Many-to-Many Media Opportunities in Professional Sports

Virtual 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?