I have spent an interesting time looking at. and participating with, sports marketing 2.0 and the differences between the US and European take on social media.(http://sportsmarketing20.com/group/theeuropeanperspective)

I guess my latest position is that there is a simplified way to see how sport marketing is adapting to the WWW - and it follows more or less the Tim O'Brien paradigm of web 2.0 - reproduced below from his seminal paper 'What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software located for download at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1008839

Its a journey from the recently learned (for sports managers at least) areas of web 1.0 to the braver new world of web 2.0 where paradoxically, the technology is more accessible, but the rules of successful deployment are far harder to comprehend if they exist at all. So whereas the blogosphere is full of comments and stories on sport (and fewer comments on comments except on fan sites where it easily degenerates into name calling and ranting!), sports marketers have to work out how they can make this journey. To date certainly the hi-tech industry, and surprisngly the high visible brand FMCG industry are deploying user communities and social networking tools to engage more closely with their customers. As they must do in a competitive market. But sport has always been a bit smug about the devotion of the fans who are rather taken for granted. So much so that , as I have said, many organisations do not even want their fans to interact except in the case of putting their hands in their pockets at match day and for merchandise. I agree more is being done to use the web and internet technology to provide more and more content to fans (sometimes at a price and sensibly so). But one feels there is still the fear of engagement, and that the sponsor and the traditonal media will always be placed first because that is where the money appears to be. Plus there is a culture of secrecy, a tradition of clubs being walled off from their fans than discourages communication and interaction in case the fans make unreasonable requests. In this way many sports organisations are very Dilbertish ' we exist to meet our customers needs - our customers want better products for free- lets sell them what we have and call it a strategy' (apologies - couldn't find the orginal cartoon strip).

In other words its very outward looking, very one way. If the fans start talking amongst themselves- will they want better for free? or will they want better and want to pay for it? how will you know if you don't engender the dialogue and find out?

Thoughts on PR sport and new social type media

I guess I am still trying to work out just how effective the use of 'new' media by sports organisations really is, and whether the instances of where it exists (for example, the large number of blogs in NHL, MLB etc in the USA is meaningful or not as most seem very rarely updated, or to attract any real interaction). Also it has proved hard, if not downright impossible to find any existing examples of where practioners feel they have new and effective tools as opposed to me too tools in their marketing communications mix. If i take the old PR model of asymmetric and symmetric communications (I know its a bit old but it still gets a mention in the text books) it isn't at all clear to me how PR and Communications professionals at the major sports organisations are harnessing new media as opposed to making sure its there. For instance no research seems to exist into the effectiveness of , say, having a Facebook or My Space presence versus the traditonal web site. There rarely seems to be feedback from supporters on , say, how the sports club's web site is operating except for standard complaints when it is out of date or the e-ticketing is slow./broken. So it all seems still quite asymmertrical publicity and information as opposed to relationship oriented.

the other issue i picked up in my travels through cybermedia was that there must be a threat to sports clubs corporate reputation in ares such as face book- for example, a county cricket team in England has a static site looking like a billboard on MySpace which simply links to the web home page. However, 'friends' profiles attached to the sight include one charming individual whose visible profile is a short video of the infamous Roy Keane 'tackle' or actually grievous bodily harm attack on Haaland which ended the latter's playing career. This act of gratuitous violence is now attached permanently to the site. is this a good thing? and if it isn't, what can the club do about it? It didn't help that their web site home page was covered in 'hacked by' html for days - which makes me wonder as to the importance they give to this.

So all the new media possibilities, while undoubtedly being played with out there by sporting organisations seem very poor in comparison with the way traditional media has adopted new technology to support the way in which it supports sport. in additon, companies such as Nike (as one might expect) have adopted social media to create what lok like very viable community creating and sustaining tools for their customers. This is marketing savvy, and you either seem to have it, or you don't. It seems to me that sports organisations are still rooted in ideas of marketing communications which rely hugely on face to face and traditional press/media briefings, with the bells and whistles of video and mobile information as add-ons. In other words they aren't really using the potential of the new tools to forge new relationships with their publics, but rather using them to enhance and simplify the traditional means of creating communications. Is this necessarily a bad thing? If believe your customers have no choice, then developing relationships is really not worth the effort - and I still believe many sporting clubs do act in this way - preferring to ignore or patronise their audience because anything else is too difficult. The PR disaster that is Newcastle Utd in the UK premier League bears this out.

When sport marketing people get a good idea, they tend not to want to find another - so whereas the web and internet has simplified communications and commerce, i don't feel at this stage there is much desire to explore further.