Category Archives: Sports Media

Reebooting Sport

Posted on August 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

This is just a quick post to say that discussion that is solely around the impact of social media on professional sporting organisations, fans and the commercial media, can be found on my new blog Rebooting Sport.

Here you’ll find an overview of my PhD, as well as discussion of some of the issues that are arising from it. So please check it out.

In the meantime, New Media Mogul will be continuing to discuss more general issues to do with social media, digital media, technology etc. Despite being in the process of getting my PhD finished up, I’ll still try and blog as often as I can.

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Posted in Sports Media

New media strategies for professional sporting organisations

Posted on March 11, 2009 | Leave a comment

To wrap up this series of posts on professional sporting organisations and marketing, I’m going to look at how social media might aid them in their marketing processes, using the model I discussed. It should be noted that I haven’t as yet talked to any professional sporting organisations about social media, and when I do, which I hope will be soon, then I may have different ideas about this aspect of my research.

Sport is after all a game, and there is no guarantee that a certain team will win week in and week out. They can only hope to recruit the right players and the right coaches, hope they are better prepared than their opposition, play an exciting style of game and go from there. But in the end it comes down to chance.

At present professional sporting clubs have very explicit interactions with their customers. Customers either see the team play at the ground, on television, or might interact with the club through their website. These are very structured interactions, and there’s a real separation between what the sporting club does in public and what they do behind closed doors.

There has to be this separation because image management is a huge issue for professional sporting organisations (both leagues like the AFL and individual clubs), but there could be a more subtle separation facilitated by social media that allowed a sports club or organisation to effectively manage its image while still making fans feel more included in the processes of the club.

Imagine if professional sporting clubs used Twitter. For example, Carlton could have tweeted before its recent NAB cup semi-final against Geelong, ‘Should we play Chris Judd this week?’ Although it would surely be inadvisable to take popular consensus over the opinion of professional coaches and other experts, it would make fans more included in the machinations of their club and potentially make it easier for professional sporting clubs to establish and maintain relationships with their customers (fans).

Interestingly, Ebbsfleet United has gone all the way with social media and made an offer to its customers that in exchange for owning a piece of the club they get to be involved in the day to day decisions, including picking the team.  The football club is a very minor one in the grand scheme of things, playing in a division that is four below the Premier League but interestingly after embracing this concept they have achieved their best ever result to date, winning the FA Trophy.

Ultimately, a tightly controlled interaction between professional sporting clubs and customers (fans) could make maintaining a relationship an easier process. With more insight into the running of the club, the emotional connection (if indeed it does exist) might be strengthened due to the customer feeling more important in the process of the club, and when times are tough, careful explanations and behind the scenes looks at why the club is performing badly may make fans more accepting of the inevitable slumps that every professional sporting club goes through.

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Posted in New Media, Social Networking, Sports Media

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Sport’s inner emotive qualities?

Posted on March 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

In my last post to New Media Mogul I talked about the challenges that professional sporting organisations face in marketing their sports to customers. I identified that although many traditional marketing principles relate to professional sport, there is something that exists that sees even those teams who don’t win games continue to survive. While sometimes this is because the governing body refuses to let them die, and provides additional funding to see them through, there is something to be said about that as well.

There is surely an emotional core to sport that professional sporting organisations attempt to capitalise on in their marketing efforts. For one thing, it’s why a team like North Melbourne in the AFL has ‘Stay Troo’ as it’s membership drive slogan for 2009, a play on stay true and the club’s moniker, the Kangaroos. In other words the club is appealing to the loyalty of its supporters to buy memberships, even though it has now been ten years since the club won a premiership.

In a similar vein the Western Bulldogs membership slogan for 2009 is ‘Are you with me?’ a similar appeal to loyalty, pride and identification with the team. This is a team that has not won a premiership within the last 50 years, and in any other form of the entertainment industry that sport is nominally a part off, couldn’t hope to survive. It would be akin to a band failing to produce a new record in 50 years and continuing to tour with their old songs – eventually you’d think that their fans would dry up.

Instead they keep on turning out, suggesting that they have a deeper connection with the club that is not just based on winning games, winning premierships and value for money. The noted academic on sports matters, Richard Cashman, suggests that wrapped up in sport is a pervading sense of nationalism, because the way a nation plays sport can define both what it is and what it is not. Cashman cites Anderson when he says that nations aren’t necessarily physical, but can be imagined, and therefore the Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne can be defined as a nations.

Embodied in this feeling that Cashman describes is no doubt a sense of loyalty to this club – indeed he describes it as a ‘deep horizontal comradeship’ that involves a shared sense of history and values.

It’s clear that not everyone gets so embedded in a sporting club, and some professional sporting teams do come and go – clearly because they haven’t marketed themselves properly and have failed to form a strategic relationship with their customers in the manner I talked about in my last post. But perhaps over a longer period of time this changes and people become more deeply involved with their sporting teams, so that it’s no longer just a consumer relationship but an emotional one as well. To me this makes the marketing of professional sporting teams a different process to other entertainment products, and explains why clubs continue to play each week in the face of extended periods of poor performance.

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Posted in Fan Culture, Sports Media

Marketing professional sport

Posted on March 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

Recently I’ve been considering the ways in which sport is marketed as part of my approach to the area of research I am pursuing. For while it is my ultimate aim to study the transition of professional sporting organisations into the new media landscape, marketing is such an integral part of what separates successful professional sporting organisations from those that are less so.

And indeed if sporting codes weren’t marketed correctly, there would be no media interest anyway, because there would be no customers (fans), and therefore no need for the media to disseminate information about sport.

Before I go into detail, what is starting to become apparent is that sport has unique properties (which I probably won’t go into fully in this posting, but instead the next) that make sporting teams attractive to customers (fans). And although professional sporting organisations still have to follow traditional approaches to marketing, there is an emotive aspect to sport that changes the dynamic between organisation and customer in this instance.

It also strikes me as apparent that there are ways that sporting organisations could use new media techniques to strengthen this relationship and make their marketing efforts more effective. I’ve more or less talked about this before but I will go into this further in a future post as well.

To explore some of what I mean about sport’s unique marketing properties I have paraphrased the following points on how to establish a strategic relationship between a customer and a company from the book, Leading Through Relationship Marketing by Richard Batterley.

In italics I will annotate his descriptions with how I think they relate to professional sporting organisations.

Section A to B

The prospect is unaware of the product or service or has never thought of opening a relationship with the company

Point B

The prospect sees some form of stimulation (say a press advertisement) and recognises the product or service may have some relevance for them and considers what a relationship with the company would bring them

How does a professional sporting team become relevant to a customer? Particularly a low performing team who has never achieved a sustained period of success. These types of teams still manage to attract customers who either attend matches or purchase season tickets. There must be a sense of tradition in following this team, or local pride, or empathy on some level that makes sport a unique marketing product.

Point B to C

The prospect’s expectation and anticipation is heightened as they consider their needs.

Point C

At this point the prospect realises the product or service offered might provide some value to them and they request further information.

While professional sporting teams tend to attract more customers during periods of success (Hawthorn has the most members of any Victorian AFL club this season after their premiership win), there are still nearly 20,000 people who have signed up as Melbourne members. Melbourne has endured a number of unsuccessful seasons in a row, and any other marketable product that had failed to deliver for so long would surely be finished by now.

Section C to D

Again expectation and anticipation increase the strength of the relationship while the prospect is waiting for the information they have requested.

Point D

This is when the prospect expected the information they requested to have arrived. If the company is responding to the initial invitation to enter a relationship they will have provided the information by this point. From here the relationship can take two alternative routes.

Here’s the good news track

Section D to E

Having received the information sought, and it meets their expectation, the potential customer is in a position to make a purchase decision. Part way through this section they cross the decision line ‘I will buy’.

What is a customer’s expectation of a professional sporting team? Is it to win, or to play the game with skill, or to play fairly? This is where sport really seems to become different to other marketable properties. A band whose concerts constantly failed to live up to expectation would be finished, yet a team that fails to win games over a sustained period of time can still expect to see people turning up to watch.

Point E

The relationship is cemented! The prospect buys! And now becomes a customer!

In sport the relationship can be cemented even when the product (sporting team) fails to live up to the buyer’s (fan’s) expectations.

Section E to F

In this section of the relationship the customer is enjoying the product or service they have decided to purchase and the strengths of the relationship is growing (assuming the product or service meets their expectations)

How does a professional sporting team meet expectations? Does it need to win a premiership to achieve this? Does it merely need to play fairly? What are fans expectations of sporting teams?

Point F

At this time in the relationship the new customer is so satisfied with the product and the supporting service they are receiving they become an advocate and start recommending the organisation and its products or services to others – so convinced are they that the organisation will deliver a similar level of relationship to their peers!

Do sporting fans ever engage in this sort of behaviour? I guess to an extent, but not in the same way that I might recommend that someone buys an Asus laptop or an iPod, or uses iTunes to manage their music collection. 

Now, the ‘other’ track!

Section D to G

The prospect still feels that they should have received the information they requested by now – but they haven’t. As a result, their expectation and enthusiasm for opening a relationship begins to slow down – not reverse yet, just slow down: recovery is still possible, but it will not be easy.

With bad marketing this can happen to sporting teams, but I think this is different to another sort of product. While it might mean that someone doesn’t worry about becoming a member of that club and buying a season ticket, it won’t stop them being a supporter of the club.

Point G

If the organisation doesn’t deliver the information by this point, the prospect’s initial expectation isn’t met and the gap between expectation and delivery creates frustration and strength of relationship begins to decline

Section G to H

Nothing has happened so the strength of the potential relationship is damaged and takes a negative turn. It is still recoverable – but only just, and it will take a lot of expensive follow up to save the prospect’s expectation of the relationship.

Section H to I

The rate at which the relationship is declining is increased and almost nothing can be done to recover the situation.

It would be interesting to know whether there are people who refuse to continue supporting a sporting team because of continued poor performances. Enthusiasm can wane for professional sporting teams but in my experience it is uncommon to hear about people refusing to support a particular team any longer. 

Point I

The point of no return! All is lost. The previously potential customer has crossed from feeling positive about the organisation and its products or services to a space where they actually begin to feel negative about them – contact may aggrevate the situation!

Section I to J

And now the situation is declining even further towards the relationship graveyard. The once prospect starts talking negatively to their peers about the organisation and becomes very cynical about failed promises.

There are many frustrated supporters of professional sporting teams, particularly of teams that perennially underachieve, however in my experience these fans continue to attend matches and will still be supporting the team if and when things finally turn around.  

Point J

Gone. Lost forever. The formerly potential customer has made the decision they will never buy from the organisation, no matter how good the products and services are. Best left well alone!

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Posted in New Media, Sports Media

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The rise of technology in sports media

Posted on December 16, 2008 | Leave a comment

It’s interesting to think about the role that technology has played in the evolution of sports media. I feel that there are distinctive stages in the history of the engagement between fans and sport where changes in technology (or in other words changes in the dominant medium) have eventuated in changes in this relationship.

In the first place there was the spoken word and this was a time when sport was predominantly local and representative of a single community. The team was the mouthpiece of this community. This is where the preoccupation of professional sporting teams with image management comes from.

Then came newspapers and people could not only keep up with the results of their own team, but other teams as well. This is probably where the preoccupation with statistics and records comes from, as previously it would have been hard for fans to keep track of these as clubs may not have had the resources. Media organisations did however, and realised that fans had an appetite for them.

Radio was the next leap forward in the way sport was disseminated, and once again changed the relationship between sporting organisations and fans. For the first time a dichotomy was created between watching sport at the ground and listening to it at home on the radio. However it was probably not a strong dichotomy because radio was not a visual medium, therefore the experience of consuming sport at home missed out on one of the vital sense.

However the radio era did globalise sport to a certain extent. Although not cosmopolitan, it made Australian audiences more aware of sporting contests that were taking place overseas, particularly in places like Great Britain. Here I’m thinking particularly of the 1934 Ashes series were over by over descriptions were telexed from the UK to a studio in Sydney and recreated as though they were really happening.

Television changed things again, creating a visual aspect to consuming sports at home, but in a sense it was also a step backwards because when television was introduced the technology was not in place for many live broadcasts. However, this is probably the era where sport was truly commoditised when its considered that the Olympic Games launched television in Australia. Ever since there has been a strong relationship between the two.

Truly live television created a true dichotomy between watching sport at the ground and watching it in the home, and solidified sport’s place as a television (and media) commodity. It was in this era that battles were fought over sporting rights, as media moguls wanted the best live sporting content for their networks. This gave sporting organisations previously untold riches and brought a new professionalism to games.

The era of cable and satellite television brought more channels and consequently more sports. For the first time audiences could experience regular sporting contests from overseas on a regular basis, instead of special events being broadcast and weekly highlights packages being offered in the meantime.

This is the era in which sport truly started to become global. Thanks to satellite and cable television it is now possible for global fans to immerse themelves in the experience of watching and following a sporting team without being at the ground to experience it.

Finally the era sport has now entered into is that of social media or Web 2.0. This is beginning to create a bottom up rather than top down approach to sports media, as fans have even more choice about the sorts of sports media they consume, and the ability to customise it. It is also further locking in global sporting teams by giving fans the tools to form networks and communities with like minded sports lover, consequently created a virtual analogue of the community feel that has always been a part of sport.

 

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Posted in Fan Culture, New Media, Sports Media

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Reflecting on the recent Andrew Symonds incident

Posted on December 12, 2008 | 1 Comment

So it’s been a while since I’ve last blogged on New Media Mogul. Lately I’ve been busy helping to put together an exhibition on media technologies in the home, which I made a film for that I will upload to this site when I get some free time. Although this has not been directly related to my PhD, the increased prevalence of media technologies and the way in which they are used directly impacts on the area of research I am undertaking.

The latest thing I’d wanted to blog about was the recent incident where Andrew Symonds again found himself in hot water for getting into an altercation with a hotel patron in Brisbane, after only just returning to the Australian cricket team after an enforced layoff.

Typically the mainstream media reported it, and the incident made front page news in several newspapers and online news sites. Of course opinions were written about whether Symonds should be allowed to stay in the game, and there was the usual examination of any issue like this.

Twenty four hours later it was reported that Symonds’ version of events, in which he was the victim of the incident, was found to have been what actually happened and as of today Symonds is still playing cricket for the Australian team.

What’s interesting to think about here is how professional sporting organisations like Cricket Australia, which seemingly spend more time on image management than anything else would have approached the incident if it had occurred in a landscape dominated by social media.

Imagine if people started ‘twittering’ or blogging about what allegedly took place at the hotel. (E.g. Aussiecricketlover Just seen Symonds hit a bloke for six, no cricket bat involved #cricket).

How would Cricket Australia respond? Would they twitter back? (E.g. CricketAustralia investigating Symonds incident and will let you know shortly). Without the thousands of words of copy and countless hours of television coverage of the Symonds incident at their disposal, would they be able to repair the damage to Symonds’ reputation as readily?

This is something that sporting organisations have to consider as social media outlets like Twitter become more prevalent. Considering that Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull both ‘tweet’, it is becoming a powerful communication tool. But because professional sporting organisations are unique, in that it isn’t just about getting a message out but also maintaining an image, it becomes trickier for them. The next phase of my research is going to look at what strategies they might use to negotiate this.

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Posted in Social Networking, Sports Media

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Olympic radio stations suffer in the ratings

Posted on September 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

The latest radio ratings in Melbourne, which were conducted during the period that the Olympics were on make for interesting reading. I’ve taken the liberty of comparing the market leader, Fox FM to the four stations that specialise in sport, so for a full breakdown, you can go here.

Station Audience Share (Survey 6) Audience Share (Survey 5)
FOXFM 15.1 14.2
3AW 14.9 16.6
SEN 5.2 5.4
3MMM 6.5 6.7
ABC774 10.0 10.2

 

(The survey results are Copyright 2008 Commercial Radio Australia).

Fox FM is more or less a youth station that specialises in popular music, and features a number of popular comedy shows, Matt and Jo for Breakfast and Hamish and Andy. All the other stations 3AW, SEN, 3MMM and ABC774 specialise in sport.

3AW and 3MMM didn’t cover the Olympics, but did feature regular updates and had programming that tied in with the Olympics. 3MMM’s  breakfast show Pete and Myf featured the Pete and Myf Games where the co-hosts competed for medals in different events. 3AW, being a news driven talkback station, featured regular updates from Beijing. ABC 774 and SEN had full coverage of the Olympics.

From a still incomplete content analysis of the way in which the mainstream media covered the Olympic Games, there were constant appeals to people’s sense of national pride, and even attempts to invoke regional pride (for example stories from Perth would make mention of Western Australian athletes competing in the games). There was also an inbuilt expectation about whether the particular teams that I covered, football’s Olyroos and basketball’s Opals, were medal chances or not.

Perhaps as I am beginning to explore the idea that sport is becoming increasingly globalised and is moving away from its communal and regional roots , this argument is demonstrated in these radio ratings. In this very concentrated event that is the Olympics, the mainstream media’s employment of these frames only dissuades people from watching and listening.

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Posted in Sports Media

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Take part in my survey on sports based social media

Posted on August 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

Things have been quiet lately at New Media Mogul but that is mainly because I have been busy gathering real research that I will start talking about on the site as soon as I’m finished doing it. So for anyone that has been visiting and has noticed the lack of new conntent, I apologise, and promise that the situation will change very soon.

In the meantime I am conducting a survey on the way people disseminate sporting information through the media landscape, looking at how people use traditional media sources, and newer social media outlets and the ways in which these are used in combination.

So if this sounds interesting to you, then click here to take my survey.

Thanks!

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Posted in Sports Media

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Corporate social media use: lessons learnt

Posted on July 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

The iPhone craze is sweeping the world at the moment and it seems like just about everyone wants one (I would too but after breaking my last phone I paid good money for and seeing the same thing happen to a few friends, I am now of the belief that no one should pay money for a mobile phone, ruling the iPhone out for me). In Australia, three out of the four major mobile operators have secured the iPhone – Optus, Vodafone and Telstra. The fourth, 3 Mobile, seems to be having a tougher time doing a deal with Apple and so interestingly, they turned to social media to help them in their quest.

They set up a blog so that they could inform customers of what was happening with their iPhone negotiations with Apple, and so that Apple could hopefully see how much Three’s customers wanted the iPhone. It was an interesting ploy and one that seemed to really polarize people.

Some people were grateful that Three were being so open and honest with them, in keeping them informed about developments on the iPhone and allowing them to interact directly with Three and other Three customers.

Other people saw it as a desperate marketing ploy to get the iPhone on the Three network, and found it pathetic that Three couldn’t have negotiated with Apple themselves and instead had to turn to their customers to try and convince Apple that Three should carry the iPhone.

Others saw it as a cynical marketing exercise, either as a different take on the ‘register your interest in the iPhone’ pages that the other carriers have had, or a move to see just how many customers they might lose if they weren’t to offer the iPhone.

Three is obviously not a ‘media-facing company’ in the traditional sense, not relying on the mainstream media to generate an income. But it would be interesting to see what sort of reaction people would have to a blog set up in a similar fashion by a media-facing organisation like the AFL. If the league was to suddenly directly interface with its fans and ask them questions about elements of the game, would the fans accuse it of admitting that it was out of touch with its public, or would they see it as an opportunity for greater involvement in the development of the game.

The Three blog is shutting down as of 5pm today, having been open for a week, and it is uncertain as to why this is actually happening. Once again this move has polarised people, who are either disappointed that Three hasn’t secured the iPhone yet or a wondering why the blog is really shutting down.

From this experience it is easy to see why media-facing companies are reluctant to embrace social media. There is so much more control possible in the mainstream media, whereas Three has had a real mixed response from this experience – there have been plenty of people singing its phrases, but also plenty of vitriol from people too, and there is a sense that this experience has devalued the Three brand in the eyes of some at least. I wonder if the same thing would happen to the AFL…

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Posted in Citizen Media, Sports Media

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AFL to players: Don’t read fan blogs

Posted on June 5, 2008 | Leave a comment

Before I begin, I need to give a thankyou to Half Back Flanker for the contents of this blog post. If I hadn’t been reading this site then New Media Mogul might have missed this story entirely.

It would appear that the AFL has advised players not to read fan websites, for fear that the vicious player appraisals could lead to depressions, according to the Herald Sun.

You can read the article for yourselves, but it certainly seems that the AFL is doing nothing to build up a relationship with sports fans who are citizen media makers. It would also seem that the AFL is not very well read on emerging forms of media, as the article is quite clearly referring to people who post on forums, considering at one point that it talks about users stealing the identities of players. As pretty much anyone who uses the Internet would know, the interactions and behaviours within a forum are totally different to those found within a blog.

However on the plus side for sports fans, it does show that they have gained some power through social media, with even the always busy AFL coaches being familiar with fan sites like Big Footy and the ‘viscious cyber-bullying’ that is found within them.

It’s obvious though that the AFL doesn’t see the value in sports fans who are citizen media makers, with the article at one point quoting an AFL official, Pippa Grange, who described them as people ‘with not much better to do’.

New Media Mogul always considered that the AFL would be one of the more progressive sporting organisations when it came to dealing with new media issues, so it is disappointing to see that they have about as much interest in social media, as as much understanding of the potential of the medium as the other sporting organisations covered recently. The International Olympic Committee, with its extremely censored Beijing blogs, is now starting to look quite progressive in its use and encouragement of social media.

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Posted in Citizen Media, Sports Media

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