This is a guest post from David Lasday

Professional sports teams around the world are leveraging their brand and resources to better their communities. The social impact of sports philanthropy is growing, but it is still in the relatively early stage of development. Professional sports teams build programs with social impact missions to address a whole host of social issues, from bringing sport to underprivileged populations, empowering young women, teaching healthy lifestyles and encouraging children to stay in school. Today’s professional sports team possesses all the tools for a successful social good program.

Though the driving motivation behind sports philanthropy was originally altruistic, today, professional teams have found that their philanthropic activities add intrinsic value to the organization and benefit the team. Professional sports teams are identifying the powerful impact their brand has on members of their community, and as fan-based organizations, their success relies on building a strong and engaged community. Eli Wolff, Director of the Sport and Development Project at Brown University, notes that from a business standpoint, professional sports teams often find social impact programs lead to more tangible business results and stronger consumer connections.#

Sports teams feature massive brand values. Leveraging that brand value and using its power for social action therefore has great potential for wide social impact.

Social Impact of Philadelphia Eagles

One example of a program that successfully leverages its brand is the Philadelphia Eagles Youth Partnership. The Eagles package their program materials in all things Eagles, from the design of the vehicles to the posters, bookmarks, bookplates and storybook, optimizing their brand in efforts to attract and engage children. For example, branding playgrounds with the Eagles logo makes them attractive spaces to bring the community together. They have also used their brand to promote their Eye Mobile program, encouraging children to get their eyes checked and wear glasses to improve their eyesight.

A team’s connection and access to media gives them the power to spotlight social issues. As Peter Racine of the Jacksonville Jaguars Foundation (NFL) noted, driving the media is important because teams can attract media coverage to bring public attention to social matters and provide publicity to partners in community impact.#

The brand strength of professional teams and their access to the media assists in fundraising for social impact programs and initiatives. For example, Netanya Hoops For Kids works with the Barak Netanya basketball team to help raise funds for building and renovating after-school programs in Netanya, while both DC United’s United For DC and Netanya Hoops For Kids raise money from sponsors to buy tickets for children to attend games.

Martinez-Helfman, Director of the Eagles Youth Partnership, says: “It’s on the front end with raising the dollars, and it’s on the back end with delivering the service. The Eagle’s brand helps move the needle on the child’s behavior to get them to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. We have much higher rates of eyeglass wear than other programs that have been done without that connection.”#

In an age where collaboration and being lean is the name of the game, professional sports teams have the ability to create partnerships with community organizations quickly and easily. Schools and community centers are excited to partner with professional sports teams. These partnerships function as a win win, enabling both parties to leverage their resources and abilities to better serve the community.

Volunteers are also attracted to work with professional sports teams and lend their skills to social impact programs. Hapoel Tel Aviv Mifalot, who in 2010 were recognized by Beyond Sport as “Best Team in the world for social impact created off the field”, successfully recruits volunteers from their local youth leagues and their sponsors. Likewise, Barak Netanya and Netanya Hoops For Kids has recruited volunteers from MASA’s new long-term Israel program, Israel Teaching Fellows. Volunteers jump at the chance to work with professional sports teams and give back to the community at the same time.

Similarly to team brand strength, the status and influence of individual professional athletes is a valuable tool in engaging and educating children and their communities. As part of United Soccer Clubs DC United players coach youth from underprivileged communities, promoting healthy lifestyles through soccer. Michael Vaughan-Cherubin, Program Manager for United Soccer Club, says “Professional athletes are real-life heroes who children are excited to learn from. When children see a player playing goalie in a professional soccer game in front of thousands of fans, and then at their practice the next day, they pay attention.” Likewise Netanya Hoops For Kids utilizes the status and influence of Barak Netanya players to spread the game of basketball and to use the sport to teach children life skills such as listening, communication, teamwork, goal setting, and community responsibility.

Social Impact In The Future?

Whats next? As the field continues to grow, teams and players will begin to leverage their brands for massive social impact through crowdsourcing offering contests and rewards to individuals and groups doing the most social good in the community. For instance a team will offer free tickets or a player visit to the youth team that participates in the most volunteer hours in the community.

The power of sports teams to enact wide social good is unarguable.  Few other entities have access to the built in resources for wide social impact. Sports philanthropy turns sponsors into philanthropists, fans into volunteers, and players into change makers, while building a community we can all cheer for.

David Lasday is a social entrepreneur specializing in sports philanthropy and sports based youth development.  David was a 2010 PresenTense Global Fellow. He is founding member of Global Game Changers Sports Development Consulting Group, and serves as a sports development consultant for Israel Lacrosse. David currently works as the Program Director for Netanya Hoops For Kids, a program of the Netanya Foundation and Netanya Municipality.

This article is In debt to: Sports Teams and Social Impact: An Analysis of Recent Developments and Best Practices. An MBA Project for Eagles Youth Partnership Completed by students at The Wharton School. Lisa Alexander, Liz Eavey, Kat O‟Brien and Melissa Torres Buendia with the assistance of faculty members Jeff Klein and Katie Krimmel. July 2011

Do you think sports teams are doing enough to give back to the community? Leave your comments below and please feel free to share this with your friends on Facebook and Twitter!

About Heidi Howes

Heidi Howes is a freelance writer,editor, and singer-songwriter living in Columbus, Ohio. She blogs about following bliss at www.theanandaproject.com.

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Professional sport teams each have fans that not only live in within arena zip code, but there are others who live in other states and even in other countries.  Many of these fans have never been able to be communicated with by their favorite team…until now.  The next question is not, “Why should I care,” but instead, “How can I capitalize on this market for additional revenue for our sports franchise?”

On the surface this photo above looks like a pretty typical fan at a baseball game holding up a baseball. Average photo except this is a picture of my brother wearing an Atlanta Braves jersey, at a Los Angeles Dodgers home game with a ball tossed to him by the Braves first baseman, Freddie Freeman. (click the link to be sure to follow Freeman on Twitter)

I most recently learned that the reason my family went to sooo many Dodgers’ games was because we use to have season tickets! I still have no explanation for why we had a family member stray to support an East Coast team. All I do know is that his favorite player is Chipper Jones who still makes my brother very excited about baseball. (click the link to follow Jones on Twitter)

How does a boy on the west coast gets his Atlanta Braves fix?  Scores are pushed to his cell phone regularly. He can check for instant updates on scores and batting percentages online. His favorite players also happen to be on Twitter. Finally, he posts comments and updates to his Facebook wall throughout the season to ignite conversation among friends and fans. 

This is just the beginning of the potential.

With the increase in teams adapting to a more social and digital realm, being able to get more involved from a farther distance is becoming more accessible and interactive.

Through the use of social and digital media integration as a marketing platform, sport teams and athletes can now tap into resources previously unavailable to them.  Thus, allowing teams to not only maximize their current market, but reaching outside their arena too.

Role of Social and Digital Media

• Not only can you maximize the space within the arena, but now have the opportunity to create your own digital content in the US, Europe, Canada, etc.
• Sponsoring companies now have a benefit for not only their local stores near the arena, but able to be a supportive element in addition to increased brand recognition for national locations too.
• Community Relation’s efforts can be expanded and driven with greater support and reach through the social media channels; providing a greater resource to reach a broader audience.
• Global merchandise sales.
• Must stop location for out of town visitors.
• Sponsorship activation across boarders
• With more and more professional athletes becoming more involved with social media personally, the fans are then able to follow a more inside look into their lives. It allows the personal space athletes enjoy, and the access the fans cherish for a lifetime.

 As sport organizations become more in tune with the opportunities available to capitalize and maximize their current marketing and revenue efforts, the creative uses of social and digital media will continue to increase substantially.

What are some other opportunities a sports franchise might have in tapping into fans outside their zip code?

About Kristen Sonsma

Kristen Sonsma has spent most of her sports career in ticket sales with experience in the AFL, MLS, and NHL. Connect with her on LinkedIn or on Twitter

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It’s no secret that mobile is taking over.

My only question is why are sports teams and leagues waiting around in order to miss the boat?  Some sports teams are starting to use mobile marketing and are getting great results, but a lot of teams just don’t understand the value… yet.

This video is a great representation of how artists and their fans are connecting via mobile, and it is exactly the same way sports teams, leagues, and pro athletes should be connecting to their fans as well.

Let’s go over some important mobile statistics:

• There are over 5 billion mobile phone users in the world.
• More than 450 million Smartphones will ship in 2011
• By 2013 more people will access the Internet from a mobile phone than a computer.
• By 2014 7 billion devices will be connected to the Internet.
• The Smartphone market will grow 4x faster than overall mobile market.

Enter Mobile Roadie 

Mobile Roadie is widely known as the most powerful mobile app platform in the world.

Even thought Mobile Roadie powers apps for the worlds top artists like Madonna, Linkin Park, The Doors, Taylor Swift, and The Beatles, they are also becoming the go-to provider for the worlds top sports teams and athletes (like the Washington Redskins, Miami Dolphins, and more here).

Even we at Sports Networker decided it was finally time to get our own mobile app, and we are already starting to see the results. (Feel free to download the Sports Networker mobile app here)

Mobile is taking over, and soon more people will be on their mobile devices over their laptops.  Make sure to talk to someone in marketing at your sports team, league, or organization today and ask them what their plans are for mobile.

Are they staying ahead of the pack, or waiting for others to be the leaders in the industry?  Make sure to show them this post and video and take a look at the various options out there for creating your own mobile app.

There are many options for creating your own app (but we at Sports Networker love the easy to set up and manage platform with Mobile Roadie).

Whatever you decide to do, make sure you start thinking about how to integrate mobile in your marketing strategy today so you can take advantage of the way your fans will want to interact with your team in the future.

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The team at Mobile Roadie wanted to provide a 15% discount for any SportsNetworker readers or sports teams who sign up to get their own mobile app.  Just use “SPORTSNETWORKER” when you check out over here and you will be given the discount.

Related Sports Mobile Marketing Posts

5 Ways The National Football League Can Use Geolocation Apps

Geolocation is a Game Changer for Sports Businesses

The Power of Mobile Marketing for Sports Teams

Top 4 Strategic Mobile Opportunities in College Athletics

Mobile Apps Sports Marketing

About Lewis Howes

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The hottest market to be in right now is deals. From Living Social to Groupon, finding a deal in your city is easier than ever. With big brands like Gap, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon already having joined in on the party, the sports world is starting to turn their attention toward this rapidly growing market.

While there have been a few sports teams who have experimented with offering discounted ticket deals through deal sites (see New Jersey Nets), sports teams need to consider the financial and brand ramifications that come from slashing ticket prices in the exchange of selling off inventory.

Win-Win Situation?

Speaking with other sports professionals, the biggest reason why they would consider working with a Groupon or Living Social is to help them move inventory that they wouldn’t normally be able to sell in a limited amount of time. Typically, this would mean tickets for a game less than a few days away.

At first glance, this would seem like a win-win situation: Fans get a great deal and the team sells off inventory that would have otherwise been considered a loss. Still, if we dig closer we will see that is not always the case.

Things To Consider

While we’ve all heard about the success stories of deal sites helping businesses grow their customer base, what rarely makes the headlines are the stories of how deal sites hurt them.

For example, profitability should be a huge red flag for any sports team looking to sell off tickets and inventory quick. In most cases, not only would a team have to offer a deal at 50% or more, they would also need to split revenue of those sold with the deal site. Groupon which can take anywhere from a small amount to 100% of the revenue depending on how much the deal price is set at (see Posies Restaurant), can make covering basic overhead costs near impossible.

Further, Utpal Dkolakia, associate professor of marketing at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, recently published an in-depth review of one-a-day deal site Groupon and reported that 32% of companies said that the Groupon campaign was unprofitable with only 25% of redeemers buying additional products beyond the ones offered through the coupon and only 15% of coupon users coming back.

Another important factor to consider is who the deal is being targeted toward: Is it being marketed toward your fans or is it being marketed toward deal seekers and one-time shoppers? For sports teams especially, they need to remember that coupons make customer loyalty go out the window. As stated before, only 15% of Groupon users are coming back, which means that for a sports organization they would lose money in the long-run since their is no customer retention.

Lastly, sports teams need to consider not only the financial aspect of working with a one-a-day deal site, but also need to consider the following:

• Are we able to gather and own any of the data of the individual buying a ticket? Ex: Age, Interests, Area Code, Email. — Answer: Sometimes. Refer to Groupon example of “Release of Personally Identifiable Information.”
• Sponsorship – Getting a sponsor to take part in a one-day-deal is difficult (maybe impossible), because of the numerous league rules that govern promotions and sponsorships. No sponsorship means that a team must rely strictly on the ticket revenue that is shared with them and the in-stadium up-sell.

Alternatives to Deal-A-Day Sites

While the appeal of deal-a-day sites may seem too good to pass up, there are other alternatives for sports teams looking to sell extra tickets and future inventory. Here are a few of them:

1. Create your own deal-a-day. Sports teams don’t need to necessarily work with a deal site to offer great packages and tickets to fans. The Los Angeles Clippers are a great example. Through their official fan engagement site, myClipper NATION, they were able to create “Fastbreak Friday” which offered registered user (Clippers able to capture and own user data) exclusive offers. The Clippers were able to set their own prices and keep 100% of their revenue.

2. Consider creating a loyalty program. While many focus on the immediate goals of selling inventory fast, why not create a loyalty program that gets fans to come back? Loyalty programs are great because they encourage fans to come back and are also great for building up a fan base by offering them incentives (that the team controls and creates).

About Joseph Yi

Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans. Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.

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Today, every sports organization has a digital team that’s in charge of the upkeep and management of the teams digital assets. From the articles that go up on the website daily, to the Tweets and Facebook updates that are shared with fans, a teams digital presence has grown from just banner ads and email blasts to fan interactions and real-time content. Still, although every sports organization has a digital team in place, not all are making an impact with their efforts.

5 Questions To Ask

So how do you know if you are doing a good job? While it would be convenient if there were some sort of grading scale where A’s and B’s were easy to distinguish, instead we have to develop our own scale of what is considered ‘passing’ and what is ‘failing.

Here are 5 questions that every digital team should ask themselves in no particular order:

1. What ‘brand’ do I want to present versus what people actually think of my brand?

Fundamental to any digital effort is the question of what the main focus will be in regards to representation of the teams ‘brand.’ By having a clear idea of what ‘brand’ you would like to present as well as what people actually think of your brand currently will help you determine what areas need work. Without knowing this, it’s like trying to build a bridge without knowing how far the distance is between the two sides.

2. Do I know what people are saying about us?

A popular catch phrase in the mid 80′s, GI-Joe’s “Knowing is half the battle” PSA is still very relevant. With the digital space become an ever growing collection of conversations and ideas, sports teams need to make sure that they are ‘listening in’ on what their community is saying. A great example of brands that are benefiting from listening in on what their ‘community’ is saying include BestBuy, ComCast and Whole Foods.

3. Is everyone on the same page?

Having a set goal is great, but unless everyone is working toward that same goal, reaching it will be twice as hard. Similar to the ‘united we stand, divided we fall’ motto, teams need to make sure that everyone involved has a clear understanding of what the goal is and more importantly, why. Too often are individuals asked to do something without having an understanding of why. By educating someone on why they need to do something or why something is done a certain way, you create an environment where everyone feels like they are part of something important.

4. Do we offer a unique experience?

Having a digital presence not only means putting out content and engaging fans, but offering them something unique. For example, putting out last nights box score and a recap of what happened is good, but what’s to stop a fan from going to ESPN or Yahoo! Sports for the same content? Sports teams need to focus on providing fans with exclusive content and the ‘can’t get anywhere else’ opportunities.

5. Would I share the content we create?

A key part that many of us forget to ask ourselves about the content that we create and publish is whether we would actually share it with others. When it comes to content development, we often forget to put ourselves in the shoes of the fan or consumer.With the digital space, content that is ‘share’ worthy helps to grow and further a brands reach and influence. As a rule of thumb, digital teams need to be the biggest critic of their own work.

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About Joseph Yi

Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans. Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.

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The panic button. While it actually doesn’t exist per say, it’s one that we have all encountered. Whether it be an advertisement that didn’t turn out the way we wanted or putting together a team that didn’t perform like expected, the panic button symbolizes a need for help and in some cases, realization of failure. While common sense says that we should automatically hit it when we are in the appropriate situations, too often do we tell ourselves that we can fix it or resolve it on our own.

The problem with not hitting the “panic button” when necessary is that should one fail in fixing the problem, the problem just gets worse and sometimes to the point of a total loss.

In sports, the panic button is often driven business. For example, a General Manager whose team is losing every game would be expected to be replaced, but if they are selling out every game then there is a reason to keep them. Although this should be considered a paradox, it is quite common in sports.

The Fans’ Perspective

From a fans point of view, the panic button is an emotional response. When their team starts losing, their first instinct is to hit the button and ask for help. A great example is to listen to sports talk radio when the home team starts losing. One of the most common remarks that you will hear from fans is how the team should trade for X and give up nothing or give up very little. While we know where the fan is coming from, ideas such as an outrageous trade or move often spread like wildfire amongst fans and can create a domino effect in which everyone believes that the team should make a trade. The biggest problem here is that although a fan base might feel that it’s time to the panic button, teams have a different motive and point of view.

The Team’s Perspective

As fore mentioned, the panic is often driven by business. For sports teams, opportunity cost determines if it’s time to hit the panic button. For example, a team that is losing, but putting fans in stands needs to weight he opportunity cost of what it would take to help the team start winning. If helping the team win 5 extra games means bringing in a player at a cost of an additional $3 million on the books, the team then needs to consider what the value of each win is to them. Without getting to far into the economics of sports, for the team to hit the panic button it is more complex than an emotional response.

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Earlier, we brought up the problem of not hitting the “panic button” when we should. Revisiting it, although the fans and teams perspectives were both explained separately, perhaps the best way of even knowing of when to hit the “panic button” is through a combination of both perspectives.

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About Joseph Yi

Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans. Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.

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The key to an effective message is its’ ability to deliver a specific message to a specific individual. The problem with many social media campaigns today though is that strategies are often geared toward hitting a large mass audience with no specific target. In comparison, this is like submitting your resume to a company without catering it toward a specific department or position. Yes, you may get a response, but what are the odds that it’s the job you are looking for?

In the case of sports, we often see the same promotions and campaigns re-engineered for individual teams with little change. While its understandable to follow along the ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’ concept, the problem is that there is a problem and we need to fix it.

Fans Will Stop Listening

A large part of why traditional media & advertising strategies have lost effectiveness is that people just stopped listening. Consumers that were open to watching 30 second commercials for a new product found that they had better things to do. It wasn’t that the product wasn’t useful or interesting, rather it was that consumers had been overloaded with same the message over and over that it lost its relevance.

Moving forward, sports teams and creative minds need to focus on creating rather than replicating. While current social media strategies may yield positive results, teams need to begin defining their digital presence before fans begin ‘ignoring‘ them. The key here won’t be how often they tweet or post a picture, but rather how they differentiate themselves from the ‘rest.’

While nearly every sports team has a Facebook or Twitter profile established, the problem is that just a small percentage of them are innovating and impacting their fan base. Although fans continue to ‘like’ and ‘follow’ teams, just how consumers slowly started to lose interest in traditional media strategies, a teams online fan base is subject to the same end result.

2 Tips on How To Make An Impact

1. Keep your message simple.

The best ideas are those that are simple and easy to do. The biggest reason for this is that simple ideas are easy for an audience to understand. Just how when you try and explain something to someone you make it easy for them to understand, social media campaigns should be centered around a simple to execute, easy to understand idea.  In addition to having your target audience being able to easily connect with your digital efforts, a simple idea is ideal because it can easily be developed into bigger ideas should the need be there.

2. Identify influencers amongst your fan base.

A key part of the equation that many forget about are the mavens and evangelists within the community who help make ideas go viral. These individuals are vital to a social community because of their ability to influence others. Look at any sports teams Facebook Fan Page and you will always see the same individuals commenting and writing posts. Head over to Twitter and it’s the same people who are retweeting and sharing stories from their favorite teams. Teams that are looking to have a greater understanding and relationship with their fans need to begin identifying these influencers and finding ways to incorporate them into their digital efforts.

What kind of strategies would you like to see sports teams putting in place in the future?

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About Joseph Yi

Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans. Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.

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Sports PR jobs seem like they’re hidden, but they’re really not. You just have to know where to look.

Most people can’t find Sports PR jobs because they have blinders on. They get so focused on working for their favorite team, they can’t see the big picture.

That’s understandable because of all the excitement surrounding the team and the media attention superstar athletes generate.

Team Jobs = Only Six Percent of Market

According to Sports Careers founder, Mark Tudi:

“Team jobs make up only six percent of the jobs within the entire industry.”

That means there’s another 94 percent of sports jobs out there that you should know about. That’s what we’ll cover today.

Opportunities Within Each Sector

To uncover the hidden job market in Sports PR, we need to look at the various business sectors that make up the sports industry.

To simplify it, I’ve divided the sports industry into eight basic business sectors below.

• Teams / Leagues / Governing Bodies
• Corporate Sponsors
• Sports Agencies
• Sports Media
• Sports Apparel
• Sporting Goods
• Stadiums / Live Events
• Health / Fitness

Thousands of companies make up each of those sectors. Here’s the good news: 99 percent of those companies have a PR department. And if they don’t, they hire an outside agency.

Companies within the Corporate Sponsor sector, like Coca-Cola for example, employ PR experts to help grab as much attention as they possibly can in order to maximize those expensive sponsorships.

Sports Media companies, such as ESPN and Fox Sports, also have PR departments. They’re constantly promoting new programming. Same with Sports Apparel companies like Nike and Sporting Goods companies like Spalding. There are always new products rolling out.

Every company, every brand, every organization in the sports industry has a unique story to tell. And it’s the PR department that helps make that happen.

The Biggest Opportunities

Once you discover the wide-range of companies that exist within the sports industry, you’ll have an easier time uncovering the Sports PR opportunities.
As for the biggest Sports PR opportunities happening in 2011, they can be found in two areas:

1. Social Media Coordinator
2. Sports PR & Marketing Agencies

If you’re bent on working for your favorite team, I would suggest that you start educating yourself in social media if you haven’t done so already. Darren Rovell, CNBC Sports Business Reporter told Sports Networker in an exclusive interview: “I think that the social media coordinator is the best job that will open up on sports teams.”

Looking beyond the teams, the sector with the most opportunities would be Sports PR & Marketing Agencies. Media fragmentation has caused sports properties to partner with agencies that specialize in highly-targeted audiences.

I am currently writing a book on America’s Top 200 Sports PR & Marketing Firms, and would love to hear your successes and struggles, so please let me know how I can help below!

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About Chris McKinney

Chris McKinney is the president of SPORTS LAUNCH™, a career services firm dedicated to helping college students and career-changers launch sports careers. Chris' new book, How to Land Your First Job in Sports: 7 Simple Steps can be found on www.SportsLaunch.net.

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We’ve all done it. Whether we want to admit it or not, we’ve all become bandwagoners of a team at some point of our sports life. UrbanDictionary poetically defines a ‘bandwagoner’ as “someone who shamelessly cheers for a particular team not because he likes them or follows them faithfully, but only because that particular team is the “popular” choice or has been or is the top team in their specific sport recently. When that team which bandwagoners follow falls from grace, they gleefully jump on the next teams bandwagon and cheer for that team.”

While bandwagoners add to the momentum of a fan base, on the other end of the spectrum, we have those that started it: loyal fans. In sports, these are the individuals who are willing to stand by a team through the highs and lows. During the good times and the bad, these fans are always there to show their support for their team.

While it’s hard to say what the true value of one fan is to a sports team, we can start at the obvious which is invaluable. What separates loyal fans from everyone else isn’t the number of years they have rooted for a team or the number of games they have watched. Rather, it’s the simple fact that they consider the team they support their team. In what could be considered a sort of pseudo-family, teams and loyal fans share success as well as failure. There is no “they” when in reference to a sports team, there is only “we.”

Why Sports Teams Need Loyal Fans

Aside from the obvious reason of selling tickets, loyal fans help make up the brand of a sports team. From Raider Nation in Oakland to Clipper Nation in Los Angeles, these loyal fans not only support their teams on game day, but they extend the reach and personify the brand that their teams represent. From the fan that wears the silver and black while walking with friends to the fan that wears Dodger Blue to school, loyal fans help spread and extend their sports teams reach.

Teams Are Rewarding Loyal Fans

In the past, the relationship between a loyal fan and their favorite sports team was essentially non-existent. Yes, fans could get a picture with their favorite player (if lucky) and pay to watch them in person, but for the most part, loyal fans stood by with little notice. Thanks to the social media and the increasing presence of sports teams in the digital space, loyal fans are ‘closer‘ to their teams than ever before. From exclusive team content geared toward official fan communities to official tweet-ups hosted by sports teams, the wall between the fan and the team has come down. Sports team are slowly, but surely, starting to realize that loyal fans are an integral part of their success and that it’s time to start rewarding them for their support.

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To close, I leave you with a story I came across regarding a die-hard hockey fan:

About Joseph Yi

Joseph is the Social Media & Marketing Solutions Manger at GAGA Sports & Entertainment where he works with professional sports teams, including the Lakers, Clippers, and San Francisco 49ers, where he develops engaging content as well as social media and digital strategies to help teams better understand and engage their fans. Read more from Joseph and follow him on Twitter.

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When you think of sports marketing, you probably think of adults writing adult-oriented campaigns, right? A creative sports marketer, however, realizes that they can and should target the juvenile demographic as well. Not only are kids receptive to sports marketing campaigns; they can also come up with their own, using their creative talents to raise funds and grow audiences for their sports teams and products.

Sports Marketing TO Kids

Many sports marketing jobs focus specifically on children’s markets. Making professional sports appealing to kids helps grow a team’s future fan base—not to mention future players. If you are working with product endorsements, the natural admiration and loyalty many children feel for their sports heroes will lead them to be interested in products those heroes advertise.

It’s important, however, for sports marketers to associate leagues, teams, and players with programs and products in keeping with the public’s generally high opinion of sports. Most people see sports as a way to teach their children the values of hard work, self-control, generosity, persistence, and clean, healthy habits. Some marketing techniques which help support this view include: corporate sponsorship of youth sports, player appearances and skills camps, pitching healthy products and activities, public service programs, programs in underserved areas, and programs and advertisements which emphasize the value of diversity.

Sports Marketing FOR Kids

Every parent with school-age children is familiar with—and overwhelmed by—the continual to fund kids’ programs. Perhaps your kids’ team can use sports marketing techniques to raise the money they need for uniforms, travel, and equipment. Sports marketing often involves corporate sponsorships. Develop a promotional package explaining to prospective companies how sponsoring would help their business. To expand your fan base, advertise ticket giveaways, game night promotions, or work with local businesses to provide small premiums or discounts if your team wins. If your organization needs to sell a fundraising product, ask a local sports celebrity (high school or college) for his or her endorsement, or an event appearance. These projects require creativity, artistic ability, oral and written communications skills, and mathematics knowledge. They also teach kids to work cooperatively, solve problems, and communicate effectively with adults. Sports marketing at this level can also involve kids who are not natural athletes, but still want to be involved with a team. Who knows? Some kids may move on to successful careers in sports marketing!  Just check out Joey the Junior Reporter below!

Does your team have a marketing strategy that involves kids? How? I’d love to see your comments.

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Image by battlecreekcvb

About Lewis Howes

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