The Pepsi Indian Premier League (#PepsiIPL) kicks off again soon amidst its usual fanfare of music, Bollywood celebrities and the biggest names in the world of cricket.  This year however see’s the tournament ramp up its social presence, working in collaboration with Twitter and digital agency Pulse Innovations, to engage fans like never before.

Sports specialists Pulse Innovations first launched the IPL site last January, securing a three-year contract encompassing strategy, creative, build and operations. Creating a live match experience that included almost-live Hawk-Eye and video replays, live fan polling and twitter team battles proved a success with cricket fans worldwide. Coupled with social-into-broadcast integration, the IPL became one of the most innovative digital platforms within sport.

Building on last year, new innovations for 2013 include the ‘Twitter Mirror’ (something that was first seen at this years Oscars), Twitter Discover page, Hashtag Battles, a Twitter Counter, Top 10 Trends, Loyalty Corner, social sign-in and much more!  It promises to be an immersive experience no matter how you connect with the competition.  David Strachan, Creative Director at Pulse, explains more;

“This year our focus was very much on social and mobile.  Working in partnership with Twitter we’ve introduced a number of new features that should really excite the fans, including the Twitter Magic Mirror, a first for sport giving fans a glimpse of what goes on within the teams during game time. This coupled with some great 2^nd screen initiatives will put the IPL on another level to other sports in terms of fan engagement.”

Their other focus was mobile, and not just on the major platforms:

“We’ve introduced a ‘feature-phone’ site, a simplified version of the smartphone site. It felt strange developing what was effectively a WAP site, but given the huge audience in India who still use feature phones it was an obvious step. In terms of mobile, IPL is now available on iOS, Android, Windows 7/8, as a mobile site and now a feature phone site. Truly multi-platform.”

The IPL starts tomorrow (2.30pm GMT) with last year’s champions Kolkata Knight Riders hosting the Delhi Daredevils.  Here is a round up of all the new features you’ll be able to play with over the 2 months.

Twitter Magic Mirror

A first in sport, the Twitter Magic Mirror will, in select celebratory settings, allow Cricketers and Celebrities to tweet out candid pictures with one click through the @IPL account. The Mirror will travel the country, and give fans an authentic, behind-the-scenes view of the IPL.  Today saw it used for the fist time by Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni;

Discover Page

“Pepsi IPL 2013 Discover Page” will help users around the world to easily sign up for Twitter, view/join the #PepsiIPL conversation, and follow their favourite cricketers, teams, personalities, celebrities and more, with one click.

The Team Hashtag Battle

On the Live ‘Match Centre,’ there will be hashtags for both teams (eg. #KKR and #DD). As the teams fight it out in the middle, their fans will indulge in a battle of hashtags to ensure that their favourite team triumphs on the popularity front.

Live Tweet Counter

The ‘Match Centre’ has a counter that keeps rolling as people tweet anything related to the match, or the Pepsi IPL 2013.

Top 10 Trends

There is a section on the homepage that ranks the Pepsi IPL 2013 teams on the basis of how talked about they are on Twitter. It will help fans track the overall Twitter popularity of their favourite team.

The Loyalty corner

A box on the homepage where the fans can announce their allegiance to a team on Twitter. All they need to do is select which team they support and hit ‘TWEET’.

Pepsi IPL 2013 Conversation

Boxes on the official website’s homepage and live match centre, through which the fans can let the world know who they’re supporting, their predictions and match moments.

Pepsi IPL 2013 Tweets

There will be a section on the official website that will feature tweets from the Pepsi IPL 2013 franchises, cricketers, commentators and administrators. The section will act as a fan’s one-stop destination to know what the ‘who’s who’ of the Pepsi IPL 2013 are talking about.

On Television…

Twitter features on the Pepsi IPL 2013 website, such as the Tweet Counter, Trending Topics and Team Hashtag Battle, will be flashed on the TV screen during the live telecast of the Pepsi IPL 2013 matches, with the support of a real-time data stream.

Fan/Celebrities Tweets, Pictures and Vines: Viewers will be invited and encouraged to tweet and vine on the Pepsi IPL 2013, and the best tweets of the day will be picked, to be read out by the commentators on air.

In summary, Rajeev Shukla (Chairman of the IPL), said.

“It has been our constant endeavour to make the fans feel that they are a vital part of the IPL, and not just passive spectators on the outside. Our relationship with Twitter, one of the world’s most popular and prominent social media platforms, will bring the fans closer to the Pepsi IPL 2013 and the cricketers participating in it, in a thoroughly engrossing, interesting and enjoyable manner,”

The Pepsi IPL 2013 starts on 3th April 2013 and runs until 26th May 2013.

Following on from my ‘Planking’ post yesterday, yes it was a bit random but showed how athletes can engage with fans away from their chosen sport and be perceived as being closer to them, I thought I’d continue my look at the lighter side of athletes and how digital is getting involved.

Whilst having half an eye on England taking on India in the first test match tomorrow, for work purposes obviously, I noticed on the Official England Cricket Facebook page that another new craze is hitting our cricketers.

Thanks to the ECB’s Social Media man Steven Dent they have developed a very relaxed tone in their social media posts, they sometimes veer away from the cricket matches themselves and this helps keep interest when not much cricket is taking place.

A couple of recent posts have shown the England players competitive instinct and interest in ‘Owling’.  Now if you have not come across the activity before, it takes the same principles as ‘Planking’ but instead of lying flat you find a place to perch and pretend to be an Owl!

The interest from my point of view was the coverage of it on Facebook and how it brought some fun into what could easily be quite a stat heavy page.  Content is an issue that affects every page we manage, it’s this that gives it an interest, personality and a reason for us to press ‘like’.  As well as being served useful content we also want to be entertained, it is a fine line and much of it is experimental to gage reaction (internally as much as externally).

It’ll certainly be interesting to see if it extends beyond Steve Finn and James Anderson in the coming days/weeks…. and if they will be up to anything during the Test match!  Now that would be fun to watch out for.

I saw this today and thought it was a really neat, reactive piece of thinking by the guys at Dare.  This came on the back of Matt Prior, the England wicketkeeper come batsman, getting rather agitated after being run out in the 2^nd Test at lords yesterday.

An ECB spokesman described the incident: “Prior put his bat on the ledge where the wall met the window in the dressing room. The bat handle bounced off the wall into the window, and the glass broke.

“A lady spectator suffered a small cut to her ankle. It was an accident, and Matt Prior has apologised.”

So how was this cricketing incident taken advantage of?  Well take a look at the screenshot below…and also try it yourself by Googling ‘Matt Prior’ and see what comes out top in the search.

It is an interesting and very clever way in which B&Q has taken advantage of a topic that people will be searching for online.  There are surely lessons here for businesses, clubs and individuals on how you can market for very low cost by being very flexible and reactive.

Imagine if Liverpool, for example, were pushing a new product or tour that wanted people to find easily.  Why not bid on your player keywords with a link to the relevant tour/product?  At the moment there is no-one taking advantage of Luis Suarez on Google, so why not go down this root as a low-cost way of marketing?

If you are very reactive, could you not take advantage on the day or week a new player is signed or manager starts?  Manchester United or a sports business could be, as we speak, taking advantage of the space when lots of people will be searching for Phil Jones today or Jordan Henderson now probably going to Liverpool. 

A little creativity and it could really pay off.

The last few weeks for Glamorgan Cricket fans have not been easy ones to stomach.  The walking out of Matt Maynard, Jamie Dalrymple and Peter Walker after the management decided to appoint a new captain for 2011 has caused massive disruption and press inches.

Controversy is not something new at the club which has had to deal with the renaming of the old stadium (something that still irks die-hard fans 3 years on), poor performances on the field and the drive from being an old fashioned county club to an Ashes hosting multi-million pound stadium business.

It all started with the naming of unknown South Africa opening batsman Alviro Petersen and former club wicket-keeper Colin Metson as Head of Coaching.  This was done without the knowledge of the current captain, director of cricket and chairman hence now all three have resigned.

The club has responded to the criticism of the Chairman, Paul Russell, and CEO, Alan Hamer, with a letter to members and appearances on radio.  But is this old fashioned approach and lack of social network presence be their undoing?

Currently their main presence is a 2,500 strong group of friends as they have set up as a person rather than a group or page.  Their twitter presence involves the @GlamCricket account which has tweeted once in over a year.

The response to the negative remarks on their Facebook page has been to delete them from the wall with apparently hundreds of remarks being taken off.  If there is one way to wind up a angered fan even more is to deny them their voice.

A quick grab from the page:

Read the full story

The ECB have taken another step in formalising their social media approach by appointing Modern-English. 

The company is based in Manchester and has worked extensively with music-business clients inclusing EMI, Ticketmaster, Sony and Ministry of Sound.  They successfully pitched for the business and will be charged with devising the strategy, content and technology used to both increase their links with the cricketing public with, I imagine, a side note to increase the ECB’s income streams and database contacts in the process.

This is in addition to their appointment of a Social Media Executive back in May.  It has been an interesting time for the governing body and no doubt this has been partly influenced by the press gained by Kevin Peterson, Azeem Rafiq and Dimi Mascarenhas this summer.

Surprisingly there is no mention of training in there ahead of the high-profile Ashes tour where no doubt we will be hearing from within via Peterson, Paul Collingwood, Graeme Swann and not to mention the Radio 5, SkySports and other commentators and journalists.

 It will be interesting to see what new initiatives Modern-English come up with and how much freedom they will be allowed with a heavily regulated and political organisation such as the ECB.  Hopefully there will be more to shout about than a new iPhone app and YouTube channel.

We shall reserve judgement for now but will be keeping an eye on developments at Lords here at UKSN.

The alleged match fixing charges against Pakistani cricketers which have been dominating the sporting headlines recently raise two interesting questions. Firstly, will there always be match fixing in sport? Secondly, is sport really any different to any other business?

History would suggest that the answer to the first question is unfortunately a resounding yes. In ancient Greece, Olympians had to take an oath to maintain the integrity of the competition but bribes were still common. Match fixing is probably as old as sport itself.

Getting back to cricket – the English game, which first attracted gamblers as early as the 1660s, is no stranger to match fixing controversy. A decade ago Hanse Cronjé, the then South Africa captain, was charged with match fixing and players from India, Pakistan, Kenya and South Africa have all been banned since 2000.

Our national game, football, has also been tainted by match fixing. Back in 1964, eight players from the FA were jailed for it. More recently, in 1999, a Malaysian based betting group was caught installing a device to disrupt the floodlights at Charlton Athletic’s ground and further investigations revealed that the group had also been responsible for floodlight failure at both West Ham and Crystal Palace. Another footballing scandal involved Matt Le Tissier who “revealed that he once attempted to play a part in a £10,000 betting scam while a player with Southampton”.

Across the channel, French football was shocked by a match fixing scandal in 1993 involving powerhouse club Olympique de Marseille (OM). In the year that OM won the Champions League, the club fixed a match with Valenciennes. The club was subsequently stripped of its French championship. Financial irregularities linked to the club president, Bernard Tapie, were also discovered. As punishment, the club suffered a forced relegation to the second division.

Similarly, Italian football was thrown into turmoil in 2006 when several major teams, including then league champions Juventus in addition to AC Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio and Reggina, were all found guilty of match-fixing (the clubs actually influenced the appointment of match referees).

There are also ongoing investigations into match fixing in several other European countries and sports. In August 2010 charges were filed against two men alleged to have attempted to influence at least 10 football matches in Germany and 14 elsewhere in Europe. As I write this, John Higgins, the snooker star, is also maintaining his ‘100 per cent’ innocence into allegations he threw frames.

Arguably the most famous case of match-fixing in sport is the ‘Black Sox’ scandal. In 1919, the Chicago White Sox threw the baseball World Series. Eight members of that team received life bans for deliberately losing to the Cincinnati Reds. The ‘Black Sox’ scandal resulted from players being linked to the Chicago underworld, and set a pattern of established crime syndicates being associated with professional sports match fixing.

All these cases, and this is by no means a comprehensive list, merely demonstrate that sport is a reflection of the human character. Unfortunately that means that traits such as greed, arrogance, self-interest, to name a few, will always be present in sport. The stakes in sport are high and the punishment for breaking rules too light. The incentive to throw matches is always going to be there – and I haven’t even touched upon other sporting crimes such as doping, cheating on the field itself, breaching salary caps and other matters.

Getting back to the second question, sport is therefore no different to any other business (just look at some of the banking scandals on Wall St).  However, the ‘rotten apples’ in sport are definitely in a minority.

Nearly all sports are played, administered and governed properly and in the right spirit. Sport is far from being broken. The growth in popularity of sport on a global scale is living proof of that. The examples of good sportsmanship are just too numerous to mention but one famous one I’d like to leave you with took place in English football in the 1999/2000 season. In a surprising demonstration of fair play from a player previously banned for pushing a referee, the Italian striker Paolo Di Canio caught “the ball rather than shoot when Everton goalkeeper Paul Gerrard was on the ground injured”.

Kevin Pietersen has become the latest cricketer to be caught out on Twitter and could find himself in hot water with the ECB because of it.

We have highlighted the cases of several athletes around the world who have come a cropper recently and Peterson has shown that when the red mist descends then Twitter can be too easy to use.

With so many journalists using Twitter to gain latest scoops must have thought Christmas had come early when they saw this come up in Peterson’s stream.  At the moment there are no rules as to when and where players can use social media, plus I imagine no training by the ECB, clubs or agents for their prized assets on the do’s and don’ts.

You will probably have seen/read that Pietersen found out he was to be dropped from the England team for the first time since his debut back in 2004.  To say he wasn’t happy about it is an understatement as his tweet reveals although he has come out to say it should have been a direct message (DM) and not gone out into the public domain.  It still doesnt excuse the language used.

It is generally understood that players are not allowed to comment about team squads until after the official announcement is made.  This tweet came out several hours before and was soon picked up by blogs, new sites and TV across the globe.

Even though it was hastily removed it had already been seen, copied and pasted.  These things are impossible to undo no matter if you hit the delete button or not.

After Azeem Rafiq’s ban and fine for abusing the England U19 team development manager  on Twitter (plus being caught out late whilst on duty).  There is no doubt that the ECB will have to take a tough stance with at least a fine.

Talk is about a new rule being brought in banning centrally contracted players from using social media on the Ashes tour this winter.  The ECB claim to have reminded players before now about using social media responsibly, but how much training/education did they actually give?

This would be a massive over reaction but one you can see happening when you have technophobes such as Geoff Miller as an England National Selector.  His reaction was unfortunately obvious;

“I don’t like that kind of language and I don’t use that language at all.  I don’t follow Twitter and I’m not a great believer in that kind of thing. I don’t think it is necessary. I’m still the national selector and what I do is select sides with my co-selectors that we think is right for England. My priority is the England side and it is not about individuals.”

It doesn’t hold out much hope for the advocates of social media within the England team or ECB does it!

This shows a very archaic view compared to our cricketing compatriots in Australia who show a much deeper understanding of the benefits of its use. 

Michael Brown, Cricket Australia’s operations manager, said there would be no social networking bans placed on the players. “At this stage it’s really important that we are about growing the game and embracing the future, and young people are a critical part of it,” he said. “We want young people to be associated with the game.” The coach Tim Nielsen has signed up to Twitter and even the team manager Steve Bernard is using it.

And captain Ricky Ponting is equally enthusiastic about the benefits, “You won’t see us banning our players from doing that sort of stuff,” he said at the team’s camp in Queensland. “It is your job as international players to promote the game and be the best you can for the game. If we can use social networks, if that brings people closer to the game, brings people through the gates to play, then that’s what it is all about.”

Ponting has 11,000 likes on his Facebook page and vice-captain Michael Clarke has 42,000 following his every tweet.  Showing that they practice what they preach and see that for every slip and PR shocker there they are far outweighed by the use of social media for a better future.

“The biggest thing we face as international players is … everyone knows us with the helmet on but very few in Australia, or around the world, actually understand what we are like with the helmet off,” Ponting said. “If there are ways to express yourself then feel free to do that. I am totally all for that, as long as it is done the right way and within reason.”

Read the full story

Earlier this week the New York Times had an interesting article on sports broadcasting as viewed through the recent YouTube – IPL Season 3 experiment. While the financial winners and losers of the arrangement are not known, we do know that it was a win for many fans, including myself, who viewed matches and highlights. In fact, according to the article:

“About 50 million viewers tuned in to YouTube’s I.P.L. channel, 25 percent more than Google executives said they expected when they signed the deal in January. Approximately 40 percent of those viewers were outside India.”

Yesterday I wrote about Google’s Chrome ads and how there were more than just about speed. I think the Google has made another shrewd move with the [Google-owned] YouTube – IPL tie-up. Just as they are challenging Apple in the ‘creative’ space (again, see the Chrome ads), they are also positioning themselves to challenge the likes of ESPN (via their ESPN3 online sports channel).

By partnering with the IPL, YouTube not only has a direct plug in to the burgeoning Indian market, but also to the high end sponsors that come along with a property as massively popular as the IPL. Again from the NY Times article:

“Google signed on seven advertisers in India, including Coca-Cola and Hewlett-Packard, two in Britain and one in the United States, where YouTube showed matches 15 minutes after they finished.”

Now it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to see a vision of the future where fans from around the world are watching live sporting events via YouTube on their Nexus One Google phones. That really can’t be more than a couple years away at most. Just as Rupert Murdoch grabbed rights to English Premier League football to legitimize Sky Sports (and to some degree NFL rights to legitimize FOX in the U.S.), Google could tie up exclusive mobile rights as a trojan horse for the Nexus One.

Perhaps the biggest problem Google will face is that both the properties themselves as well as the current broadcast rights holders are organized or technologically savvy enough to make this work. They’re stuck in an out-dated system that often bundles mobile and television rights to the same outlets, regardless of their abilities to maximize the digital opportunities.

Ultimately Google, if they are indeed headed in this direction, may need to pay over the top for mobile or online rights. I’d reckon that’s a gamble worth taking, especially for a sport such as cricket which is on a global upswing right now

Following on from Ash Reads article on the Facebook and Twitter Premier League, I decided to take a look at one of our other major sports…cricket.  Social Media is obviously something that the ECB are looking at as they recently posted the role of Social Media Executive onto LinkedIn and their site.

When it comes to the county cricket clubs though, the message does not seem to have filtered down.  Some have Facebook and Twitter accounts which you can find links to if you look very hard on their club sites.  Others are oblivious to the new platforms available and carry on regardless.

For my research I visited every county club website as well as diverting my attention to known players and the ECB.  I also searched for them on the platform search engines to make sure I hadn’t missed anything and the results were pretty shocking.  If we thought football was behind when it comes to social media then cricket is in the dark ages!

The first scary statistic is that out of the 18 teams 5 of them do not have an official presence of any kind.  The second scary fact is that out of the 18 teams and taking into account Facebook fans (or friends) and Twitter followers the largest number for a club is 2,176!

Here is a full list of the clubs in England and Wales…..

*All numbers in the table were correct as of Friday 19^th March 2010

With the massive potential that social media has tied with the problems cricket has always faced in connecting with fans and filling the stadia outside of England games, you would have thought it would have been a sport that would be embracing the new, low cost tools available.

But, with the backward perception that the sport has in public eyes are we surprised that they have failed to grasp the possibilities with both hands?  Clubs have long been battling to gain lucrative international games to ensure they have enough money to keep going rather than their own club games. 

One area I see that would be a great move would be to turn around the problems caused by the British weather.  I have worked at games which should be popular but spectators have stayed at home because it looks like it may rain or it has rained that morning – the ground is then fine by game time but the damage has been done.

Here is a great opportunity to keep your fans engaged with regular updates on match days, to reassure them and interact with them.  Many clubs run ticket offers, have merchandise to sell, international games to publicise and the biggest advantage cricket has is that the players are more approachable than in most sports.

Have the ticket manager, marketing manager, CEO and others on twitter posting updates and answering questions that relate to them rather than the PR person or mascot.  Educate the players in how to use it and warn them about what not to say (they are still speaking as a club representative at the end of the day, much like talking to the TV or press).  Add pictures, video and offers to your Facebook site, do chats with the players that fans can join in with and have fans them upload video and pictures.

Many fans grumble about how they cannot speak to the clubs, how they feel unheard and these damaging feelings only grow they don’t go away (especially with clubs becoming more commercial and less fan focused).  Be active on Twitter and answer any grumbles people add which can be answered – this way you are winning over fans you may otherwise lose.  This can be taken into context with any sport or organisation, not just cricket. 

The Twenty20 version of the game could potentially lend itself better to social media than the longer version. Microphones have been introduced to select players for televised games so commentators can chat to them while playing.  They also have more ‘engaging’ activity during the game, batsmen intro music, competitions for the best fan fancy dress and originally the hot tub!  The activation possibilities with this form of cricket should be particularly interesting to all involved.

We could also look at what else fits into the statistical nature of cricket – mobile phone apps would be a great source of interaction and profit for clubs/ECB.  It gives far more diversity than you can gain in a match programme and has the potential for sponsors and partners to piggyback on with offers and incentives – drinks promotions being an obvious one.

I did say at the start about my research into the ECB and top players.  Currently the ECB Facebook site is run by their members club ‘Twelfth Man’ and has 9,719 fans which offers latest news, videos and photos.  They also have a Twitter feed with 8,678 followers with latest scores and info on and some interaction – it’s a start but the emphasis has to be on connecting with fans and interactivity not pouring out the same content you see on the website.

On the subject of players I was even more surprised by the lack of activity by well known cricket names.  Here are some of the results I found on official pages for Facebook and Twitter…

What do you think about the impact Social Media could have for cricket and other sports?  Why do you think they have been unwilling to make the most of it so far?