The Rise of The Digital Fan

SABM Sparks Session 18 October 2011

The Growth of Digital in Sports

In-home is (and always has been) – the prime viewing spot

Digital and Social Platforms are fundamentally changing the way

people watch sports

“I think the new way to enjoy a game is to have

your TV on and have your iPhone or smartphone in your hand. You no longer

have to have a meet-up of 20 people. I watch a game

and I’m interacting with thousands of people”

Matt Halfhill

Blogger

Fox Sports say that a fan might use his phone 100 times on match day to access sports related mobi-sites

Source: Nielsen wired

“We are rethinking the model of the best available screen. Interaction goes

well beyond that biggest screen….but it’s about the right content for the right

screen”

Rob Master, VP, Media, Unilever

F.C Barcelona partners with Telefonica to provide the “finest access to Social Networks”

But it’s not just in-home...

How is all of this impacting the discipline of sponsorship?

VS

WC 2010

Remember this?

“Sponsorship has ceased to be a conversational guarantee”

“the brand readiness factor” – that readiness to synthesise “paid” and traditional media with “earned” and social

media and to feed the conversational frenzy surrounding the beautiful game ahead of time.

Pete Blackshaw

VP Nielsen Digital Strategic Services

“Social Bowl XLC”

Social Media Remained a huge contributing factor to the overall

experience

EEE

On Average only 11 minutes of football in the average game!

The Wall St Journal

2011 was no exception

Virtually all advertisers “stoked” the conversation prior to match day by showing sneak peeks of their ads, inviting consumers to vote for the ad

they wanted to see...even creating 3 minute films they hoped would go viral

The following graphs show how sustained the online conversation was even a full week before match-day

Remember this quote?

“Last year (2009), brands used Social Media marketing mostly to develop content for and promote their Super Bowl ads (like Doritos who

‘crowdsourced’ their 30’ slots) - but this year Super Bowl ads are being dedicated to the support of larger Social Media marketing strategies. The

servant has become the master”.

Augie Ray, Forresters Research

On the role of social media in the 2010 Super Bowl

So what did fans do during the game?

• 14% of the total audience - about 12m viewers - accessed the internet and used social platforms during the broadcast

• The time spent on such platforms increased from 23 minutes in 2010 to 29 minutes in 2011

• Google and Facebook were the top two sites visited – though the average simultaneous time spent on Facebook by viewers was 19 minutes

The shape of things to come?

Budweiser screens an FA Cup preliminary

round fixture between Ascot United and

Wembley – on Facebook!!

Video

The practice

4 Key developments and trends

#1 “Skipping the Stadium”

Providing the stadium experience in-home

TNT’s Screen Mosaic

#2 Fantasy over Reality

Fantasy sports is a $4bn industry

The rise of the “Quant Jock”

#3 They’re just like me

Places average Joes on the field, in the lockeroom or right in the middle of the everyday lives of their

favourite celebrity-athletes.

The whole concept of the FAN is changing rapidly from being a person who follows a team to a person who

literally “stalks” individual sports stars

“The way we think about watching sports is going through a rapid

transformation. Attendance is down across most leagues but TV ratings

are up. Fans seem to be more wrapped up in the sagas of

individual athletes than they are in following their favourite teams”

Quoted in Mashable.com

A recent photo from the NY Giants locker room post a major victory received over 40 000 “likes” on

Facebook in 2 hours

#4 There’s an app for that

Now, more than ever, the App is becoming the most important lens into the online world...this app for Wimbledon (iPhone and iPad) is your first and last stop when it

comes to following the tournament

Exhibit A

Heineken’s “Star Player”

Heineken realised that their status as Headline Sponsor was no longer a conversational guarantee

The team also realised that “Be a man of the world” had to be brought

alive in an extraordinary way

Heineken’s UEFA Mission

“To connect Heineken drinkers to football and give them the best UEFA Champions League experience by

enforcing their “man of the world” status”

Video

How the NBA is building a Global Audience using digital media

The NBA’s strategy

“Make a local sport global”

This year, the NBA finals will be watched by fans on television,

online or mobile devices in more than 215 countries

The NBA’s Digital Mantra

Provide fans the content they want, when they want it – where they want it.

Always ask: “How will this enhance the fan’s

experience? What are their needs?

The big “tune in” tweet

• "#NBAFinals: Dwyane Wade is putting shots up by himself on the floor right now. Game 2, 9pm/et ABC. http:// twitvid.com/MJQS5"

Shot entirely on the iPhone of a NBA social media “scout” and

tweeted in real time as a reminder for people to get ready to watch

the game...

NBA Game time application

A free mobile app available on iPad, Android, iPhone and Blackberry – 2.5m downloaded this season

NBA.com

More than 2.5bn videos streamed this season – the sites video views have more than doubled in a year . Fully integrated with the league’s social media channels and it

saw over 8million unique hits per day! (up 78% from 2010). Over half the site’s traffic is international

Player stats

The new Stats Cube – allows fans to do direct statistical comparisons between players – even down to how they perform in the last 5 minutes of a game. You can create and test how your own imaginary line-ups might work – (shades of You be the coach?). It also helps you play out a myriad of scenarios and make your own prediction for the

game

Mini-Moves presented by Kia (this clip is too big to download but WELL worth the watch)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRD1kCXL170&playnext=1&list=PL5D9

26C4EE1ED1291

Using motion picture techniques to create a larger than life heroism about

the game

Tweets about Tweets Nike’s EPIC family tracks how many tweets are going out about top NBA players...the

most tweeted ones rise to the top of the family

Social Media: The NBA Stats compared to the Twitter Context

• On a normal day, Twitter users tweet 65 million tweets or 2 billion tweets a month

• That translates to about 750 tweets per second

• Group stage of World Cup 2010 saw 2700 tweets per second

• NBA finals game 7 in 2011 saw 3085 tweets per second – more than 185 000 tweets per minute

Some of the guidelines the NBA lives by

Some key principles which the NBA Social Media team lives by.

1. Make fans feel like insiders

2. Don’t join the conversation , create the conversation

3. Know what your readers want, when they want it

4. Don’t overwhelm your followers

5. Plan ahead – not everyday has a big game