the list of sport networking & communities websites

if you don’t see yours or if I have skipped some; contact me and I’ll be pleased to add them! This post is not primarily for fantasy sports… lets start with 52 listed websites, we’ll see where we end up

GENERAL

1. loopd.com
2. sponsorhouse.com (help you find a sponsor)
3. eteamz.com (over 3 mios users, manage your team & league)
4. sportsvite.com
5. isporty.com
6. yousport.com
7. active.com
8. mixsport.com (coming soon)
9. sporgle.com (organize your sport online)
10. sportingo.com (sports discussion)
11. takkle.com (high school sports community)
12. ourplaybook.com (create profiles, share media & connect with other athletes) 
13. sportme.com (UK based, focus on athletes & teams)
14. allympic.com (french based; find players, organize your activities)
15. sportkin.com

NEWS

1. fannation.com (owned by sports illustrated)
2. fanspot.com (fan club, team stats, blogs…)
3. sportsmates.com (included 1000 communities)
4. sportspundit.com
5. efans.com
6. fanvoice.com (NBA official social network)
7. mynfl.com (NFL official social network)
8. nhlconnect.com (official social network)

ACTION SPORTS

1. actionprofiles.com
2. boardride.tv
3. skuff.tv
4. shredordie.com
5. twinzer.com
6. bnqt.com (bought by USA today)
7. xtrm.com (mostly motocross)
8. surfspot.com
9. x3mpeople.com (beta)
10. snowboardrevolution.com
11. adrenalinehub.com
12. athletefocus.com (community for athletes)
13. nevermodest.com
14. stream19.com
15. seshn.com (niche blog)

SOCCER

1. youfoot.com (beta)
2. kickkickboom.com 
3. joga.com (owned by google & nike)
4. footbo.com 
5. soccerflaw.com 
6. oleole.com (social media site has everything a football fan want - news, blogs, photos, videos, history and fantasy football. Everything is 100% UGC)
7. peoplessoccer.com (want to buy or start a soccer team?)

GOLF

1. golfbuzz.com
2. golfnuts.com
3. igolf.to
4. golflink.com (personal golf analysis)
5. golfshake.com

OTHERS & SPECIALIZED

1. skispace.com (ski)
2. sanoodi.com (map & monitor activities)
3. swimroom.com (online community for swimmers)
4. tennisplayers.net (help you find new tennis player)

Are you an entrepreneur?

1. do you think constantly about ideas, projects, how to push things forward, while riding your bike, listening to music, watching movies, etc?
2. 3 straight red bulls wouldn’t match your energy per hour?
3. Are you able to pass on your passion to others?
4. When you listen to the “eye of the tiger” you’re pretty sure you could beat up Rocky Balboa?
5. Can you bounce back when failed?
6. Is working til 10pm too late for you?
7. Can you explain your project in one sentence?
8. Were you born to create your own network?

e-sponsoring: the most powerful tool of social advertising

Let’s try to make a comparison with the real life: Imagine you are watching a game in the central court of Wimbledon, all around the court there are advertisings of banks, brands.. that correspond to a banner on a website. Then the guy seated next to you starts asking you questions about the racket of Federer, that will correspond to a chat, forum. All of a sudden, Roger misses a ball, goes to his seat and exchange his Wilson for a Head.. (well in real life he will never do that because of contract’s reasons but lets pretend)… It is pretty obvious to understand the influence of this act on the community: 50% of Roger’s fans will run to the closest store buy the Prince; others will wondering what’s wrong with the Wilson, and the Prince users will now be able to say “I told you it was a better racket”.. well the damage for Wilson can be quite severe.

In a preview post I wrote about a music community (modlife.com) and the fact that there is possibility to get some revenue from your fans in exchange for exclusive contents:

But make no mistake, bands & music communities are different by the fact that you can try it right away. You hear about a band, you go to myspace and make up your mind in a minute.

It is different for brands and their products, if you read a good post about a new cream by Chanel, you can’t try it right away, you gotta go to a shop, maybe first ask for a sample; that asks a certain engagement.

Where does this engagement come from?

As we have noticed, the moves & actions of Federer have a lot of influence on the tennis community… and that’s what marketer should look for online: Users Alpha (as defined by T. Ahonen). The user alpha is a usually technology oriented guy/girl and is an avid users of the internet and social networking. But most of all; he is LISTENED. What he says, writes or comments have a strong influence on the community he belongs to. Have a good comment from him/her and your traffic will double, have a bad review and you will have to spend much more energy to get your customers back.

E-sponsoring is not about bribing these Users-alpha; there must stay independent. But it is a long term relationship aiming to engage the communication between the brand and its products and the community. The user-alpha must keep in mind his defined line and why he became a leader of a certain community but his role has just been upgraded with new functions: engage the communication (which can be positive or negative), moderate and help the brand to find a right answer and make the right corrections as he is at the source of the information.

In conclusion, every brand should have his online Roger Federer.

 

 

 

 

digital music has not yet touched the live concert industry..

Well almost not.. DeepRockDrive is the first live interactive entertainment service and that’s a good news for the music industry, which is not going to sell albums much longer..

What is it?

DeepRockDrive is filming concerts in their Las Vegas warehouse with 5 HD sony cameras, optic fibber and a stage surrounded by a big flat screens where artists can interact with their audience. The ticket for a show is USD 6.99, splitted between the company and the musicians.

It’s a service for connecting fans and artists together. The most important feature of DeppRockDrive, outside of streaming music, is that the fans go to an interactive concert in which they are able to select the playlist, chat with the band, modify camera feeds and more from the comfort of their own homes. One can watch just the drums, or the lead singer in HD video broadcast and give live digital shoutouts to the artist in the studio at the end of a song. 

Any band could be one day broadcasted any users can create a petition and use the viral digiposter on websites or myspace in order to get enough votes. 

Will this work?

Well it is clear that the experience of a live show can’t be matched by your computer screen. But this website gives you the chance to see and interact with a band that you would never had an opportunity to see & interact. 

At the beginning of the music industry, they were no albums, no recording of any kind, band & musicians were earning money from their live show. Then came the recording, albums on viny, cd’s.. and then the internet and free music over the world… We are going back at the roots for artists which means Live shows; but with a major difference: Technology. The live show is a USD 10 billion industry and it is not going to decrease any time soon because the music business have never been so big.. Yes that is correct; music has never been so popular and so accessible because of our today’s technology. The future is not about selling 1 million cds (on which an artist gets almost nothing anyway) but it will be having a solid base of true loyal fan that will be ready to spend some dollars per month to get closer and interact like never before.

Will people would rather see music live shows of poorer quality on youtube/myspace.tv or will they be ready to spend USD 7 for scheduled live show? That’s a tough question.. But was is sure is that by bringing a lot of interactive tools between an artist and his fans, DeepRockDrive is pushing the level of the communication between them and that can be only positive for the music industry. 

 

why modlife / Angels & Airwaves have a right music model

Modlife is interactive website for fans of the band Angels & Airwaves (created by Tom Delonge, former lead singer of punk-rock band blink182). People who subscribe can have online daily chats with the band, instant messaging, webcam chats, watch concerts live in HD on their webpage, behind the scene, exclusive interviews…

Right now it is limited to the Angels & Airwaves but it should open to other bands soon. 

A couple years ago Tom realized with the increasing drop in music sales and with kids downloading more and more free music through different platform that he was not going to make most of his money with his cd sales like in the old days.. Music is becoming free and modlife is encouraging that. As stated Tom Delonge: “Bands will be able to have seamless interaction with their fans. They can double-click on someone’s face and start video-conferencing these kids instantly, so the subscription service is a new thing. Basically for two cups of coffee a month, they can come on every single day, and there’s something new every single day, whether it’s little short films behind the scenes or motion pictures we’re making, live shows, broadcasts, the band will be on camera every day at certain times doing weird shit.” 

But this isn’t just about music, it’s also a lot about visual content: The art of music because of the internet, iphone.. is merging with the world of videos => you can’t sell your music anymore.. so the bands are going to sell their image through video, videocast, blogs, a direct connection with them through chat or an exclusive accoustic live show..  

This will of course not work for every band as some won’t like giving to much of their private life away and of course this require a relative amount of faithful fans.. 

In a world of connectivity and interactivity; bands must realize that their best asset is their image! 

Trailer of their motion picture:

 

10 reasons why brands still fear communities

1 Customers become harder to find and more difficult to keep => fragmentation of customers attention

=> Marketing costs more and delivers less

 

2. The Word of mouth through emails, social network, IM or cellphones can dominate over a brand message, even when multi million dollar marketing are spent.

=> We trust a community more than advertising.

 

3. The youth believe in freedom of choice, indeed the necessity to make their own choices. Brand advertising and marketing was based on the principle “Be like me” as an inspirational desire. But in the future this will not work.

=> That means “From Push to Pull” for advertising

 

4. Consumers today are more aware of the options and sources of information available. Previously the only way to learn from new offerings or products was through advertising (or word of mouth). Consumers don’t want interruptive advertising anymore.

=> Age of self-empowerment

 

5. We move into the connected Age called “Generation-C”. A Gen-C member carries his/her community in the pocket (cellphone) and accesses that community all the time: “The network is there to help me and I control the interaction”.

=> Sharing information is power.

 

6. Emergence of the four C’s: Commerce, Culture, Community and Connectivity

=> a more powerful and inseparable combination

 

7. Each community will have its dominant influencing members, who coordinate communication within the community. The only way to convince this generation for marketers is to identify them and to cooperate together.

 

8. Internet is troublesome for brands: Nobody owns it, everybody can use it and anybody can improve it. A regular business by its nature is predisposed to misunderstand the internet’s nature

 

9. Consumers today want to create their own content. Technologies allow delivering or creating contents and services faster than ever like the blogosphere, which drives huge amounts of interactivity (real time and multi flows of information, knowledge, views and opinion)

 

10. The information needs to be entertaining. If brands don’t package their message the way the consumers want it, it will be ignored. Rather no advertising than a bad one..

=>Info-tainment

 

We’ll resume this first blog by a famous Charles Darwin’s phrase: “It is not the strongest that will survive, nor is it the most intelligent; but the one most adaptive to change” 

Inspired by the book “Communities dominate brands” by Ahonen & Moore