Sports and Fan-Generated Content

8.30.07 by Mike Spataro {Brand Management, Consumer Generated Media, General, Interactive Marketing, Mike Spataro, Social Networks}

Now that the Michael Vick situation has finally started to wind down (at least until sentencing), the NFL needs to start assessing the fallout from the Vick incident, which is just the latest in a recent long line of troubling off-field player behavior issues the league has faced.

I’ve had the fortunate pleasure to meet with dozens of companies across many industries over the past year to share thinking about reputation management and the business value of measuring Consumer-Generated Media, and that includes meeting with a number of professional sports leagues and numerous individual team officials. Sports at all levels represent one of the biggest opportunities for league and team officials to connect with their key audiences - the people who buy the tickets and pay the salaries of their players.

Fan-generated media (FGM) has been booming for years but many teams are just now starting to think about how to tap into this new marketing channel and connect with passionate fans. When I look at the top industries that have the biggest opportunity to make great strides in putting CGM to work for their bottom line, professional sports easily makes my top five list. (I’ll share my other four at another time).

Yet here we are heading into 2008 and most leagues and teams are still way more focused on how they look on SportsCenter than in online communities frequented by their biggest fans. That, of course, will change over time. They won’t be able to avoid it much longer.

The NFL needs to stay connected with fans more than ever now — and in every way possible — including through FGM. By tapping into what’s being communicated online league officials could better understand the fallout from Mr. Vick and the other Pacman Jones’ of their world.

The NFL has been riding a wave of highly justified popularity for years, but if history is any lesson they could face some tough times ahead. Let’s not forget that major league baseball really was the nation’s pastime years ago, and believe it or not, many people actually did care about an NBA regular season game not that long ago.

Mike Spataro
Visible Technologies

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