USA Bid Committee having a ball keeping its fans engaged

The World Cup ended nearly a month ago. And FIFA won’t award the 2018 and 2022 World Cup host cities until December.

So if you’re the USA Bid Committee, hoping for one of those two coveted selections, how do you keep the casual and hard-core soccer fan excited and engaged in the interim?

Keeping fans involved is a big issue for a lot of sports that have gaps between big events or rallying points. Most Olympic sports fall in this category. The key is creating compelling content and a reason for people to engage on an ongoing basis. GoUSAbid.com has faced this challenge since the site was launched, and it has more than met the challenge every step of the way.

An opportunity to win an autographed soccer ball, signed by the U.S. men’s national team, is the latest lure. That’s what the folks at GoUSAbid.com are offering for the low, low price of inviting five friends to sign up and support the bid. Its goal is to get a million fans to back the effort. The autographed ball is the perfect short-term vehicle to help reach its goal, add to its database and extend the scope of its viral campaign.

It’s another smart effort by the committee, which is working on the behalf of the U.S. Soccer Federation in its effort to bring the World Cup back to the U.S. With more than 917,000 people having already signed the petition, breaking the million mark is a sure bet.

Is lack of a salary cap undermining interest in MLB?

There was an eye-opening Harris Poll released last week that said interest in Major League Baseball has slipped to 35 percent among adults who say they follow the game, down from last year’s 41 percent.

While it’s tempting to say it’s only one poll, or it’s only a one-year anomaly – because we’re in an era of short-attention-span theater, a recession or have so much fighting for our entertainment dollar – but what if it isn’t?

Is it possible that the lack of a salary cap is finally catching up to baseball? Many fans have long decried the lack of a cap, the disparity it engenders between big-market and small-market teams. The behemoths of the game, led by the Yankees, Red Sox, Philles and Mets, can hoard the best players because they can afford them.

It leaves large swaths of the league competitively irrelevant (did you know the Pirates have had 17 straight losing seasons?) and while some of those teams are simply poorly run, baseball’s lack of institutionalized parity plays a big role. The NFL is the best example of how the salary cap improves the health of a league overall. Small-market teams like Green Bay can be perennial contenders, something MLB's Pirates or Royals can never aspire to.

A good goal for FIFA: Use technology, get it right

So now the final stage is set: Spain vs. The Netherlands in what should be a glorious World Cup final, a fitting culmination to the 31-day tournament.

If only . . .

If only the players and the hundreds of millions of fans around the globe who will tune in to watch Sunday’s finale could count on the officials to call a competent game, a 50-50 proposition in a tournament marked by missed goals and handballs, phantom fouls and routinely botched offsides calls.

Of course, the officials are human and fallible. The real fault lies with FIFA, the sport’s governing body, and its president, Sepp Blatter, whose prehistoric mentality toward instant replay has helped create a digital-age mess. Fans worldwide watch the games with the benefit of modern technology – live streaming, slo-mo replays, a terrific on-screen offsides guide – and yet FIFA has refused to make such tools available to the referees, thus creating a huge gap between its technology-savvy fans and the game. The tournament’s -- and the sport’s -- credibility is suffering the consequences.

Technology is a wonderful thing. Video replay has been around since 1963 (yes, 1963).  Instant replay has been widely used in the NFL for the past 25 years. And the NBA, MLB and the NHL have all integrated replay in one form or another. Even a fairly simple technological advance – a microchip in the ball that could indicate when it crosses the goal line, an advance that would have signaled Frank Lampard’s infamous goal should have counted in the England-Germany game – has been spurned in favor of old-fashioned human error.

FIFA and Blatter have no excuse not to leverage all that replay has to offer for the World Cup. This is not some mom-and-pop operation. The tournament is a billion-dollar venture, and by failing to use replay to ensure the fairness and accuracy of officiating, FIFA undermines the very sport it’s charged to promote and grow.

Social media campaigns help hand Nike the World Cup crown

The World Cup won’t end for another 17 days. But we don’t need to wait that long to know the winner of the brand wars. It’s Nike, hands down.

Rival adidas is one of the official sponsors of the World Cup, but with Nike dominating TV, online and print media, adidas may as well be brand X.

When award-winning Wieden + Kennedy partners with Oscar-nominated director Alejandro G. Inarritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros and Babel leap to mind), it’s no surprise that the campaign they create would be memorable.

And Nike’s “Write The Future” commercial delivers on that promise. It’s a stirring three-minute paean to the sport and its stars, including Didier Drogba, Fabio Cannavaro, Franck Ribery, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo (not to mention cameos by Roger Federer, Kobe Bryant and Homer Simpson).

But what truly elevates Nike’s brand is the use of social media surrounding the campaign. It has done a great job of engaging users in creative ways by incorporating Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, among other platforms.

Mobile digital television: Coming to a (small) screen near you

Mobile digital television as we’ll come to know it -- live broadcasts, designed for the smaller screen, and most important, free -- is step-by-step getting closer to becoming a reality.

There are a plethora of questions surrounding mobile digital TV. The biggest is simply whether it will succeed, the success of a free ad-based service depending entirely on widespread adoption -- the network TV model gone mobile. Another question is whether it will reshuffle the landscape of existing services, crippling subscription-based models (like Flo TV and Hulu, if it goes down that path, as rumored). 

Mobile digital TV is being promoted by the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC), a group of more than 900 local broadcast TV stations. It aims to create a mobile digital TV standard to allow and provide live and on-demand video broadcasts.

The technology would allow wireless devices to pick up over-the-air local TV broadcasts, even when users are on moving trains, cars and buses. Mobile digital TV already exists in test markets such as Chicago and Washington -- and is already popular in Japan and South Korea -- and may soon be coming to a city near you.

ESPN's deal with Xbox continues trend of new distribution methods

This week’s announcement that ESPN had partnered with Microsoft to bring live and on-demand sporting events to Microsoft’s Xbox continued the trend of alternative distribution methods for live sports video.

The distribution of sports content has gone from TV to online streaming on PCs and laptops to wireless devices like smartphones and tablets. Now it is aimed for gaming consoles and other set-top boxes, in one way bringing the cycle full circle back to watching on a TV.

Xbox will reportedly carry more than 3,500 live and on-demand sporting events, bypassing traditional cable providers in the process. The live events will come courtesy of ESPN3.com and will include MLB, NBA, tennis, golf, soccer, college football and college basketball. Noticeable by their absence are the NFL and NHL.

MLB.com announced a similar deal with Sony in April to bring MLB.tv to  PlayStation 3 game consoles and the baseball package is already available on set-top devices from Roku and Boxee.

Will U.S. fans shell out cash for World Cup mobile TV?

As the first round of the World Cup progresses, it's providing an interesting petri dish on how U.S. fans consume the game.

Aside from the mainstay of watching the tournament on ESPN (and ABC), there are three main planks of the network’s strategy that bear watching.

First and foremost is whether U.S. fans will pay to watch on their cell phones. ESPN is breaking ground by offering live match coverage on mobile.

But are fans here willing to pay the price? Are they that devoted to the game, or the fortunes of the U.S. squad?

Of cricket, Google TV and altered playing fields

As the masses dissect Thursday's reveal of Google TV -- and Mark Cuban's blog has an interesting take on it -- the debate is on about how successful it will be. While not everything Google has touched turns to gold, it consistently has been ahead of the curve. Its recent foray into broadcasting live sports is the most recent example.

YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, just concluded broadcasting cricket around the globe to unparalleled success. YouTube carried the Indian Premier League's third season, broadcasting the league's 60 matches live. 

YouTube's IPL channel reportedly got 54 million video views. To put that into perspective, NBC got 45 million video streams for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. According to the New York Times, 40 percent of the IPL viewers came from outside of India.

It was the first time YouTube carried a major sporting event. It won't be the last. Google has already indicated it will pursue other sports to broadcast live, and other events such as concerts. India has a population of nearly 1.2 billion. Getting 54 million streams for the IPL was just a first step. Sports that attract global audiences -- think soccer, cycling and field hockey -- may be next up.

New technology coming to social media near you

Two recent stories in Advertising Age underscore the power of Facebook, and how companies need to stay vigilant about adapting and exploiting emerging technologies via social media platforms.

The first story focused on how Facebook was nearing a launch date for its location-based functionality. The second reported how magazines would be able to sell subscriptions within Facebook’s news feed.


Location-based services (LBS) are a hot topic this year in social media, much as 3D is for the television industry. So when a behemoth like Facebook -- with its more than 450 million users -- announces adoption of LBS, companies need to take note. The same is true for the system Facebook will try to introduce offering users the ability to purchase subscriptions without leaving their site. The key phrase there being “without leaving their site.”

How companies can best leverage either technology is obviously dependent on what business they’re in, but it is important to be aware of emerging technologies and start thinking about what they could mean for your organization. Not long ago, LBS was one in a sea of new ideas, but it has grown quickly into something Facebook wants to leverage. There are others on the horizon, like QR codes and augmented reality, which could work their way toward mainstream use as well.

Magazines to sell subscriptions within Facebook’s news feed {Advertising Age}
Mags look to Facebook to hawk print subscriptions {Paid Content}
What will Facebook’s upcoming location-based service look like? {Mobile Beat}
Facebook poised to take geo-networking mainstream {Advertising Age}
How Facebook's geo-netoworking plans will change everything {Advertising Age}

MLS relaunch provides a cautionary tale

“Best-in-breed technology” and “industry best practices” seem like buzzwords until the launch of your website fails.

That’s when you realize that having the right people and the right companies behind your launch is so crucial. Any major undertaking -- be it a new site or a relaunch -- relies on people who understand the issues at hand and companies that provide proven solutions for features like content management systems, integration with third parties, and the all-important quality assurance and testing.

For a cautionary tale, look no further than Major League Soccer and its new site, MLSSoccer.com, which was supposed to launch triumphantly in late March.

The site suffered systemic failure on Day 1. More than three weeks later, problems still abound. The league has been addressing the fallout ever since.

Gannett takes calculated risk on content strategy

A story in the New York Times this morning noted how Gannett’s newspapers in New Jersey have been carrying stories about the New Jersey Devils, written by an employee of the Devils.

It’s a new twist on a not-so-old development of sports organizations taking non-traditional avenues to enhance coverage of their properties. In an era where traditional media struggle to cover everything it once did, teams and leagues are smart to seek out new strategies to replace the publicity. For most, it means making the wise choice to rejuvenate their own Web content.

The Bengals are believed to have been the trendsetter when they hired Geoff Hobson -- then the Bengals’ beat writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer -- to work for the team’s Web site in April 2000.

Today, a plethora of leagues and teams have followed a similar path, including the Devils, who have employed Eric Marin as the team’s staff writer since 2007.

Internet TV is on its way, broadband plan or no

Last week, the FCC unveiled its National Broadband Plan and it gained a lot of support instantly — including a New York Times editorial calling for its quick adoption — but it also spawned a round of thinking ahead to the future of media.

One conclusion, nicely highlighted in an article in the Atlantic by Max Fisher, is that Internet TV is coming, regardless of what happens to the National Broadband Plan. Any digital strategies being created now must keep this in mind, or risk being obsolete as soon as that future starts taking shape.

Fisher posits in the Atlantic article that cable TV is doomed because it is built on a bad business model: consumers pay for cable access, at prices that keep climbing steeply, and still have to pay again by watching advertisements. While consumers pay for Internet access as well, the costs are lower and so many are paying it already, in addition to cable TV.

The hurdles to Internet TV have been poor video quality and a lack of programming.  But as the networks have gotten used to the idea of streaming shows, the programming supply has grown quickly and will continue to do so because networks are motivated by self-preservation. Technology is also improving video quality, which will get another boost if the National Broadband Plan kicks in and increases available bandwidth.

Revamped MSN homepage embraces changing digital environment

MSN rolled out a new homepage Wednesday. Or more precisely, it’s in the process of rolling it out to the site’s 100 million users.  MSN’s initial redesign began last November when it was road-tested for a small segment of its users to solicit feedback.

In addition to revamping its design - its first serious makeover in a decade - Microsoft added a number of new features. Prominent among those features is a large push for Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. With Bing showing steady growth in the share of search queries, this comes as no surprise.

The redesign also incorporates a new module for local news, another fast-growing segment of MSN’s site traffic. Additionally, MSN has aggregated its social networking, with popular trend watches, Hotmail, Twitter and Facebook tabs.

All of this isn’t to say the new MSN homepage is a success or failure. Change isn’t easy for a lot of users, and the loss of the MSN’s trademark blue background alone will be enough to cause some initial anxiety.

Twitter: The little platform that could -- and did

Twitter, which surpassed its 10 billionth tweet on Thursday, is in a lot of ways the perfect example of how important having a social media strategy -- and a social media strategist -- is in the current digital climate.

Less than two years ago, Twitter was a roundly dismissed microblog that conjured images of people tweeting what they were planning to have for lunch. But it quickly became the little platform that could. Its simplicity became its beauty. The masses flocked to it, celebrities enhanced it, and businesses finally embraced it.

Now, it's an essential part of any content strategy. It's simply expected. Users demand social media today. The Web community puts a high premium on participation and Twitter has become the digital equivalent of the front porch. And that's a bigger leap than even the numbers -- from one billion tweets in 2008 to 10 billion tweets in just about a year -- indicate.