Sports Marketing 2.0 is a social network dedicated to the Business of Sports. Created by Pay Coyle of the Indianapolis Colts, Sports Marketing 2.0 is comprised of franchise executives, sports marketers, college students, sponsors, and fans. The Linked In page describes Sports Marking 2.0 as a “digital think-tank for sports marketers in the Web 2.0 world.

The social networking card has been pulled time after time, day after day, second after second – I don’t expect it to stop anytime soon. The extremely high traffic seen on Twitter, Facebook and Linked In has been expressed over thoroughly over the past few months. Some of the networking sites that are slowly making names for themselves are well worth the visit – a few that I belong to:

Sports Marketing 2.0

Sprts Business Education Network

Minor League Forum

Sports Cue

Facebook, a social utility that connects people, is now the third largest Web site in the U.S. Only Google and Yahoo! are bigger. In fact, seven of the top 10 largest Web sites rely on user-generated content or offer social-networking features, according to the Web information company, Alexa. These social sites are making money and building gigantic market caps along the way, clearly demonstrating that there can be good business in user-generated content and online community.

The thought of a pro sports team operating its own social network for its fans seemed ludicrous just a couple of years ago, but lately there has been an upsurge in activity on the sports and social media front. Much of this activity has been fueled by software companies. These technology-focused firms sense an opportunity to sell their wares, and are scrambling to equip both team and league Web sites with Web 2.0 features. Many of these companies and the features they offer are quite good, but few seem to offer the strategic insights necessary for teams to leverage technology to build profitable digital businesses over the long term.

From a business perspective, the first goal of a team social network should be to help fans connect with each other. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff stress this point in their recently published book, “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.” These Forrester Research veterans stress that the most successful Web applications today are designed to connect people to people, rather than to push information. In fact, they stress that social media isn’t about technology at all. It’s about connecting people.
With this in mind, a good strategy for teams might be to focus on building fan community, rather than worrying about having the latest techno bells and whistles. Bottom line, when fans are connected to each other, they are more strongly connected to the team, and they are less likely to defect, which ultimately means greater lifetime value for the team.

But managing fan discussions and online communities can move teams and leagues into new and unfamiliar territory. Teams are accustomed to dealing only with local fans based on their home television markets. But the Web has revealed that most team fans don’t live in the cities where their favorite teams play. Pick any team in any major U.S. sport, and you’re likely to find a majority of fans living outside the home market, and even outside the home state. Ironically, it is television that has helped to increase the number of team fans outside local markets.

To keep reading, take a look at the full article – visit the Sports Business Journal

Pat Coyle is founder of Sports Marketing 2.0 (sportsmarketing20.com), and can be reached at pat@coylemedia.com.

“You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want”

Very true!

Brendan Wilhide is the creator and founder of the SportsList. Who is on this list? How about Shaq, Lebron James, Chris Bosh, CC Sabathia, and Kerry Rhodes to name a few. Twitter has exploded over the last few months. You can credit this Twitter craze to the many athletes that have hopped on the bandwagon. Brendan has organized a list of these athletes, personalietes, and franchises over his SportsList…
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Josh Feinberg: For those not familiar with Sports in 140, where did that title come from?

Brendan Wilhide: “Sports in 140” is the easiest way of explaining the purpose of the Sports on Twitter list: it’s all about sports on Twitter. Every tweet on Twitter must be 140 characters of less so I find that the name is the easiest way of explaining the concept all in one phrase.

Josh Feinberg: Tell us a bit about your Sports List on Twitter?

Brendan Wilhide: I created the Sports on Twitter list as a resource for fellow fans. I initially started the list because I was tired of trying to track down athlete Twitter accounts. I’m a big baseball fan and initially maintained a small, private list that I could share with friends.

One night I went looking for some sort of list of official list of athlete Twitter accounts and was frustrated when I couldn’t find one. I made my list public and the Sports on Twitter list has grown steadily from there.

A lot of people ask me how I go about validating and verifying accounts. I validate all athlete accounts by doing one of a few things:

1) I contact the team or organization and verify that the athlete is indeed using Twitter
2) I contact the athlete personally and ask if they can provide photographic proof that the account is real
3) I check to see if an already validated account has validated the account in question (typically teammates interacting with each other)
4) I check for mentions of the athlete’s account in the media

I’ve been able to validate a lot of accounts—and invalidate plenty of others—using this methodology.

I’ve also been fortunate that my contacts have been very helpful in adding to the list. I find that Twitter users will tweet or email several new additions to the list a couple of times each week. The list would never have grown so quickly were it not for people’s interest in contributing to the list.

Josh Feinberg: How many athletes and teams are on the list?

Brendan Wilhide: I don’t have an exact count so I just say “over 200” athlete and team accounts.

Josh Feinberg: Where did your passion come from to work with Twitter and the Athletes on Twitter?

Brendan Wilhide: As I said I’ve always been a very passionate sports fan. I spent four years working in professional sports and thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I’ve always been interested in technology.

I’ve found that maintaining the Sports on Twitter list allows me continue my passion for sports and my interest in technology in my spare time. I continue working on the list every day because I know people are using the list and I want it to be as up-to-date as possible.

Josh Feinberg: What does the future of Twitter look like for athletes, personalities, and celebrities?

Brendan Wilhide: I think we’re seeing a dramatic shift in the way athletes, teams and celebrities market themselves to their fans. Twitter offers anyone an opportunity to follow their favorite star and, in a sense, get to know them. There’s something to be said for the feeling fans get when they learn that their favorite star likes the same TV show or enjoys the same restaurants. I think these little things make stars more accessible to the fans and I think the fans appreciate that new level of accessibility.

Someone asked me recently if I thought Twitter would eventually supplant more traditional PR and I said no. Athletes and teams will still need traditional PR for all the reasons they need PR now, especially in crisis situations. Traditional PR is not going away.

Josh Feinberg: You launched Sportsin140 a few weeks ago…what has been the response up to this point?

Brendan Wilhide:The response has been tremendous. I never thought the site would garner so much traffic in just a couple of weeks. I had an idea about the way I wanted to site to look and feel and I’ve been able to expand on my initial idea already because the reader response has been so great. For example, I didn’t know about the huge auto racing community on Twitter. A Twitter user contacted me and asked me why I didn’t have a larger category for auto racing. I built a large list of auto racing users on Twitter but would not have realized the need for that category if a reader hadn’t contacted me.

The biggest compliment I received about the site was when someone told me they thought the site had been up for months. “You have so much information, I thought the site had been up for months!” she said. That meant a lot to me because I spend a lot of time on the site and I want the content and look to be as professional and complete as possible.

I take pride in the site and it’s a rewarding feeling knowing that people return to the site because they enjoy reading it and look forward to the updates..

Josh Feinberg: Who is your favorite Athlete or Team to follow on Twitter?

Brendan Wilhide:While following athletes on Twitter is a lot of fun, I enjoy following teams more because teams are consistently finding new ways to promote and market themselves through Twitter.

I recently blogged about my “top 10 Minor League Baseball teams on Twitter” and I think minor league sports are an excellent example of how teams can use Twitter in their marketing efforts.

I’ve seen teams tweet about everything from promotions and the weather at the ballpark to ticket giveaways (Shaq made the Twitter specific “find me now” promotion famous) and special discounts for fans.

I think teams are realizing that Twitter is a fun, free way to stay in touch with their fanbase and I think we’ve only seen the beginning of sports teams on Twitter.
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Be sure to check out Sports in 140…

You can find Brendan and his Sports List on Twitter – @beingthere & @sportslist

“Need help wit something? Ask. It’s not an admission of weakness, but shows your determination to succeed. (via @LewisHowes)”

Check out both @RyanStephans Blog and @LewisHowes Blog

Each week, Monday to be exact, there will be an exclusive interview of a blogger that has made a presence online. Bloggers will be focused on Sports Business and Social Networking.

Our first MMB will be Brendan Wilhide of “Sports in 140″.

Jim DeLorenzo

Josh Feinberg: Can you speak on your career path and experience leading to Octagon?

Jim DeLorenzo: My experience has been heavy on the digital media side and not as much on the sports side. I was pretty fortunate that I was able to eventually combine the two (digital media and sports) because I actually am a huge sports fan. My background started with law (as an attorney) almost a decade ago, representing the original Napster. From the law firm and handling those types of digital media property issues, I moved over to AOL where I was handling a lot of mobile and instant messaging transactions. I then ended up becoming head of business development and took care of the marketing issues for a start up (company) called Qloud, which was backed by Steve Case and his company Revolution. I focused primarily on online music applications that lived inside the various social networks.

We launched initially on Facebook and then quickly moved to MySpace, High Five, Friendster, and all the others. In less than a year, we ramped up about 7 millions users or so. I had a successful exit with Qloud and at the time of that exit, I was looking around and trying to decide if I was going to continue with the acquiring company or move somewhere else. At that moment, a position popped up at Octagon, which was looking for somebody to stand up their Digital Division.

So again, being a huge sports fan and obviously being involved in the digital media space, it seemed like a good opportunity to combine the two. Now at Octagon, running the Digital Division, I have two main responsibilities, one of which is to find new digital marketing channels for our athletes online. Another is to develop our own stand alone digital properties, the first of which is Twackle.com.

Josh Feinberg: Following your undergraduate work, I take it, that it was not your intention to work in the Sports Industry?

Jim DeLorenzo: I wouldn’t say I didn’t have any intention of working in sports, but it wasn’t something I was actively trying to pursue. It wasn’t as if I was pursuing internships (in the sports industry). Again, I’m a gigantic sports fan, so I always thought it would be something that would be fun but it wasn’t something I was going to actively pursue.

I went straight from undergrad to law school, then law school down to a firm here in D.C. So I was not necessarily following a career path that would typically lead you to a sports related company.

Josh Feinberg: When did you join Octagon?

Jim DeLorenzo: About a year ago.

Josh Feinberg: For those not familiar with Octagon, can you give a brief overview of the company?

Jim DeLorenzo: Octagon is a global company. Octagon Athletes and Personalities is based here in McLain, Virginia. We have about 800 athletes worldwide representing pretty much every major sport. Some of our bigger clients include Michael Phelps and Chris Paul.

Josh Feinberg: Now can you go into what you do within the Digital sector and how that is incorporated into Octagon Athletes and Personalities?

Jim DeLorenzo: Well I think what you are seeing, more and more is that people are consuming their sports content online. Every athlete, every league, and every team are looking for ways to connect with their fans online and are shifting to different online platforms. For Octagon, one of my responsibilities is to help the agents find the right opportunities for their athletes in a digital medium. An example would be, if you go to NBA.com, they have videos running of Chris Paul. They have behind the scene videos chronicling what it is like to be a young, NBA super-star. Having NBA.com as a platform, to push those videos has a lot of benefits for Chris (Paul). That is one of the things I am doing out of the digital sector.

Basically, I am trying to find digital marketing opportunities for our athletes online and helping to provide both the athletes and the agents more of a consistent digital strategy.

Josh Feinberg: Looking at the social media platforms, specifically Twitter… We have seen an explosion of athletes and personalities jumping on-board. What is your reaction to the Twitter craze?

Jim DeLorenzo: Again, that gets back to the whole concept of athletes, teams, leagues, and different brands trying to find new ways to connect with their fans online. For a long time for an athlete or a team, that meant writing a blog. To write a blog, that really does not fit into an athlete’s daily schedule because they are busy being a professional athlete, which is all-consuming. When you have somebody that is a professional blogger, they are sitting there banging out a couple posts per day on a team or player. Than you have the player who is spending the vast majority of their time focusing on being a professional athlete, which is what they should be doing. So they are always going to be at a disadvantage to the professional bloggers, in terms of the amount of content they can produce and how much time they can spend trying to make that content compelling.

Now you have Twitter come along, all of a sudden, you have a channel that athletes can use that fits into their life very easily. They can use their mobile device to send a short, 140 character messages. It doesn’t require them to sit in front of a computer. They could be on their way to practice or on their way back from a game. Or in the case of Charlie Villanueva the other night, have the ability to throw out a Twitter post in the middle of a game, during halftime. It fits to more into the athletes’ life style and the time constraints that they have, which are very demanding.

The great thing for the fan, because of the immediacy of Twitter and the fact that Shaq could write something during half-time, or even sit at a diner and say “come meet me at the diner and I’ll give you free tickets to the Suns’ game tonight”. The immediacy is something that you can’t replicate in a blog. It provides a benefit to the fan that wasn’t there before; this feeling of immediacy and intimacy with the athletes and having a real connection there. That’s one of the things that make it appealing to the fan and consumer standpoint. I think it’s (Twitter) only going to continue to grow. It really fits into the athlete’s life and the consumer loves it because they’re getting little nuggets of information faster and more on a real-time basis than they ever could otherwise.

Josh Feinberg: What exactly is Twackle?

Jim DeLorenzo: One of the problems you have with Twitter is that there are massive amounts of data and it becomes difficult for people to manage it. One of the things that we thought would be helpful is to have a sports focused front end on Twitter. What we do, we find and aggregate all the messages on Twitter related to sports and put them into Twackle.com in the appropriate area using our navigation. This allows the user to quickly find the topic they are looking for. We surface all of these messages in the form of “feeds” which allows the user to find feeds on a topic very quickly. Whether that’s the NFL, New York Giants or a particular player on the New York Giants, they can drill down and find the information they feel is compelling very easily. If they’re looking at our NY Giants feed – we are pulling that information in real time, every message seen on Twitter will feed into Twackle. There it is an aggregation and discovery tool for sports content on Twitter. Beyond that, you have the ability to have a native Twitter integration. You can log into Twackle using your Twitter ID and password. With that integration, when you post a message live on Twackle, it shows on your Twitter stream. You end up with a multi platform play as the user. If you look, there’s actually a top ‘Twacklers’ module that shows the people that have used Twackle the most over the past week. Some of those people are actually teams. For example, the Charlotte Bobcats are on there. They’ve started to use Twackle and use it as one of their platforms for distributing their Twitter messages as they live ‘tweet’ during games.

Josh Feinberg: How long since Twackle went live?

Jim DeLorenzo: We got something up there with Twackle at the beginning of this year. In its current form, we started telling people about it back in February. There was actually a Sports Business Journal article about it early in February. It really hasn’t been that long, you’re looking at 4-6 weeks since we went live. It’s pretty new and we continue to rev out new functions. We have some pretty cool things coming down the pike that I think people are going to find very interesting. It’s relatively young in the cycle right now.

Josh Feinberg: With Twackle’s initial launch, I would imagine it’s not perfect and it does not satisfy everyone out there. Can users suggest information they would like to see on Twackle?

Jim DeLorenzo: People can always send us messages; we do have the ability to send comments back. They could also send messages through the Twackle feed. We are always open to suggestions. User feedback is crucial for Twackle. We recently had the people of ‘Women Talk Sports’, which is a great blog obviously focused on Women in Sports; reach out to us telling us we need more content around Women’s Sports. They were right and we did. We’re definitely open to any suggestions on a content side…any content areas we are not currently covering – we definitely want to hear about that, along with any suggestions. It’s pretty easy for us to throw up items in regards to a specific topic, as long as there is content behind it. On the functionality side, same thing, we always like to hear from people. Any comment from our users is always helpful. It’s a huge advantage to have that connection with our users.

Josh Feinberg: Any other features the user should be aware of?

Jim DeLorenzo: One other functionality I wanted to mention was the ‘Top Links’ module. For every one of our feeds, take the NY Jets and Kerry Rhodes who is a safety on the Jets, he has his own Twitter page. We have 800 or so feeds that we continue to add everyday. For every one of those feeds, we pull out the links on an on-going rolling basis for the past 24 hours, the links that were sent the most through those feeds. If you look at the general NFL feeds, the module shows the links sent the most; either on Twackle or Twitter- and the Top Links module becomes a user generated recommendation engine.

Josh Feinberg: What is the relation with Twackle and Octagon:

Jim DeLorenzo: It’s an Octagon Digital property. The ultimate plan is to spin it out and turn Twackle into its own independent entity.

Josh Feinberg: To close, let’s relax a bit with few quick response questions:

Josh Feinberg: Favorite Athlete (all-time)?

Jim DeLorenzo: Joe Klecko

Josh Feinberg: Favorite Team to Follow?

Jim DeLorenzo: New York Jets

Josh Feinberg: Who do you have winning tourney?

Jim DeLorenzo: Being a graduate, I have to go with Duke

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Check out the published interview with Jim on SportsAgentBlog.com

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — NBA Development League President Dan Reed announced today at a press conference at the Basketball Hall of Fame that HWS Basketball, LLC will be bringing an NBA D-League team to Springfield, Massachusetts for the 2009-10 season. The team will play at Springfield’s MassMutual Center.

The new team will be owned and operated by Michael Savit who is the managing partner of HWS Basketball, LLC, a group of local investors. Savit brings with him to Springfield and the NBA D-League a wealth of minor league operational and sports business experience, including time as Senior Vice President at the Cleveland-based International Management Group (IMG) and as the managing partner of minor league baseball teams in the South Atlantic League, Midwest League, Southern League, California League, Coastal Plain League and New York-Penn League.

Savit and his group have been awarded the right to relocate the NBA D-League team currently playing in Anaheim, California to Springfield. While the local ownership group will have the option to retain rights to current Anaheim Arsenal players, they will announce a new name, colors, and a mascot for the Springfield team later on this spring.

“As the NBA D-League continues to move east, we’re very excited to bring a team to a place that not only has rich basketball history, but also boasts an impressive ownership group, strong civic leadership and community support,” said Reed. “We’re thrilled to welcome such a well-respected and experienced operator in Mike Savit to our ownership ranks, and look forward to not only bringing our unique brand of affordable, family-friendly, and NBA-caliber basketball to Springfield, but becoming a vital part of the greater Springfield community.”

Today’s announcement featured Reed, Savit, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, James E. Rooney, executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, University of Massachusetts men’s basketball head coach and Springfield native Derek Kellogg and George Ramirez, the deputy director and general counsel of the Department of Business Development, Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. Rooney served as a master of ceremonies for the event.

“Today is an exciting day for Springfield!” said Savit. “I’m thrilled to be a part of the group that brought professional basketball back to the game’s birthplace and I can’t wait to contribute to this city’s great basketball history and become part of the fabric of the community.”

“The National Basketball Association, Springfield and the MassMutual Center are a powerful combination,” said Rooney of the MCCA, which owns the venue. “The entire Pioneer Valley will undoubtedly embrace our new pro team, and we plan to be worthy partners with our top-tier service and state-of-the-art amenities.”
The team in Springfield will be affiliated with two NBA team parent-clubs, which will be able to assign their first and second year players to the club up to three times during a season. Thus far, the 2008-09 NBA D-League season has had 30 NBA players assigned on 39 occasions to NBA D-League affiliates to continue to develop their games. An announcement regarding Springfield’s NBA team affiliations will occur during the offseason.

About the NBA Development League: The NBA Development League, founded in 2001, is the NBA’s official minor league and features 16 teams with direct affiliations to NBA teams. The league has produced 15 percent of the players on 2007-08 end-of-season NBA rosters and continues to develop current NBA coaches and referees. In fostering the league’s connection to the community, its teams, players and staff promote youth basketball, support local needs and interests, and assist in educational development through NBA D-League Cares programs. The NBA D-League also advances the game of basketball as the research and development arm of the NBA. Throughout this season fans can watch all NBA D-League games on NBA Futurecast, the free live Web-streaming initiative found at nba.com/futurecast.

Looking at the agenda, how can you not be impressed? Representatives from the NBA, Octagon, Georgetown University, AOL, CBS, Washington Redskins, Under Armour, USA Today, and of course our host, the Washington Nationals. The opening Keynote Address was given by Major League Soccer President, Mark Abbott.

The event was marketed towards potential players in the sports, events and marketing industries; those being young professionals, motivated students or career changers. There was a mix of each but the audience was primarily made of college level students.

A speaker that took the lead was AOL Vice-President, Jimmy Lynn…

Jimmy Lynn has been a key player in the business for quite some time. At AOL, from 1995-2006, Lynn was as innovative as anyone there. Lynn was responsible for the relationships surrounding the sports content seen on AOL. A few of the partnerships developed under his guidance were with the NFL, NBA, NASCAR, MLB, and HBO. Now, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Lynn graduated from American University with a B.A. in Public Communications and a M.B.A. in Marketing. Lynn is very supportive of young professionals at the collegiate level.

In regards to today’s business leaders and practices – “Go Mobile, Go Global, or Go Green.” – Jimmy Lynn

Another speaker of note was Tim McDermott of the Washington Capitals…

The Capitals’ Chief Marketing Officer gave inspiring words towards the sports industry and what we need to succeed. He spoke of the ENERGY and DRIVE industry professionals can never lose. It is the ENERGY and DRIVE we can never give up. It was stressed that we need to learn everyday on the job. In this industry, the sports industry, we can never be at a stand-still.

“We have to keep our foot on the gas…” – Tim McDermott

The Lakewood Blueclaws, a minor league affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, have brought a positive light to the picture. Get out of your houses, bring the family out, have a GREAT time – all for a $1…or maybe $4. This is the message the Blueclaws are sending.

The Blueclaws announced last month that kids would be eating FREE all season. Yes, you heard correct, all kids, 12 and under, will be walking in the stadium, and eating free – for all 70 home games. This is quite a statement the Blueclaws are making.

Check out the release… http://www.lakewoodblueclaws.com/lakewood_blueclaws_news_details.asp?id=1448

Most recent, the Blueclaws have launched $1 weekend to start the season. The weekend of April 10th-12th, fans can purchase tickets for $1. With that, I family of four can get in the park and feed the two young ones for a measly four dollars!

Further information – http://blueclaws.com/lakewood_blueclaws_news.asp#1471

Each of these promotions bring on an extreme risk and reward. The response has been fantastic! Keep an eye out on the Blueclaws. Take a peek and follow them on Twitter!