community service and co-branding and shared media.

“It’s never been more important than it is now that all of these tactics work together under a codified plan that’s actually on paper.”

Schwartz was on the front lines of the rapid evolution of communications strategy; he had an up-close view and played an active role in seeing it through. NASCAR, the country’s leading stock car racing league, has been a success story of that new archetype of an integrated marketing and communications practice.

NASCAR was (and continues to be) one of the strongest sports leagues in the US, but it had to modernize in some ways to keep up with an increasingly diverse and aspirationally national audience. The organization has an incredibly loyal fan base, the most impactful corporate partnerships in sports, a growing social media operation, and strong media relationships and returns. So when it came time to take on something of a brand transformation, NASCAR succeeded because it was firing on all cylinders (yes, pun intended! Vroom vroom)

“For years, NASCAR did a fantastic job making it easier and more convenient for journalists to cover the race. And there was massive coverage…But ultimately NASCAR needed to evolve and it did….,” said Schwartz, who was Managing Director, Integrated Marketing Communications for years at the motorsports juggernaut. “We really ensured we had stakeholder relationship groups — we had people working on the digital and social side, we had somebody focusing solely on business, someone focusing solely on our work with the media networks, solely on sponsorship and really making sure that comms was embedded in every function of the business.”

Sports is unique from most other industries, though, because the producers of the product, the labor — the athletes — have individual and collective platforms themselves that rival or surpass that of the teams and leagues employing them. That’s ultimately a good thing for sports, but it adds another layer to the integrated strategy. If the athletes aren’t aligned, even the best marketing and comms strategy is rendered relatively feeble.

Schwartz had a front-row view, and indeed an active role, in seeing that scenario play out at the NFL, too. The league’s most important employees, the players, worked with some internal NFL social media staff to produce a video in which they stated in no uncertain teams that they felt the league was not doing enough in the Black Lives Matter moment and movement. It could’ve been a communications crisis, but for Schwartz it represented a lesson-learning moment and, indeed, an opportunity to help steer the NFL’s powerful platform in a direction for societal good.

“I think [it was] a lesson about how much the voice of employees matters…It was a moment I think of the people and it really underscored the importance of listening and responding,” said Schwartz of the video and the narratives that followed. “The league [had been] doing really good things with Inspire Change, its social justice platform, before that, but it really doubled down with it afterward.”

Schwartz gave illustrative examples, recalling how an integrated strategy came together to create meaningful results, specifically citing an initiative around LGBTQ+ support, which he’d volunteered to lead.

“I was able to get a few people together from marketing and advertising and the NFL Network and NFL media and the social media team and we created a really cool campaign…“The big KPI was doing it. Just doing it. Just the NFL getting behind a campaign for LGBTQ+. We didn’t expect the kind of impact, we didn’t expect a huge number of social media impressions. We didn’t expect to be able to pull off a public service announcement with Rob Gronkowski. We didn’t expect anybody to say yes and a bunch of NFL current and former NFL players did…

“A year after that, Carl Nassib became the first active NFL player to come out. And this year they’re doing a big merchandise collection with a big fashion brand around pride. So, yeah, it was an interesting time, but I think it reminded everybody of the importance of listening to the voices of employees.”

The connective tissue throughout Schwartz’s career, even amidst all the challenges and changes, is relationships. Forming relationships, sure, but also fostering them over time, and understanding how we’re more powerful together than we are alone. That’s ultimately the underlying foundation of all of this talk about integrated communications and marketing, about multi-faceted and cross-channel campaigns. Call it whatever you want, but it’s just appreciating that each of us brings something unique to the table and when we work together — actually work together — we can achieve incredible outcomes.

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH JON SCHWARTZ

Brand, Digital, Fan Development, General Sports Business, Sports Venues

The CMO View: How Fan Engagement Strategy Gets Shaped in Sports

It’s fun to imagine the genesis of modern professional sports. That gradual buildup that started from a handful of individuals taking in an otherwise friendly game played at a high level. From there you get tickets and crowds, ‘fans’, radio broadcasts, TV, social media, and, before you know it, sports teams and leagues that boast billions of fans worldwide.

But for most of that history, the end game was attendance. Heck, it wasn’t all that long ago when some teams battled against broadcasts or pushed for blackouts unless games were already sold out, lest they cannibalize paying fans. And even today, for many, the season ticket holder is still seen as the highest echelon of fandom.

The picture is a lot more complex these days, though. Your team’s most valuable fan may never buy a ticket.

Elisa Padilla saw the evolution, having been in and around sports marketing for decades, including stints overseeing marketing for the Brooklyn Nets, New York Islanders, and Miami Marlins. So as media deals continued to explode and social media took off, she witnessed first-hand that ‘fan engagement’ rapidly evolved and expanded beyond the arena or the ballpark, with new goals to chase beyond attendance.

“[If] you can’t get to a game for whatever reason, it’s the team’s responsibility to be able to ensure that you have access to the team — whether it’s television, radio, digital, so when you think about the KPIs, when you think about social media, it’s about growth,” said Padilla, who now runs Kick It By EP, drawing out leadership, career, and industry insights throughout sports and entertainment and beyond. “How many people are following you? How is your account growing? How are your fans engaging? What is the reshare [rate] like?

“At the end of the day, you have people that are buying your merchandise, that are contributing to your TV ratings, your radio ratings and they’re your ambassador, they’re equally as important as the ones that are spending money to come into the arena.”

Fans are everywhere, they’re engaging everywhere. And no matter how sophisticated our analytics and tracking get, fans are also engaging where we’re blind to it. So when it comes to digesting the fan experience, it’s all more complicated than it was when Padilla was starting out in her career, when one of the primary concerns was how the in-game entertainment and experience resonated with fans in attendance. The never-ending feeds of social media offer a real-time glimpse of fan reactions, though — instantaneous insights.

But I asked Padilla about how leaders look at this vocal minority on social. Even a tweet that gets ratioed is still most often a mere thousand or so replies, a drop in the ocean for a team with tens or hundreds of millions of fans. It’s about understanding the direction of the tide, though, she said, and recognizing when a preponderance of evidence exists across touchpoints that’s resonating.

“I think it’s just having a temperature on what the chatter is,” she said. “And it’s just like if you have 24 comments, I’m taking this as an example, and 12 of them are negative and eight of them are not, it’s like, okay, that’s one view. And if those comments are on Instagram, well, what are they saying on Twitter? What are they saying on TikTok? What are they saying on Facebook? What are they saying on Reddit?

“I think it’s more important to really have your finger on the pulse, and if it’s something where the sentiment is red flags all across, then I think that that’s where you address it.”

It’s only getting harder to even understand how to find the pulse now, with new platforms, behaviors, trends, and tactics popping up seemingly every day. Everybody reaches an age when we can’t quite understand everything ‘the kids’ are doing. Heck, the way that Snapchat’s UX intimidates older users is often described as a feature, not a bug. But the more one moves on up from being in the trenches, creating the content, and pushing the buttons, the more important it is that leaders lead, but know enough to understand the big picture.

Padilla never shies away from new platforms and appreciates the role and responsibility of guiding the doers, managing the forest while experts tend to the trees.

“I approach it where I know enough about the platform, but I lean on others that have the expertise from a user perspective,” said Padilla, reflecting most recently on the emergence of TikTok the last few years. “Like, I know that there’s a generation out there that uses TikTok as research, so it’s like, okay, when we show up on TikTok we need to make sure that, whatever brands you’re working on, you have to show up from a place of knowing that the majority of the people that are going to see your content are potentially using it as research. So what do you want them to know? How are you putting your brand out there?”

TikTok, and social platforms in general, represent enormous opportunities for teams to grow and engage global audiences, well beyond what one could even conceive to fit in an arena. Padilla even spoke about the Brooklyn Nets being among a handful of US teams with a presence on Weibo, the Chinese platform often described as being similar to Twitter.

Remember earlier on, when the season ticket holder was atop the pedestal, the pinnacle for fandom? Well, when you have thousands of fans in Brazil watching your Instagram Reel or millions of fans in China following on Weibo, the picture gets a lot more complicated, but also a lot more potentially lucrative. The goal isn’t to sell tickets, to drive tune-in, or to necessarily make a sale. Those fiscal investments by fans are all great, sure, but it all starts with the prerequisite of earning emotional investment. Only then can you lead them to conversions and find ways to earn their revenue-producing support, in whatever form that may come.

“The way that I look at it is it’s about evoking emotion, driving action to share of wallet,” Padilla explained. “So if you produce a piece of content and you’re evoking emotion, what is the action that you want that customer or your fan to take? Is it that you want to lead them to your website? Do you want to lead them to a landing page? The brand has to figure that out.

“Then how once you get them to do that action, then what is the next step to get your wallet? And it may not show up the day that you post the content. It may show up six months later. But as long as you’re evoking that emotion and breaking through the clutter, I think that you can justify it.”

Once that emotional connection is formed, a fan becomes a fan. And then begins the desire for fans to show they’re a fan — can a fan be a fan if they don’t demonstrate it in some way? Consider the myriad ways to showcase it — going to the games, wearing the merch, watching the broadcasts, following and engaging on social media, messaging friends about the team, customizing one’s avatar — and the avenues to activate fandom only increase.

But even as it all gets more complex, the basics still reign supreme. When the team wins, hundreds or thousands or millions of individuals around the world feel a warmth in their hearts, a compulsion to stand and cheer, a desire to high-five the person next to them. Everything else follows that feeling.

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH ELISA PADILLA

Digital, Fan Development, General Sports Business, Sports Technology

The Expanding Definition of Sports Fandom and What Sports Business is Doing About It

It took sports shutting down to speed the sports industry into a new era.

Sure, fan engagement and monetization had digital elements before covid entered the daily zeitgeist. But the conditions for a complete paradigm shift happened as everybody was stuck at home and the sports business was left with no choice but to innovate. An industry that had for so long enjoyed enormous recurring reliable revenue had to pivot (unless you had insurance, like Wimbledon!). But for these billion-dollar businesses whose moneymaking models had largely not changed in over a quarter century, the path forward is anything but certain.

“Sports, I think in a lot of ways is one of the fastest-moving industries because it is a little bit smaller than some other big things, but it’s also a fairly slow-moving industry in a lot of other ways,” said Jacob Feldman, who covers innovation in fan engagement, among other broad topics in sports business, for the publication Sportico. “So to see those changes happen, basically overnight during the pandemic, was really fascinating. And now we’re kind of seeing a proving point of are these things worth keeping. Are they worth pushing forward on it? Should we put these ideas back on the shelf and maybe they weren’t ready yet?”

Digital engagement became paramount during the pandemic as so much of, well, life was spent on Zoom or watching streaming or engaging with online communities or games. Sports wanted to ensure they were part of that engagement diet, capturing hearts, minds, and, more broadly, attention and time spent.

But something else was bubbling up, too, during the time that digital fans and localized fans were one and the same. ‘Fans’ couldn’t go to games, they couldn’t wear their team’s t-shirt in a pickup basketball game at the gym or talk about being at the big game at the watercooler the next day. Life was being lived online more than ever — a lasting challenge and opportunity for sports business.

“You have thousands of other things to spend time on now. I think that has been the biggest driver of teams, leagues, players, media networks, all saying, okay, how do we, whether it’s looking more or working more like those new things are, or just improving our product so that it can compete with those things I think is the biggest driver (of innovation),” said Feldman, who has written extensively about NFTs, web3, fan engagement startups and more for Sportico.

“It’s competing for attention, it’s also competing for identity. Like, people who are young people in the world, young adults, maybe just out of college, trying to decide who they wanna be, what are they gonna put in their Twitter profile and their Instagram profile? Are they gonna put Warriors fan or are they gonna put Fortnite player? Once you determine who you are and what you do, everything else kind of comes from that.”

The broad scope of identity is an important inflection point for sports fandom. It was once about having a bumper sticker on your car, wearing your team’s cap, or going to a team bar to watch the game. All that can still be part of being a fan, but, as Feldman stated, digital identity can be just as important. For some, being a fan on digital platforms is the only way they can express their fandom. They evangelize the team as they engage on digital and social, and they showcase their identity in whatever way they can. And oftentimes the team has no idea who they are, let alone a way to give or get value from it. Feldman used himself as an example, at Atlanta Hawks residing in the northeast, and the opportunity to strengthen and activate his Hawks engagement.

“I’m a big Atlanta Hawks fan. The Atlanta Hawks don’t know who I am, don’t know that I’m a Hawks fan and at some point that’s frustrating, right?,” said Feldman, who grew up in Winston-Salem, NC before heading up north to attend Harvard for college. “Like, in every other way I go about life — I play Magic the Gathering sometimes when I have some free time, and Wizards of the Coast — the people who put that game out, they know who I am. They have my email, they message me, I get rewards, all these kinds of things.

“I don’t get that for spending hundreds of hours watching the Hawks, reading about the Hawks, talking about the Hawks. I’m a massive evangelist for this brand and I get nothing back from it. So I think NFTs hopefully were a wake-up call that teams need to be doing more in that world to connect with fans [like that].”

Connecting with fans, making them feel appreciated, and giving them more chances to engage with the players and teams they love are not altruistic endeavors, of course. There is money to be made. The technology that sticks around is not only what fans will adopt, but what will enable all these displaced fans, and the sports businesses…err….teams that they support to manifest that investment and engagement in tangible ways. “[Sports organizations are] recognizing how much money is being left on the table from fans who don’t live within a hundred miles of the stadium,” Feldman stated. “Whether that’s international, whether that’s just kind of national, that’s been changing a lot in terms of what teams are able to do. Obviously, technology has allowed them to reach those fans and monetize those fans.”

The sports industry has plenty of incentive and necessity to make moves and to do so quickly. Organizations in sports need to explore emerging engagement vehicles and platforms, lest they get left behind. There was a lot of experimentation in the last few years in sports, and it’s not yet clear which paradigms will prevail in the years and decades to come. But we’re watching it play out right now, and the road ahead for what it means to be a sports fan is uncertain and exciting.

Said Feldman: “I think whether sports is being dragged or sports are finally coming around to some of these innovations, it is happening now. And we can go back to the pandemic thing — I think that was a big push. It’s also just kind of where the money is, right? You know, Apple and Amazon have the money, and they’re going to be slowly gaining a bigger and bigger foothold in sports.

“[Innovation in sports business] was slow in the past. I think it is speeding up, but they still have a way to go to catch up to some of these other industries.”

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH JACOB FELDMAN

Fan Development, General Marketing, General Sports Business

Building a League and Fans from Scratch: Inside Fan Development with the Premier Lacrosse League

Every sports team and league has its diehards. But every team and league also knows they can’t thrive at scale on diehards alone. That’s why so many are perpetually chasing the casual fan. The curious observer that can one day turn into a diehard. And even the biggest, most established leagues in the world still don’t have 100% penetration, there is always room to grow.

If cultivating more fans is a challenge for the longstanding major pro sports leagues, imagine an upstart league with an emerging sport. This was what the Premier Lacrosse League and its founders Paul and Mike Rabil were and remain up against. Lacrosse participation is growing, sure, but the viability of the PLL rests on its ability to bring its sport, teams, and players to the masses — whether they’re lifelong players and fans or just discovering it for the first time.

But it’s happening. They’re doing it. The PLL is still just getting started, but RJ Kaminski, the league’s Director of Brand who has been there from the start, sees fans being borne. His charge and his efforts are a big part of it. Kaminski recognizes that fans aren’t built in a day. There are steps along the way as the fan goes from just noticing the PLL to consuming more to the point where they’re buying swag and making plans to go to a game. For Kaminski, to see the process in action is so gratifying.

Kaminski described it: “The most satisfying part has been watching the fan who really doesn’t have an interest in the sport of lacrosse, but something along the way — a campaign that we did — sparked their interest enough to follow along, which led them a little bit further down the fan funnel to potentially watch a game with us, and then they’re really in it. And then they’re potentially picking a team and then they’re potentially appearing in person.

“Watching some of those fan journeys just on Twitter as you can see when someone follows along or when you see someone start to engage and then see them actually come to a game — watching that probably has been the best part.”

There is no one way, no magic pill campaign that can create fans. But the path to fandom involves emotion, getting fans to care. For the PLL, playing a sport with which the majority of people are not familiar, this means highlighting plays and players to inspire awe, empathy, and exhilaration. Kaminski talked about bringing out the stories of their players, citing an example of Redwoods star Myles Jones recounting his dreams as a kid playing lacrosse. Those human stories can ignite the initial intrigue.

“[The Jones story] was an inspirational bit [and makes them ask] ‘What is the PLL? Who is Myles Jones?’” Kaminski explained. “And then they follow along and whether it’s just from a passive capacity and they’re just keeping an eye on what we’re doing or whether they’re ready to come to a game or turn on the TV to see a Redwoods game, whatever it may be — there’s an interest sparked.”

Once fans have a reason to care, Kaminski and the league can watch them dive in, while showcasing what makes the PLL so great. Start by making fans care, then connect, and then fall in love or find someone or something to latch onto. Clearing this pathway is why Kaminski and his colleagues mix the slick shots and moves with scenes that show the human side of the players.

“So you’re sitting at home and you’re watching someone like Myles Jones barrel someone over and put it in the back of the net from two and then you see him in the locker room with his shirt off drinking a beer, celebrating with his teammates, making jokes, and singing along to his favorite Drake album,” he said. “Those are the moments that humanize our players and really deepen the fandom that already exists there and potentially attracts a new fan to follow along with someone like Myles.”

So there you go, right? Drive fans to find players they can love and who can make them go wow in highlights. That’s not the finish line, though. Such fandom may play well on social media and stories off the field, but the most invested and engaged fans care about the final score, too, and not just who scored the sickest goals. The PLL has had fans of its players from the earliest days of the league, but creating fans of the teams is more challenging because of the nature of the team.

The eight Premier Lacrosse League teams don’t represent a city or state like most of the PLL’s pro sports counterparts. They’re relatively arbitrary. But the PLL knows the best fan experience involves them cheering on a favorite team to win the game, bringing an intensity that only rooting on one side and against an opposing side can deliver. Kaminski talked about why getting fans to pick a team is an important objective for the PLL.

“It’s [about] building rivalries, man,” said Kaminski, who can be seen hosting a lot of the PLL social media content. “It’s getting the opportunity to have competing fan sections at games. It’s what you see in the more traditional sports media landscape.

“It’s being able to attend a Redwoods-Whipsnakes game, and have one part of the stadium cheer when a ball goes in one net, and then the same for the other side. That’s happening and we’re progressing there, but there’s a lot of work that goes into actually getting a fan to pick a side, to pick a team or pick two teams or just follow a superstar.”

So how does the PLL go about differentiating the teams, such that being a fan of one and not another really means something? Social media plays a big role here. It’s where, through the content shared, the tone, the personality, the sights and sounds — where all that can create a vibe and, eventually, a unique brand for fans to choose to wrap their arms around and identify with. That’s easier said than done, of course, because it has to fit. A team shouldn’t have a jokey brand if its players exude intensity. So Kaminski and his colleagues take care in building these team brands.

“It’s largely driven by the culture that’s developed from the head coach and the players of those clubs,” he said.

“For example, I think Chaos is one that we can start with — a team that quite literally is incredibly chaotic in the locker room. Pregame speeches, and for those that don’t know who are listening, the Chaos are led by Andy Towers, who’s an incredible head coach. He’s about six foot five, he’s bald and you can hear him from a mile away. [He] gives incredible pump-up speeches, usually has an incredible anecdote to get his guys fired up, and it usually goes viral the next day for how he got his guys going in the locker room. “

All the best marketing, human stories, and entertainment wouldn’t get the PLL all the way there. They’re a professional lacrosse league, their primary product is the game its players are paid to play. But Kaminski is confident that once fans get in the door, they’re not leaving. The PLL has a winning product, so, while conceding that it’s not easy or a given to keep fans in the fold, that he’ll bet that fans who sample it will stick around for the long run.

“Retention can be one of the hardest things to succeed in for a sports league,” he said. “But when the product’s there and the product’s the best out there that combines [with] what we’re doing in the broadcast side and the talent in the booth, to me it’s gonna be tough for them to flip the channel.”

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH RJ KAMINSKI

Fan Development, General Sports Business

Inside US Soccer’s Social Media Strategy as the USMNT Competes in the World Cup

When Giannis Antetokounmpo won his NBA championship, his multiple countries of origin (Greece and Nigeria) celebrated along with him. And the Greek Freak’s achievements in basketball no doubt seeded more dreams of kids to be the next Giannis, driving interest and participation in the sport at all levels. Likewise when kids in China saw Yao Ming become perhaps the most recognizable athlete in the world. A sport rose even as those athletes left to join more elite leagues abroad.

This is part of the soccer story in the US. The best soccer leagues in the world are now more accessible than ever in a number of ways for Americans, and the status of soccer in this country is ripe for continued growth. We can watch every game, we can see Americans succeeding at the highest levels of the sport, and we can see US sports culture wrap its arms around the globe’s most popular sport. Because even if Major League Soccer (MLS) isn’t about to match the NFL or NBA in viewership and popularity in the near future, the growth of soccer isn’t solely tied to our mid-tier (though ascending) domestic league.

“It’s not necessarily about what’s happening here, but the interest [level],” explained Cody Sharrett, Social Media Manager for US Soccer, referring to the growing interest of Americans’ in the top European soccer leagues. “I think about being in high school, the access to professional soccer was so limited…The access to watching soccer has changed so much just in the last 10 to 15 years.”

And there’s nothing quite like an international tournament to introduce and endear the best soccer plays the United States has produced to burgeoning and existing US soccer fans. Even if many ply their trade thousands of miles away, fans can still fall in love with them and the sport they play. Son Heung-min may only be visible to South Korean fans through telecast or screen, but there is little doubt the Tottenham star is among the most famous individuals in the country. Part of the goal coming into and out of the 2022 World Cup for Sharrett and US Soccer is to likewise elevate American soccer stars into transcendent household names, no matter which league for which they compete in club soccer.

“We break [fans] down into avids, casuals, and emerging fan bases,” explained Sharrett, who is with the US Men’s National Team in Qatar for the World Cup, managing the social channels. “The avids are gonna care no matter what. Our goal for this upcoming World Cup is to make the casuals and the emerging fan base know who Matt Turner is, know who Weston McKennie is; even Christian Pulisic playing at one of the biggest clubs in the world and you see him on TV all the time right now in the VW commercial — making his face just as recognizable as a LeBron James or a Patrick Mahomes or a Serena Williams.

“I think that that plays into our goal of making soccer the most preeminent sport in America. It’s like, yeah, Messi and Ronaldo are popular here, but we want an American player to be just as recognizable in our own country as those two…”

Sharrett noted that some of the country’s most famous athletes are already soccer players — primarily from the women’s team. The next challenge he said, about which Sharrett is hopeful, is to ensure the string of Mia Hamm to Abby Wambach to Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe continues on for the ensuing generations. Of course, it helps that the USWNT has been so successful in international competition this century and that women’s club soccer worldwide has really only grown in prominence in the past decade, giving the US’s domestic league a fighting chance. A fan of Alex Morgan can latch onto the San Diego Wave FC of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) or a Rapinoe supporter can watch her play for the OL Reign. The best men’s players, right now, play overseas. So US Soccer can’t necessarily be concerned with creating more MLS fans — if American fans watching the World Cup decide to check out more Lille games to see Timothy Weah or watch Leeds United matches to see more of Brendan Aaronson — they’re consuming more soccer and soccer is consuming more of them.

The nature of fandom is also necessarily different in this framing, too, because it often isn’t backed by local identity and culture. Sharrett sought to sum all this up, bringing together the ideas of US Soccer representing a sport and the country’s best athletes and driving fans to be fans of it, wherever that takes them.

“I think if you can entice somebody to become a Weston McKennie fan, then they’re gonna end up supporting Juventus, and then they’re gonna support the national team as well,” said Sharrett, who also spent time with teams in the NBA (Trail Blazers and Timberwolves), WNBA (Lynx), and MLS (Crew). “I think they go hand in hand. But as you talked about, we are a national team.

“I was talking with somebody about this the other day, and I kind of miss the locality of it all. Like being in Portland, being in Minnesota, you could rely on some regional flavors and nuances, and we don’t necessarily have that on the national team level because we are a huge country, and the cultural diversity of the regions of the country and backgrounds of the country — not to be cliche, but it is a melting pot…”

The national nature — literally posting on behalf of an entire nation — presents many challenges, as Sharrett alluded to above. You can’t rely on local identity, you have to try to meld this incredibly diverse nation of ours. Beyond that, too, Sharrett pointed out another unique consideration when it comes to US Soccer’s social strategy during the World Cup. Shockingly (or perhaps not, depending on your frame of reference), you can cross match highlights and footage off the list of content. It’s not easy to accomplish all of the objectives we’ve discussed in this article given the constraints. But Sharrett and his team focus on what they can give fans, and how powerful that can be to propel the endearment of these elite players to potential and existing soccer fans in the States.

“We’re gonna have access to the team that none of those other outlets have, so that’s a huge responsibility is showing that behind the scenes,” he explained. “One of our themes is brotherhood on the team and that’s always showing that it’s a young group of hungry players that are near the same age group, and they all just kind of vibe together. It’s showing that it’s a family.”

This is how it all comes together. How fans get emotionally invested in all of it — the players, the team, the sport. The sport is the north star for US Soccer, the remit for everybody in the organization. Sharrett talked about the vast room for growth soccer still has, potential growth that really no other sport can match because others have largely reached maturity. There are more soccer fans in the country than ever before, yet the ceiling is far higher.

Sharrett told me: “You’ll see it in every job posting that we have — our goal and our role is to grow the sport and to make soccer the most preeminent sport in America.”

LISTEN TO MY FULL CONVERSATION WITH CODY SHARRETT

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