See slides below, or follow this link for details

Enthuse is poised for rapid growth thanks to its mobile loyalty platform which is focused on improving fan experiences and driving revenue opportunities for schools, conferences, pro teams, leagues, sponsor brands and sports media.

Read TechCrunch article on Enthuse here

Here’s how students can apply:

1. Download Enthuse app for your iPhone or Android device.
2. Follow your school’s teams on Enthuse.
3. Start inviting friends to download & use Enthuse, and get their feedback.
4. Send resume & a cover letter telling us why you’re the perfect fit & two ideas you have to generate buzz on your
campus to gigs@enthuse.com5.
5. Be sure to let use know your handles on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Good luck!

Steelers & Cowboys are evenly matched in both realms.

Both teams have 7-6 records this season, and they’re battling for playoff spots; and each has around 5 million social media fans to date. Regardless of what happens on the field, the team that adds more social followers will win the social battle. OK, this is small consolation, but fun stuff all the same!

IMO, the Steelers and Cowyboys should be commended on taking an enlightened view of digital media. The contest page lives on both teams’ sites. The page allows fans to share the contest with their friends, and vote for either team. So in theory, a Steelers fan could vote for the black and gold right from the Cowboys page. Be still my heart!

View Steelers page
View Cowboys page

What’s cool about this, to me, is that the teams are working together. They know their fans don’t like the other team, so they’re giving fans a means to “defeat” the other team. This is empowering in a weird (but good) way for fans. It’s a pride thing. And we’ve seen this type of thing work before.

Campbell’s Chunky Soup launched its “Click for Cans” promotion in 1998 and let it run for more than 10 years. The long run of this program hinged on one thing: fans want their teams to win. When I worked at Colts we used to get calls and E mails from season ticket holders every year when this campaign was running. Our fans begged us to promote the contest so Colts would win…and since Chunky wasn’t a sponsor, this presented the team with a bit of a conundrum: please fans, or toe the financial line? (And this pre-dates Facebook).

Click for Cans had one thing that this new contest is missing: a prize. The Chunky contest allowed NFL fans to earn soup for hungry people in their cities. The Steelers vs. Cowboys tilt offers no such payoff for fans. I’d like to see a tangible prize, maybe the owner of the losing team tweeting his concession with a twitpic of himself wearing opponents jersey.

I also think teams should have even more fun with this contest. Hold a press conference – or maybe record one on Google Hangout and post online. There needs to be some context, or back story built here. Let’s have the teams come right out and say “our fans are better than your fans, and we can prove it!” Then each team should be ready with quotes for the media illustrating why their fans are better than other team’s fans….poking fun in a lighthearted way at the other team as LA Kings did during playoffs last year. That’s how this program gets picked up on major media, which is what is really needed for it to tip / trend.

Anyway, I love to see campaigns like this and believe there should be more like it. Great use of social to engage and empower fans. It also reminds me of what Miracle Whip did with its “we’re not for everyone” campaign. People follow teams (and brands) because they love them. Which naturally means they “hate” the opposition. Without a worthy foe sports would be boring! Give fans a chance to express themselves along the lines of your rivalries. It’s fun for fans, and will net big results for the team.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I hope both teams get a million new followers out of the deal.

Kudos!

….Ninety-nine percent of smart phone owners have experienced trouble calling or connecting at sports stadiums, and (as a result) sixty-eight percent of these fans think less positively about their wireless carriers. That’s right, fans don’t blame the team or the stadium when their smart phones can’t connect at games. They blame their carriers.

OK. I’m not really suggesting you extort your wireless carrier, but if you’re not working to develop a solution to poor wireless connectivity in your venue, you may be on a trajectory to lose loyal fans. If that happens, you’ll only have yourself to blame.

Where do these data come from?

As part of our ongoing “Social Sports Poll,” we recently surveyed social media fans and followers of six major U.S. university athletic departments. In total we collected more than 1,700 completed surveys.

Interestingly, 75% of our total respondents own smart phones, 25% do not own smart phones. These (smart phone ownership) figures alone are impressive since just 50% of the general population owns smart phones. Clearly sports fans are ahead of the adoption curve. The problem, illustrated by the table below, is that pretty much every smart phone owner has had trouble connecting at sports events.

It’s no secret that stadiums have connectivity issues.

What’s new here is how fans feel about it, and what they’ll do about it.

We were curious to know how poor connectivity at stadiums might be impacting fans’ experiences, and we wanted to learn what fans might do in the future as a result. Turns out most fans won’t blame the team, and they’ll keep buying tickets (for now), but a significant percentage (67.5%) agree with the following statement:

Because I experienced difficulty using my smart phone at a sports event, I think less positively about my wireless carrier. Table below shows all results.

It is interesting to see how consistently fans reacted to this particular question. Across the board, college sports fans blamed their carriers for bad connectivity at stadiums, even when the issue was a bandwidth problem rather than a wireless network issue.

Notes to consider:

- We love to hate our carriers, so we blame them every chance we get. Makes sense that fans blame carriers even though the carrier may or may not be the problem.

- Fans seem to have low (mobile) expectations at stadiums. Connectivity is bad. It has always been bad, so bad connectivity doesn’t surprise them (they’re trapped). Makes sense that a low percentage would react strongly to their bad experiences; but how will fans react in the future as they come to expect to be connected everywhere and at all times?

- 17% of fans say they are more likely to post negative comments about their experiences. These are social fans, so they are connected to many more fans via social media. When they share negative opinions the news will spread. If these are influential fans, this 17% could be a very big number, and cause for concern.

- Among all age groups, 25-34 year-olds are most likely to make negative comments, and less likely than average to recommend the sports event to friends in the future.

- Men & Twitter users are more likely than average to react negatively in every response category. These seem to be fans who have the highest expectations for wireless connectivity. They’re also the core, avid sports fans and deserve special attention.

Which is more important? Big Screens, or mobile connectivity?

Providing reliable connectivity for all fans at large stadiums is not a simple thing to deliver. Most fans just want to text their friends. That shouldn’t be too tough. But other fans want video or other bandwidth hogging content. Adding enough hardware to cover the present and future demand for mobile connectivity is an expensive proposition, often running into the millions.

So why do we keep encouraging fans to consume mobile video in venue?

Interesting that most stadiums have less trouble budgeting money for large displays than for connectivity. In theory, the big screens enhance fan experiences. In reality, they are big sources of revenue, and that’s why they’re more easily affordable. Mobile connectivity might cost as much as a mega-vision scoreboard, but as of yet the revenue model to pay for this connectivity doesn’t exist; so the investment in mobile gets harder to justify.

Some leagues, like the NFL, have come out and stated they will fix the connectivity issues in all of its stadiums. This is a good move made easier by the fact that the NFL is the richest sport in the land. It can afford the price tag, and with millions of potential lost revenue at stake if fans don’t buy tickets, it can’t afford to let mobile impact the fan experience negatively.

Still, I wonder if every NFL team has the right perspective when it comes to how fans want to use mobile in stadiums. Enabling fans to watch replays on their phones seems like a logical goal if you’re fighting against the home TV experience, but it does not seem to be the number one priority for (most) fans who attend live games. According to our research, fans want to connect with other fans, and they want to use their phones to do it. If we’re looking to improve fan experiences, we should solve problems for fans. In my opinion, allowing fans to communicate fluidly (rather than consume passively) should be the first order of business.

Want to know more about the Social Sports Poll?

In addition to the question about “connectivity,” we also asked several others focused on things like: demographics, smart phone usage and social-sharing behavior. I’m digging through the data now, analyzing cross-tabs to tease out insights. I’m finding results vary significantly between various segments of the respondents (e.g. age, affiliation to the university and gender).

Results of my analysis are only available to clients, but if you’re interested in receiving the executive summary of the results, or if you’d like to engage Coyle in research for your sports property, please make your request here: Request Summary

As part of our ongoing “Social Sports Poll,” we recently surveyed social media fans and followers of six major U.S. university athletic departments. In total we collected more than 1,700 completed surveys, 70% of our total responses came from Facebook fans and 30% from Twitter followers, which makes the following table even more interesting.

Despite the fact that Twitter had fewer subscribers among the fans surveyed, it beat out Facebook for the #1 slot. When asked what they like about Twitter, fans most often cited speed, ease of use and scoring / news updates as the reasons why. Clearly these avid sports fans use their smart phones to stay informed on sports and during the game they prefer apps that deliver information most quickly with least interference.

Important notes:

- Photo sharing is one of the most popular activities among sports fans, yet Instagram barely showed up in the “fav app” category. Just shows how wide-open the photo-app category seems to be.

- ESPN’s Scorecenter app earned 4.9% of “favorite app” votes despite being left off the ballot. More than likely ESPN would have ranked much higher had we offered it as an option in the list of app choices.

- While ESPN drew write-in votes, nobody mentioned team or university-owned apps. Hmmm. Unnecessary?

- Regarding Foursquare, few fans mentioned it as their favorite app, and elsewhere in the survey fan indicated a distinct disinterest in checking-in to earn online badges. This might explain why Foursquare recently pivoted its product.

- Text / SMS remain strong, which says to me that people still like communicating during sports with their closest friends and family as much or more than sharing with greater “social media” spheres.

- And don’t forget about E mail! While it might not be leading the way in the “in-game” category, E mail is still showing itself among the most valuable apps for fans and sports properties alike when it comes to doing business together.

- Polling fans via Facebook and Twitter is very convenient and can provide some useful data, but it’s important to remember that these data are not scientific, and represent a sample of the overall online sports audience. That said, the fans who follow sports on social media tend to be among the most avid and tech savvy, so they are a very valuable group to get to know.

Want to know more about this survey?

In addition to the question about “favorite apps,” we also asked several others focused on things like: demographics, smart phone usage and social-sharing behavior. I’m digging through the data now, analyzing cross-tabs to tease out insights. I’m finding results vary significantly between various segments of the respondents (e.g. age, affiliation to the university and gender).

Results of my analysis are only available to clients, but if you’re interested in receiving the executive summary of the results, please make your request here: Request Summary

Funny how things work out. I’ve been wanting to meet Robb ever since I first heard about the innovative things he and his colleagues are doing at Sporting KC, and Livestrong Park. It only took a trip to Italy (and presenting an award) to make the meeting a reality.

Stadium Business Summit

I’ve been working lately on developing digital tools and strategies for improving the in-venue fan experience, so this event was right up my alley. I came away from the Stadium Business Summit with a head full of new information and an armload of new friends and connections from across Europe and around the world. I’m thankful to Ian Nuttall and Ian Probert for reaching across the pond to include me as a speaker at SBS and a judge for the Awards.

Fan Experience Forum

I also want to give a special shout-out to Mark Bradley, Director of the Fan Experience Company. Mark and I co-hosted the Fan Experience Forum during the second day of the SBS. Mark’s expertise is in improving the fan experience IRL. I handled the digital side of things, so we were yin and yang (or Frick and Frack depending on who’s judging). The photo (at right) is me and Mark at the Stadium Awards.

This is the first time SBS has included a breakout on fan experience, but I expect it won’t be the last. We had a full house and a lively discussion all day.

I’m particularly excited about these events for several reasons:

First, the theme of the Stadium Business Summit is right up my alley: “Stadiums: the point of convergence.” The stadium is the place where digital media and the fan experience come together in real time. I’ve been working lately to get more involved in the digital aspects of sports events, so I’m eager to join this conversation. Plus, they’ve invited me to speak! Here’s a preview of my presentation.

Second, I’ll be co-hosting the Fan Experience Forum, which will be a day-long event intended to dig deeper into the fan experience and explore ways technology can be used to enhance it. My co-host for the day is Mark Bradley Director of the Fan Experience Company. Mark is an expert in the analog side of the in-venue fan experience, and I’ll attempt to represent the digital side of things. Here’s a link to my presentation promo, and here’s Marks.

The Fan Experience Forum will also include several other presentations and a couple panel discussions. Should be great stuff and a very important topic to all sports clubs and venue operators. If you can make it to Turin I hope you’l join us!

And finally, my secret bonus reason for excitement about these events: I’ve never been to Italy before…and I’m bringing my wife, Amy, along for a much needed mini-vacation following the event. We’re heading to Tuscany and Florence. Really looking forward to it!!