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What do the fans want? Sports teams, leagues, and marketing professionals are turning to a growing array of media to capture the elusive customer.
There is probably no better place to examine the media landscape in the next decades than the sports arena, especially the first big players in this highly lucrative, multibillion-dollar worldwide industry. We are now seeing a massive readjustment in what has historically been a synergistic relationship between the sports leagues and teams and the media. In this transformation, new alliances will be formed, media giants will be sorely pressed to operate, and viewers-i.e., fans or customers-will have unprecedented access to information on numerous and yet-to-be-determined distribution channels.
In the United States, today's sports-media model was pioneered on television by ABC's Wide World of Sports, NEC's coverage of the Olympics, and CBS's Sunday afternoon football. This relationship was clear: The sports properties sold their rights to the media, who then sold the sports content to advertisers, who gained audiences and potential customers for their products. The model was primarily built on network television and was largely responsible for turning professional and college sports into multibilliondollar businesses. Over time, this model began to change as cable television networks entered the sports rights fee arena and, because of cable subscriptions revenues, began competing with network television and fragmenting what was once a scarcity-driven market.
The best example of a current winner is ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network), the synergistic sports-media brand that communicates with its fans through every distribution channel imaginable. From its flagship television network, the company has spawned other networks (ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN Deportes), syndicated radio stations (ESPN Radio), a magazine (ESPN the Magazine), an interactive Web site with streaming video, audio, insider information, and fantasy games (ESPN.com), a mobile phone content provider (Mobile ESPN), and sports-themed restaurants (the ESPN Zone). Throughout most of the cable network's history, if a sport wasn't covered by ESPN, it didn't exist.
In the next stage, sports leagues and teams, because of technological innovations, are beginning to communicate differently with fans. For the first time, the content providers are developing pipelines directly aimed at their fans. A leader in this transformation is Manchester United, the billion-dollar English football (soccer) club, which has...