College football

Teams are constantly looking for new ways to engage fans, build brand and create added value and access year round. The problem is in this challenged economy, and with all the options out there to draw a fans attention, especially ones that are free, how do you find something that will work and keep someone engaged that will also have enough value to turn them into a new customer or keep them as a repeat customer with their discretionary dollar. One alternative that seems to be more cost efficient and has a bit of a wow factor is outbound personalized calls and video.

There are many cynics that may say President Obama can spend his time, and the countries’ dollars…doing better things than glad handing the MLS champion Columbus Crew at the White House before heading off to throw the first pitch and hang out in the FOX booth at the All-Star game. However, the man who the Washington Times called this week the “Sports Fan Chief” , was astute enough with his team to recognize early on in his run to the White House that sports is a common bond for those on the fence about anything political, and gave him, more than any other candidate, another link to a demo that may or may not have voted or listened to him at all.

As the NBA Draft approaches Thursday, it will be interesting to see the branding winners and missteps taken, and how quickly in this digital age teams will look to immediately activate with their picks…will guys be twittering new fans from the podium, who will be the first to stream and text messages back home and will any team look to Twitter their pick before it is announced, as happened in the NFL Draft? Speed and immediacy, whether they can be monetized or not at this point, will be interesting, as well as how well athletes today understand perceived brand value vs. real brand value.

Wow.

History was made last week when North Carolina based marketing company International Sports Properties, finalized a deal to pay the Georgia Athletics Department $92.8 million over the next eight years for marketing and media rights.

The deal is the largest per year payout in the history of college sports.

And what is International Sports Properties gaining in the media rights deal?

For its $92.8 million, which it will start paying in July, ISP will own the rights to assets such as Georgia’s corporate sponsorships, stadium signage and, for the first time, its Internet properties, radio network and coaches’ shows.

A few weeks ago we touched upon the great opportunity that college athletic departments of all sizes have in these troubled financial times to learn, become more business-like and show true value as community leaders to the students and the institutions they represent. Still the troubles continue ahead, as instead of investing and learning the business of sports, more colleges are looking to cut around the edges and find ways to slow the process of media relations and athletic branding down, rather than taking steps to grow through investment, a practice which certainly is taught in the classrooms of any basic history or economics class.

While the pressure to find new ways to get bigger ROI and link athletes closer to fans spending their discretionary dollar grows, the legitimacy or original reasons for using social networking as a valuable tool becomes more clouded in many ways. Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter success, with the help of Charlotte-based Sports Media Challenge, broke the ice and showed athletes and brands how that medium could work as a successful connection tool.

The have had proposals on air, the signature blue field, amazing comebacks and challenges to the BCS…now Boise State is looking to use aggressive social media tactics to grow its brands and expose its athletes to the widest grassroots audience possible in an attempt to market outside its nice audience. The Broncos plans for the summer were discussed in detail in this weekend’s Idaho Statesman, and though not unique as one off’s. they show a solid unified plan for a midmajor school looking to invest in its brand and get exposure where traditional media is limited.

One of the best sites on the web for sports things digital is Pat Coyle’s Sports Marketing 2.0, and they recently did a summary on the NFL Draft and teams use of twitter to actually break news (which was also put together by the Sports Business Daily). As brands and athletes jump to the twitter bandwagon, it shows that the technology may have an immediacy that others do not have for exclusive news distribution.

Specifically, NFL players figurines are going back to college, thanks in large part to McFarlane Toys, who will be releasing a figurine set of popular NFL players, in their college uniforms.

…McFarlane Toys has licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL and has been ”producing action figures of professional athletes for more than a decade, but never before has the company tapped the college market.” The first six players that will have a college-themed action figure are Patriots QB Tom Brady (Michigan), Ravens LB Ray Lewis (Miami), Colts QB Peyton Manning (Tennessee), Vikings RB Adrian Peterson (Oklahoma), Raiders QB JaMarcus Russell (LSU) and Steelers WR Hines Ward (Georgia).

As we move into the weekend extravaganza that has become the NFL Draft, it is interesting to see the continued activation, both print and digital, of the NFL machine as fans look to where the future stars will come from. No other off-season “event” has the power for two days that the NFL Draft does. And into the draft cauldron goes some pretty interesting stories, some of which received little attention on the national stage before now. Case in point is the NCAA’s leading rusher, Connecticut’s Donald Brown. While Brown was a key member of the Huskies building a solid Big East football power, the team was hidden in the spotlight of two mega-power college hoops teams and a market trapped between New York and Boston.

Sometimes on the surface the matchup of an athlete or celebrity with a brand may be a little quizzical, and such was the case when high-end shoe retailer Cole Haan announced its first-ever athlete endorsement deal with tennis star Maria Sharapova. Now Sharapova is already becoming the stuff of legend in the endorsement world, even in a down economy. Her deals with companies like Canon, Tiffany and the watch brand Tag Heuer pull in millions, almost as much for her ability to understand and deliver messages to a high end consumer as for her on court results and tennis pedigree. Still, matching Sharapova with Cole Haan still could be a stretch for a brand with little TV presence and no sports marketing background.

As one season starts for a star-crossed franchise (the Washington Nationals) and one ended (The New York Islanders) it is interesting to look at the messages sent to fans by the actions of the team. This weekend, the Nats benched and fined one of their young, marketable players, Elijah Dukes, for showing up a few minutes late after attending a team-sponsored community relations appearance. While the question of zero tolerance for deadlines is left to management, the question of what message it sends to fans and to players is another issue.

The NHL postseason begins in earnest this week, falling at a good time after the Masters, just ahead of the NBA playoffs, before the NFL Draft and following the hype of opening day for baseball. It also helps to have many of the major markets where hockey has a strong brand presence…New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington, Detroit and Philly especially…all playing with intriguing matchups. The new digital platforms the NHL has pushed so hard to create and offer to fans (as reported in Sports Business Journal this week) also draw more brand attention, so the opportunity to capture the casual fan, especially in major markets seems to all be in place.

As the economy continues to fluctuate downward and more brands scramble to find ways to justify spends, we saw a few unique opportunities that deserved to be singled out, copied and probably advanced a bit as well. First we looked to Florida, where the University of Florida Gators were trying to find ways to assist those loyal fans who wanted to follow the Gators into the great beyond, by finding places to create a memorial area or a way to have the deceased have their ashes spread amongst the sidelines of the swamp or the baseline of the O’Connell Center. Now there have been teams in the minors that have given away funerals and one always hears about the ashe scatterings of the die hard fan

It is no secret that all of the major sports entities have taken steps to brace for less revenue with the current economic situation, yet there remains the knowledge that many brands have made a long term solid investment in sports and entertainment to reach audience, share stories and move product. Perhaps no sport was a better example of economic growth in the past ten years in the United States than NASCAR. However as the visibility, the size of the tracks, the amount of dollars spent and committed rose, so did responsibilty, and the reality is that the mega-spend by fans and brands may not be there in the vast numbers it has been.