The steps at famous Montmartre, beautiful walks along the River Seine, the Pont des Arts, and…a naked pole vaulter making his way through each of the forementioned attractions?!?

No matter what you were looking for, at least one would have left a lasting impression.

Recently, world-class French pole vaulter Romain Mesnil bared all in a YouTube video aimed at bringing attention to his quest for sponsorship.  The video featured Mesnil running through the streets of Paris, pole in hand (for jumping, come on!), with his unmentionables covered by a digitally-imposed black box as onlookers tried to figure out what was going on.  The video concludes with a message imploring viewers to return to Mesnil’s site on March 31st, stating “You haven’t seen anything yet.”  Click here for video (watch at work at your discretion). Mesnil’s former sponsor, Nike, did not renew their support in October and ever since, Mesnil has been very creatively searching for a replacement.

One of Mesnil’s earlier efforts had him wearing a jersey with a large question mark during competition and he has also posted other great YouTube videos (even before this round of looking for sponsorship) that have helped bring a more playful side to the sport of pole vaulting. 

So now that the 31st is here, what was Mesnil’s (other) big reveal?  He has posted two auctions on eBay targeted at prospective sponsors 1, 2.  The first auction is for a sponsorship for his 2009 season and the second is to have your photo/logo/message posted on Romain’s jersey, with proceeds benefiting the ARTC (brain tumour research).  At the time of publication, bids totalled >19,000 Euros, with just under 10 days remaining in the auctions.

As far as new media strategies for the branding of an individual (athlete) go, I’d say that Mesnil has started down a very intriguing path and he has managed to reach a widespread online audience, as well as gaining traditional media coverage, with prime time exposure on French television networks and news broadcasts worldwide.  I can only imagine where he’ll go next…

In the age of Wikinomics, one of the things that frustrates me most about being an avid sports fan is that it is still very difficult for fans to have any direct say in what their favourite players and teams do on, and off, the playing surface (i.e. who plays? who stays? who goes?)

As I watched the film Us Now last week, I was reminded of the British football club Ebbsfleet United and the MyFootballClub story, (see a clip here) where fans ultimately had enough of being armchair critics and put their money where their heart (and often discontent) was, and actually purchased a Club.

Bringing the story to a more personal level, I have been to quite a few of my favourite athletic club, the Toronto Raptors’, games this year and I have left the Air Canada Centre more often than I would like wishing there were some recourse that I, as a fan, had to have my displeasure heard.  I am completely aware that loss is an important part of sport, but to leave a match feeling as if the players did not leave it all on the court, or that the coach drew up a bad play, is not a great feeling as a supporter.

Now I know what you’re saying - does everyone give 100% all the time? Obviously not, but in the world of elite professional athletics, my threshold for forgiveness is admittedly lowered. Continue reading…

I used to think that marketing NHL hockey to Canadians would make for some of the world’s most fail-safe jobs. This would be particularly true of CBC, broadcaster of the world’s oldest sports program, Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC). However, recent years have been challenging for HNIC and marketers at CBC.

HNIC used to be North America’s sole source for televised hockey games. For Canadians in particular, Saturday was synonomous with one thing: HNIC on CBC. But for years, fans have been asking, “What’s so special about Saturday night?” After all, basic cable broadcasts 2-3 games a week, and if you’re still looking for more, you can purchase the NHL Network (or a team-specific channel like LeafsTV), and watch hockey 7 nights a week. CBC clearly faces a challenge in maintaining the popularity of HNIC. So how exactly are they promoting their product?

Continue reading…

As October draws near, and the temperature begins to drop, hockey fans anxiously await the opening game(s) of the NHL season; but for CBC viewers what song will be played during the opening broadcast? For over 40 years the “Hockey Night in Canada” theme song has permeated through Canadian living rooms and sports bars, signaling “game time.” However, at the beginning of June, the rights to the infamous jingle were sold to the CTV-owned TSN.  (In other words; a canuck crisis).

In search of an anthem, CBC looked to the best possible source….hockey fans themselves, launching “Canada’s Hockey Anthem Challenge.” Just to prove that Canada is the hockey nation, even in the middle of the summer, hockey fans from across the country rose to the challenge, with more than 14,000 submissions received by the August 31 deadline. 

Continue reading…

A few weeks ago, my colleague Ben Letalik wrote about the MLB in his weekly Wikinomics Report Card. This Tuesday, the MLB announced that it began installing IBM software “to exploit the next generation of the Internet.”

“The IBM WebSphere Portal software architecture allows us to consolidate information from a variety of sources. It enables collaboration within our user community and provides a strong platform for future growth and development,” said Mike Morris, Vice President of Application Development and Program Management for MLB.

The immediate use of the software will help umpires officiate the game better by providing insights on player behaviors, weather conditions, statistics, and other key information.

“Major League Baseball has vaulted into the Web 2.0 era with powerful collaboration technology that puts the power of the World Wide Web and technology specialists into the hands of the baseball experts,” said Bob Picciano, General Manager, IBM Lotus Software.

I am hoping that, with the introduction of IBM’s software, the MLB becomes more transparent on issues concerning the game such as steroids and the idea of having instant replay. I can see how umpires will benefit from having player statistics and behavior tendencies instantly given to them. Maybe later when the software is integrated into the MLB culture, the umpires well have the opportunity to receive instant replay on a screen, so that human error can be reduced. It’s good to see that such a large part of American culture is beginning to understand the need to collaborate, especially such a large multi-billion dollar business.

I am interested to see if the NFL, MLS, NBA, or NHL decides to follow baseball’s footsteps.

“We don’t have a monopoly on baseball knowledge,” says Sig Mejdal, the Cardinals’ senior quantitative analyst who helped create the contest. “Just looking at the fan sites and posting boards, you see an amazing amount of energy. Why not harness it?”

Why not indeed! So what this senior quantitative analyst has done (as reported in the WSJ) is create a “One for the Birds” contest, where fans are invited to file 300-word recommendations for players at small, non Division 1 schools. The fan who sends in the most compelling recommendation, whether the player ends up being drafted or not, gets a tip to St.Louis and a couple of sets of ball tickets.

I have to thank Joseph P. at River Ave Blues for pointing this story out, and catching me up on a couple of other wikinomics-related stories tied to baseball that I had missed or forgotten. Continue reading…

So it’s Friday before the Super Bowl, and you know what that means - hundreds of thousands of people pretending to work while getting the latest updates on what Bridget Moynahan may or may not have done to Tom Brady’s ankle, arguing about whether we’re going to see the “Manning Face” early in the game, and - of course - whether SpyGate will be an anecdote or an asteriks on New England’s potentially historic season.

Now on the SpyGate thing (I know this has nothing to do with the title of this post and is a little outdated, so you can skip the next few paragraphs and I won’t be offended), I’m on the side that thinks it got a little overblown, but there is still something very, very fishy about it.

Continue reading…

When it comes to sports, ESPN has long been the dominant brand. When it comes to finding information online, Google has pretty much taken over. So if you want to find sports news online, where do you go? Yahoo of course!

As Fast Company reports on in their February issue, Yahoo!Sports is the most visited sports site on the web, which is quite a remarkable story if you think about it - and one that seems to deserve a lot of attention from those trying to figure out the rules for competition in the Web 2.0.

Personally, I think the #1, #2, and #3 reasons are the success of Yahoo! Fantasy sports, which the article notes controls almost 60% of the Fantasy Sports market. I think this because I know an extraordinary number of people addicted to Fantasy Sports games, they check out their teams very, very regularly, and as long as the sports news is connected to these pages the story kind of tells itself. Regular readers may remember Naumi’s post from last year, which offered a brief discussion of some of the lessons we can learn from fantasy sports.

Side note - between finishing that last paragraph and starting the next one, I went and checked the up-to-the-minute basketball scores in order to estimate how my team is doing today. OK, fine - how my teams are doing today. About 20 minutes had passed since I last checked. I continue to amaze myself by how… what’s the term I’m looking for here… pathetically and hopelessly addicted I am to these little games. But winning makes it all worth it. So I’m told.

Back to the main story line - there are also other interesting things to look at in relation to the growth of Yahoo! Sports. For example, the company has simutaneously been growing it’s collaborative communities (particularly in relation to group sports blogs), while also hiring the likes of Kenny Smith (ex NBA player) to write articles as part of an editorial staff that’s gone from 4 to about 50. Many, many companies have went down one of these roads, but few have found a way to pursue both in parallel in a successful way. Might the balance Yahoo! is striking here be useful for upstarts that can get a little blinded by the hypeelement surrounding the Web 2. 0, which leads them to adopting the former approach in isolation?

I imagine there are a lot of other pieces to this story, and I might just lobby Don to let me investigate them in depth for a future research project to see if there’s any surprises lying beneath the surface - can anyone think of any hypotheses off the top of their head?

In honour of the first day of the NBA season, I thought I’d share an interesting development in the world of data analysis in sports. This isn’t a new development, but in the context of the enormous growth in video content over the past two years, I think it’s very significant.

Synergy Sports Technology has used some next level meta-tagging to correlate hundreds of thousands of hours of video to almost every basketball stat imaginable, creating the first (to my knowledge) searchable video database of this magnitude.
Imagine being able to search for “behind the back assists by Nash” or “angry dunks by Bosh” and pulling up every video clip ever recorded. A boon for coaches, Synergy is currently catering its offering to the NBA, but the possibilities for growth are endless. Professional sports teams are increasingly scientific in their approach and this type of video indexing provides access to insights not previously available. Need to stop Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki in the next home game? Now coaches can give defensive assignments to players using a video iPod filled with every offensive play Nowitzki has ever made.  

Consider this: In its inaugural 2005-06 season, Synergy only had four teams on board; the two teams that reached the finals – the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat – happened to be Synergy clients. Last season, 14 teams were clients, and this year the company considering expanding into other sports.

For me, this is a development akin to when CDs first came on the market to eventually kill the cassette tape. At that time, the killer feature that made me switch was being able to skip to a track at the touch of a button. Video currently suffers from the same shortcoming as tape – viewers have to fast-forward or rewind to find the specific clip they are looking for.
Google-like control over video would be a YouTuber’s dream. Of course, the downside is that tagging must still be done manually. Synergy employees still sit through each game’s video footage and painstakingly link every stat available to its corresponding clip. 

For more insights on the Synergy offering, read last year’s press coverage in CNET and the article from the New York Times. From the CNET article:

Across the sports landscape, professional teams are taking a more scientific approach to running their businesses. With so much money on the line, executives and coaches who often relied on hunches and gut instincts are starting to do what nearly every other industry already does–make decisions based on hard data.[...]

“The infrastructure of the Net has gotten to where it can now support these kinds of models,” Lahr said. “We couldn’t have done this just a few years ago.”

Despite being a long-time Toronto Raptors fan, it’s taken me until this season to join an online fantasy basketball league. Now I’m hooked. For those not familiar with the concept, fantasy sport sites allow groups of people to form online leagues and draft their own “fantasy” teams from real-life players in a major sports league. Throughout the year, players’ stats are updated using results from actual games. There’s usually money involved and teams can monitor stats, adjust their line-up of players, make trades, and “trash-talk” with fellow members of their fantasy league.

The sophistication and growth in popularity of these leagues is impressive. According to a Wikipedia entry, “19.4 million people age 12 and above in the U.S. and Canada play fantasy sports and 34.5 million people have ever played fantasy sports.” Further, “Fantasy Sports is estimated to have a $3-$4 billion annual economic impact across the sports industry.”

My first foray into the world of fantasy sports has opened the doors to an unimaginable wonderland of statistical analysis, renewed my passion for the sport of basketball (beyond my myopic espousal of a single ‘home team’), and given me the opportunity to interact with my peers through a new social medium. There are some clear lessons here for students of Wikinomics. 

Real-time reporting. Fantasy sports Web sites have mastered the art of collecting, analysing, and disseminating information in a usable manner. They offer customizable dashboards, side-by-side comparisons of players and teams, and tips from experts to guide decision making. Wouldn’t it be great if government services and enterprises had the same kind of statistical reporting and advice? Imagine being able to select a hospital in the area based on the average wait time at a given moment in time. How about “drafting” an area school from a database that tracked performance indicators like average class size, number of after-school programs, and percent of students that become college grads? The same approach could be used when deciding which city to live in – what are the crime rates, average housing prices, number of parks per capita, air quality levels, commute times, and employment rates of Toronto vs. San Francisco? For enterprises, imagine if the same type of dashboards and reporting tools were leveraged when deciding on different products, suppliers, and marketing promotions: Process A not as good as process B; make a trade. An alternate supplier just got new high-performance equipment; move them to the starting line-up. The latest ad campaign is a dud; bench it. Thinking about entering a new market; get online advice from an expert.

Distributing the brand experience. Marketing 2.0 involves extending the user experience across a diverse set of media. Fantasy sport does just that. By adding an element of gaming, professional sports leagues are involving users more deeply with their brands (players and teams). A friend of mine recently went as far as to say, “fantasy sports have saved sports.” While this may be a bit overstated, it’s not a far stretch. While fantasy sports may not sell more tickets at arenas and stadiums, they do create a reason for fans to watch more sports games and follow players’ activity online (the chart below shows this relationship – football and baseball seem to be most affected in the U.S.).

Creating a social network. This is an obvious one – fantasy leagues are social networks. They pull together a diverse group of individuals with a common interest, allow users to create profiles, and provide a platform for messaging and posting information. Some leagues even have draft parties and other game-time events, taking the online experience offline.