As anyone who has worked with sports clubs, sports events or sporting associations will know, one of the biggest challenges facing marketers is the issue of maintaining or growing attendances on match day.

It's something that I've been directly involved with at work, and have spent a lot of time considering and researching.  Just how can you motivate people sufficiently to get them through the turnstiles? 

I'd like to present two ideas here, both of which are based on the group buying principle, and are both companies that I've stumbled across whilst researching this area. 

But before I get into that I need to explain some of the flaws and criticisms of group buying to provide some context to this piece.

Group Buying: The current model is flawed

Now if you're anything like me you're sick to the back teeth of the likes of Groupon and Living Social.  Basically unless you want white teeth, all of your hair removed or simply fancy colonic irrigation then they don’t really provide much value.

But more than that, there is a growing backlash against group buying deals as the business model that these companies force on (typically) small businesses is not sustainable in the long run. On top of that consumers are already showing signs of apathy for these deals so their relevance is dwindling. 

For me however these two criticisms are based on the fact that group buying companies are targeting the wrong products and sectors. 

In my mind, they lend themselves perfectly to the sports industry.  Let me take these two criticisms and explain why.  

Criticism number 1: Impact on business model

A sports event is something which has a fixed / defined sell by date.  Whereas a teeth whitening service never really runs out, once the sports event has finished, the opportunity to generate revenue from that product or service has passed. 

In this sense it’s similar to fresh groceries (bear with me here).  For years supermarkets have understood that fresh produce has a defined sell by date, and so they have a whole team dedicated to reducing the price on the last day of sale.  The logic goes, we might as well get some money for it or we’ll get nothing at all.

And that logic applies perfectly to sports events.  If, on match day you know that you still have 5,000 tickets left to sell, why not sell them at a discounted rate?  This is where Crowd Seats come in.  Crowd Seats (currently US only) aims to provide daily deals for sporting events – check out their website for more information.

I can see this working perfectly for clubs but there is one big problem with this approach – what happens to existing fans?  We all know how annoying it is when you’re sat on a train or plane and you find out that the person next to you has spent half what you have.  This would only be highlighted when it comes to sporting events where people have strong allegiances to specific teams, and have spent lots of money on a season ticket.

And that’s where the next company that I wanted to talk about comes in.  The company in question is called BuyaPowa.  BuyaPowa is effectively price drop TV but online.  The idea is that the more people that commit to purchasing the lower the price goes.

People are actually incentivised to go out and promote the event on behalf of the club / association so that they can benefit from the lower price.  This to me seems perfect for sports clubs.  It would also go some way to negating the criticism previously mentioned as you could prove that you’ve actually had to work for your discount.

Currently BuyaPowa is focusing on consumer goods.  It seems to be working well for them (I actually managed to get some great bike lights for £7.99 whereas they should be around £25 - result), but it must be relying on having fantastic buying teams who can negotiate knockdown prices for goods, thus ensuring a margin for BuyaPowa.  But surely they would be better served approaching a club like Fulham FC, who traditionally struggles to sell out their ground?

Criticism number 2: Consumer apathy 

This one’s pretty simple really.  Sports fans are the ultimate brand advocates.  And sports fans are hardly going to suffer from apathy when they’ve got the opportunity to purchase tickets for their favourite team are they?

The other benefit that companies like BuyaPowa and Crowd Seats have to combat consumer apathy is the ability to target specific groups.  Sports fans are an instantly segmented audience, and therefore deals can be perfectly targeted at exactly the right people.

And this has become increasingly easy to do as social media use becomes ubiquitous.  Most sports teams now have strong social presences, so why not harness these? Why don’t Crowd Seats or BuyaPowa create a white lable facebook ‘pop-up’ shop utilising f-commerce and approach teams and clubs?

Summary

I completely buy the criticisms of group buying, to me they make perfect sense, and were obvious once the initial hype had worn off.  However, by taking the model and applying it to industries and sectors which have huge brand advocates and rely on products which have defined sell by dates they can keep themselves relevant.  As always, the US leads the UK in this instance, and I’d love to see companies like BuyaPowa and CrowdSeats really push into the sports industry.

But what do you think? Could they make a success of themselves in the sports industry?

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I've just moved jobs and am far more busy now getting a grip on everything, meeting clients, etc.

I couldn't stay away for long though, especially with this news.

Both the Guardian and the ever excellent UK Sports Network are reporting that Budweiser will stream the first ever football match live on Facebook to help promote their sponsorship of the FA Cup.

This is a bold, but logical step for Budweiser, and to be honest it's only been a matter of time before this happened.  Live streams are nothing new on Facebook, ever since 2009 (I think) Ustream have provided people with the ability to live stream events to a Facebook wall.

The choice of match is somewhat odd though. Its the first match of the FA Cup, between Ascot United and Wembley FC - a match that otherwise would not make it onto television screens.  The match will be live streamed from Ascot's ground on to the Budweiser UK Facebook page.

Here's some quotes taken from the Guardian article

"To be involved in the first game of the FA Cup this season is an honour in itself, but to be part of a world first and have our match broadcast to a massive global audience is fantastic for our club," said the Ascot United chairman, Mike Harrison.

The reason I say it's odd though is because doing this will clearly require a certain level of investment from Budweiser, and it seems like this is just a trial run at this stage.  But you're not giving yourself a great shot at success by having a such a lower league match being broadcast.  It seems like the team behind this decision have got so wrapped up in 'the first ever football match broadcast on Facebook' rhetoric that they think this alone is a big enough draw.  Frankly, I think its a big enough draw for social media professionals to tune in, asses what works, how it works, what could be done better etc, but I doubt this will spread much further than that - and certainly wont go mainstream.

Interestingly, the Guardian piece also mentions that "Viewers must be aged 18 and over and have "liked" Budweiser's Facebook page to gain access to the free live stream."

Hmm, you have to 'like' the page to view it? That sounds like it contravenes Facebook guidelines to me.  Now the press release may well have been misquoted here, and I'm sure users can choose not to like the page and still watch it, but its still a consideration none the less. I'd be interested to see if thats the case, and if so what Facebook have to say about it.

So, in summary, its a nice move, and will generate headlines in industry press for now, as well as some online chatter no doubt.  But like everything on Facebook, once the novelty of newness wears off, its going to take much bigger incentives for it to go mainstream, and provide the types of results that the brand team are no doubt looking for.  And until brands are prepared and brave enough to invest the sums of money required to stream a big name match, I can't see this working.

But what do you think?  Are you going to watch it?

I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to get round to writing this blog post as it’s such an interesting story.

For the start of the 2011/12 season, Tottenham Hotspur will feature a new brand name on the front of their shirt.  The brand name is Aurasma.  For those of you who don’t know, Aurasma is an augmented reality application and according to the website it does the following:

“Using the smartphone's camera, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi internet and its position, acceleration and direction, the technology combines image recognition and a conceptual understanding of the 3D world to recognize objects and images and seamlessly merge augmented reality actions into the scene. Without the need for barcodes or tags, the app is able to see its surrounding environment and make it fully interactive.”

You can download the app for yourself (if you have an iPhone 4 that is) here. It’s worth pointing out here that Aurasma is part of Autonomy, the current sponsors of Tottenham Hotspur.

Tottenham Hotspur released the news, in a relatively low key press release on their website, and it’s a pretty standard affair press release wise, but one thing that caught my eye was the following sentence:

“Fans can look forward to future developments, including bringing Tottenham Hotspur content to life with interactive features using Aurasma.”

Now THAT is very intriguing. Regular readers of my blog will recall my interactive football ticket idea which could show you the view from your seat, but this was all posturing on my behalf.  This announcement makes all my posturing far more of a (augmented?) reality.

So what could this look like?  Well here’s three ideas I think could work very well, and all of them could really help Tottenham Hotspur to not only drive fan engagement, but also potentially drive match day revenues if done correctly

1.       The first idea is pretty obvious, and is linked to the match day program.  Why not use the program as a highlights reel for last week’s match? Imagine that you’re in the stands with your mates before the game kicks off, reminiscing about last week’s demolition of Stoke (no offence Stoke fans), when someone leans over and says “yeah remember the pass from Modric to Defoe? It was sublime” whilst hovering their phone over a page in the program which takes you to last week’s highlights.  How awesome would that be? And you could see that this would really help to provide an added incentive for people to purchase match day programs, thus increasing match day revenues.

2.       Secondly, what about using replica shirts?  So, let’s say you go into the Spurs merchandise shop and purchase a Peter Crouch shirt.  Once you’ve bought the shirt, you hover your phone over the shirt and it takes you to the latest stats page on Peter Crouch, how he’s doing that season, videos of his latest goals, and maybe even pushes you to ‘like’ him facebook.  You could link this to a revenue stream by using the name on the shirt as the unique visual recognition prompt, therefore increasing sales of certain shirts, perhaps concentrating on new signings or even shirts that don’t sell so well.

3.       Finally, how about using the seat that you sit on?  Maybe every week there could be 10, 100, 1000 seats in the ground which have special discounts, or perks associated with them. All you have to do is hover your phone over your seat number and it takes you to the special discounts page on the Spurs website?

These are just three ideas that I’ve come up with off the top of my head. I’m not saying that Spurs should definitely do all of these, but what this does show is that the possibilities of using AR in the football world are pretty endless.  And as football fans are without doubt the most engaged and loyal followers any brand could wish to have, the opportunities to develop engaging and positive interaction are huge.

Finally, this is a big step for Autonomy to go with, being a shirt sponsor is no cheap thing, so Autonomy are clearly backing their product financially here. It may not have cost Aurasma anything to be the sponsor themselves (as this is all paid for by Autonomy), but the opportunity cost of such a move is huge.  Also, its good to see another Premier League team other than Manchester City getting involved in this type of activity.

What do you think?  Have you got any ideas of how AR could used in football, or any other sport? If so leave a comment below.

So just as the news has broken that the IOC is actively encouraging athletes to tweet at the London Olympics 2012, a study conducted by Catalyst PR over in America has found that fans of athletes and sports stars who regularly tweet are 55% more likely to purchase brands mentioned in those tweets.  Looks like brands needs to be encouraging their sponsored athletes to get involved as well.

They also found that young people (18-34), non-white people are even more likely (75%) to purchase products and brands mentioned in tweets.

Here’s a video uploaded to Youtube by Catalyst PR themselves which explains the top line findings from the report.

To me these results make perfect sense; brands have always benefited from the aspirational halo affect associated with leading sports stars, especially among the young. And when you combine this with the fact that people have actively chosen to follow or ‘like’ these athletes this figure is to be expected.  Also, there may we well be a hint of interviewer bias here, although I’m not sure how the survey was conducted so I can’t be sure. 

The thing that strikes me most however is not these headline figures.  The thing that is most interesting is the prevalence of location based services, and its rising importance in the US sporting market.  LBS is still very niche over here in the UK.  Foursquare seems to be relatively stagnant in its growth, and from purely personal experience (statistics not yet released by FB) facebook check-ins are sporadic at best.  It will be interesting to see if many more brands in the UK begin to push LBS as a credible marketing tool, but I remain very sceptical. 

The old proverb ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t force it to drink’ springs to mind in this example.

Well, well, well – who’d a thunk it eh – finally some positive news to report!

As regular readers of this blog will know, I’ve been harping on about the need of sports stars, governing bodies and brands to embrace social media usage, but to do so based on sound guidelines which provide parameters for people to work within.  A case in point was my last post on the blanket ban on social media by the New Zealand All Blacks.

Well, today the International Olympic Committee has issued a press release which outlines their stance on Olympic Athletes using social media and guess what – it’s almost wholly positive!  Reuters today is reporting the news (over at http://reut.rs/iuEYvs) and for me the key quotes are

The IOC "actively encourages and supports athletes ... to take part in 'social media' and to post, blog and tweet their experiences".

Bloggers and tweeters must, however, restrict themselves to "first-person, diary-type formats", must not report on events in the manner of journalists and must ensure their posts do not contain "vulgar or obscene words or images".

In short, excellent news!  It provides clear and transparent guidelines, whilst at the same time actively encouraging athletes to get involved.

This is real progress and I salute the IOC for their stance.  To supplement the press release they have also issued a full set of detailed guidelines (based on Australian guidelines so hat-tip to them for setting this up) and I’d encourage all readers to check them out at  http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Games_London_2012/IOC_Social_Media_Blogging_and_Internet_Guidelines-London.pdf.  I haven’t fully digested them yet, but from a cursory glance they look pretty good!

A short while back I interviewed Lewis Wiltshire Editor of the BBC Sports Website on the subject of Sports and Social Media, and of course our thoughts inevitably turned to London2012. It was clear that social media will be playing a big part in the BBCs coverage.

“I am proud of the fact that the BBC was at the forefront of the industry with our use of social media, we were credited in 2007 as being the first mainstream European broadcaster to incorporate twitter into our website and since then twitter has always been an integral part of our site.”

“And it’s been really amazing to see the level of take up amongst pro-athletes, particularly if you see the London Olympics. We’re starting to do more and more Olympic sports in the build up to London  2012, and it’s amazing to see the amount of Olympians and future Olympians that are on twitter – it’s phenomenal.”

“We’ve got lists of all the Olympics athletes and Olympic hopefuls for 2012. We know who they are, we talk to them regularly and in some cases we GOT them on to twitter in the first through our media liaison work with Team GB. And you’ll see us kick that on again [promoting lists of Athletes to the public] during London2012”

I’m sure this latest announcement is news to the journalists ears over at the BBC, but really it should also be music to ALL sports fans ears.

Good work IOC!

The BBC are reporting that the New Zealand Rugby Union team – The All Blacks – have imposed a blanket ban on their players using any form of social media during the upcoming Rugby World Cup (full story here http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/13808100.stm).

This blanket ban is a step up from the All Blacks’ previous position of advising caution when it comes to using social media, and has been brought in by Head Coach Graham Henry.

Facebook, twitter, newspaper columns and blogs have also all been crossed off the list, with the teams stated justification being that players need to be fully focused on the job in hand.

Now you might think this is probably fair enough, but the cynic in me thinks that this is purely a PR stunt ahead of the tournament – a tournament which lets not forget the All Blacks always seem to stuff up, usually bottling it at the quarter final stage against France.

Rugby Union is far and away the most popular sport in New Zealand, and everyone knows that the All Blacks are the best team in the world, and yet their record on the biggest stage is very underwhelming.  This is what leads me to think that this is just a PR stunt from the management team to reassure the public that they are doing everything in their power to prepare properly.

But this all seems so token to me.  Is this really the reason behind this move?  If so, why stop there? What are the chances of the All Blacks management banning all pre and post match media player interviews? Or what about banning any advertising with the players in from being shown? In fact, go the whole hog and just ban anything that isn’t directly related to improving the performance of their players during the tournament.  No playstation, no swimming, cards, iPods, etc.  Just turn them into Rugby playing drones.

Now obviously that’s ridiculous and I’m exaggerating for effect, but I honestly don’t believe that this ban serves any real purpose.  

For me it has far more to do with fear.  Fear from the management that one of their players will say something stupid and inflammatory after a game. Fear that someone will twitpic the players out being drunk.  But fear is simply not a good enough reason to just outright ban something, that’s an extremely reactionary measure and one which sets itself up for failure.

As I’ve mentioned on here and twitter countless times, the correct approach is education and setting guidelines.  If teams, coaches and trainers followed the lead set by brands and corporations then they could easily remove this fear, and make positive strides in engaging with the life blood of any national sport – the fans.

Outright bans won’t solve anything, all they do is punish players, but more importantly, they punish the fans.

What do you think? Is this just a PR stunt? Are fans missing out or is this justified?

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, it’s a combination of a lack of motivation and inspiration coupled with a heavy workload.  Happily both of these situations seem to be changing so I’m back.

Anyways, now I’ve got the apology out of the way I’d like to move onto some particularly cool technology which was shared at work, and a suggestion for how sports teams could potentially take advantage of this.

The tech is called Blippar, and in short it’s a mobile augmented reality advertising application which brings print and bill board advertising to life in real time and with push notifications.

According to the website “Blippar™ is the first universal augmented reality platform aimed at advertisers. We know marketing and we know technology and augmented reality. With cumulative decades of industry experience with some of the world's leading brands and at the bleeding edge of technology - most recently on bespoke AR developments, the Blippar™ brand platform has been designed by marketers for marketers.”

Here’s a quick vids from Blippar themselves which helps to demonstrate the tech

Pretty cool eh!?

So, where does sports come into this?

Well, at the weekend I went to the frankly disappointing England Vs Switzerland Euro 2012 qualifier held at Wembley. While the match itself was pretty disappointing (match report here) the whole experience was pretty special as Wembley is such an amazing place to watch football.

And that’s the point isn’t it; it’s an amazing place to watch live football.  And it was this that got me thinking about Blippar, and how could AR enhance the user experience for someone attending a sporting event?

So, here’s the ticket to the match

Now you may look at this and think, all seems fine to me, it’s just a ticket to an England match.  But why isn’t it more than that? How could the ticket work harder for Wembley? How could they reward fans for purchasing tickets?

Well one way would be to answer the question that my girlfriend asked me as soon as she saw the ticket; namely, what are the seats like?  To show her I went on to the Wembley website, found the stadium view page, and then searched for my seat and we checked out the view - it was pretty awesome.

But how much better would it have been if I’d managed to just hover my phone over the ticket and get transported to my seat at the stadium?  That would be pretty special, and you can just imagine being at work, or in the pub (much more likely) showing your mates what your view is going to be like.  From a conversational perspective the impact would be amazing.

And, as a point of reference, British Airways have just announced a new Windows Phone app which allows you see exactly where you will be sitting, as well as take a virtual tour of the plane.  More info on which can be found here http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/british-airways-uses-windows-phone-7-for-new-features-958712

What do you think?  Have you seen anyone doing this?  Leave a comment below as I’d love to get your thoughts. 

To say its been a busy week for twitter use and premiership footballers would be an understatement!  We’ve had Wayne Rooney (@waynerooney) come in for some criticism over comments he made to a follower – claiming he would ‘put him to sleep in 10 seconds’ (to be fair the follower did say he would smash Rooney’s head in with a pitching wedge!).

But we’ve also had two of the longest serving, and most decorated managers in premiership history – Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger – come out with comments urging players to be cautious when using the social network.

Sir Alex – speaking today at a press conference (and presumably responding to questions about Rooney’s conduct) – said this of players using twitter (quotes taken from www.Football365.com)

"I don't understand it to be honest with you," he said.

"I don't know why anybody can be bothered with that kind of stuff. How do you find the time to do that? There are a million things you can do in your life without that.

"Get yourself down to the library and read a book. Seriously.

"It is a waste of time.

"It seems to have a certain momentum at the moment. Everyone seems to want to do it."

"It is responsibility. They are responsible for their actions," he said.

"We as a club are looking at it because there can be issues attached to it. And we don't want that."

When it was pointed out Twitter can bring players closer to supporters, Ferguson was equally scathing.

"It would be better if they did it on the pitch."

This is a typically old-school approach from an old-school manager, and to be honest is only to be expected following the press coverage of the Rooney incident.  I highly doubt that a ban on the social network will come into place as media and communications department of Manchester United have made huge strides in the social media space (by a distance the most followed football team in the premier league on facebook), and @rioferdy5 in particular has used twitter to great affect to interact with his fans.  It seems like the ball has started rolling as more and more Utd players join twitter, and so any ban will become much harder to enforce – plus it would and will have a massive negative impact on the fans.

Arsene Wenger has also come out and urged players to be cautious when using twitter.  His quotes on the subject are (taken from the www.telegraph.co.uk)

"At the moment we allow it. We are thinking about how to use it the best way," said Wenger.

"It can be very positive because it can be a good communication for the players with the fans which doesn't exist anymore.

"It can as well have negative repercussions for the clubs if it is not well used so we are thinking about it.

"We will see what kind of direction we will go."

A slight contrast with Sir Alex’s view in that he can see the benefits of the platform in terms of fan engagement, but with players such as Jack Wilshere (@jack_wilshere) also coming under criticism for comments he made about premier league referee Phil Dowd in the past, you can understand the hesitation.

At the social media week London event for sports and social media we were presented to by the Arsenal team and they have also made great strides in this space (over 20 players on twitter), and so it is to be expected that the benefits of players using social media have been preached throughout the organisation, and this is clear in Arsene’s comments.

It’ll be interesting to see if either club sets out strict guidelines in the summer and shares them with the public.  Both are social innovators so my bet is that as I write this, they are drawing up guidelines if they don’t already have them.  And if they need a hand just drop me an email!

What is most interesting from all of this however is that the Professional Footballers Association (PFA) have now come out and said that it plans to advise all players regarding their use of social networks.  My only hope here is that they actively encourage players to use the platform (perhaps looking to UFC for inspiration – see previous blogpost for info) and merely set out a list of guidelines, with topics such as race, sexuality, religion, confidential information kept away from their content, and to let players know that the worlds media is watching them.  Effectively, if you wouldn’t say it in a TV interview, don’t say it on twitter!

What do you think?  Are both managers right to seek caution, and what advice would you give to tweeting players?

A pretty interesting sports and social media development from one of the fastest growing sports in the world at the moment – Ultimate Fighting Championship (hence force known as UFC)

UFC, the world’s largest mixed martial arts (MMA) organisation is going to actually reward its fighters – in cold hard cash – for using twitter, according to a report on Mashable. (NB: this was flagged to me by the ever reliable Whatleydude – cheers Bro!)

As reported on Mashable “UFC and Strikeforce (another MMA promotion company, owned by the UFC) have a unique plan on how to do that. Starting June 1, they will divide their fighters into four categories based on their Twitter follower count. Then, after every three months, three fighters from each category will get a $5,000 bonus based on how many followers they’ve gained, the biggest percentage of new followers gained and the most creative tweets, judged by UFC head Dana White.”

This is in stark contrast to the majority of major sports who have been hesitant at best when it comes to players using social media – with outright bans and restrictions common amongst the most high profile.  In fact, here in the UK the FA have even charged a player (@RyanBabel) for the misuse of the popular microblogging platform.

However, this does not really come as a surprise. The people in charge of this organisation (Dana White in particular) have often sought innovative social strategies when faced with growing the sport as can be seen by this in depth report (also on Mashable.)  And as the sport is growing so fast off the back of these strong social foundations it makes perfect sense for the organisation to encourage further adoption of the latest media to ensure this continues.  Why change a winning formula eh!?

There’s a lot to be learnt from this example for a number of sports brands, but I would suggest that the sport in closest proximity to UFC – Boxing – has perhaps the most to learn.  With UFC continuing to become increasingly popular, these fans have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is more than likely to be boxing.  And as far as I’m aware there are no real innovative social media campaigns for boxing, and social media use in the sport is relatively low. 

This may well be more to do with the organisational structure of boxing (hundreds of different belts, promoters, TV channels etc), but there are surely some initiatives which should be implemented by the people running the sport.

What do you think?