Many-to-Many Media Opportunities in Professional Sports
| posted by Barak KassarVirtual reality meet actual reality ....
My 10-year old (that's him messing with me in the photo) loves soccer (playing, watching, and reading about the game). He also loves soccer video games, including playing manager, which he can do with Electronic Art's FIFA '08.
The other Sunday I heard excited shouts: "I signed Schweinsteiger, I
signed Schweinsteiger." He'd negotiated to bring a virtual version of
Bayern Munich midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger on board his virtual
team. He was soon playing Schweinsteiger and the rest of his team
against the computer's virtual team.
Now, for £35, my son can make (or at least contribute to) personnel decisions on a real team, Ebbsfleet United. Through an arrangement with online community myfootballclub.co.uk, real people can pick real team members from the comfort of their home computers. It's conceptually similar to picking a virtual video game team---except the players and the outcome happen with actual humans on an actual pitch. Details can be found in this Max Colchester story in the Wall Street Journal story (registration might be required).
Both experiences (FIFA and Ebbsfleet) offer, or will offer, new ways of connecting with consumers in the digital era. Much has already been written about so-called "in-game" advertising (as in the FIFA example). I'm fascinated by the new community-media opportunities afforded by the Ebbsfleet development.
Professional sports have for a long time been a major media business---in the traditional one-to-many broadcast/endorsement media model. Could Ebbsfleet (and a few other similar examples mentioned in the WSJ story) be an early example of professional sports becoming a many-to-many community media opportunity similar to what's developing with Facebook, Digg and other websites?
