COMPETITION NOW CLOSED!

This weekend is going to be a special one here in London.  With the UEFA Champions League Final being hosted in our capital for the second time in three years it going to be party time once again.  Now we don’t run competitions very often on here but for this we thought we’d make an exception.

We’ve teamed up with adidas to offer something very special indeed for anyone in London this weekend.  adidas will be showcasing and looking ahead at the ‘Future of Football’ with their adidas lab (#adidaslab).  The lab will give a sneaky look at adidas products of the past, present & future.  It will give consumers a glimpse into how football might look in the next  six months, year and beyond.  You’ll be able to test unseen products first-hand in a series of high-tech football experiences featuring real-time data visualisation – all at this behind-closed-doors event in London this weekend.

We’ve got 12 pairs of tickets for the adidas Labs on Saturday 25th May between 11.30am and 1.00pm and we want you guys to come along.  To enter, post a comment at the bottom of this post to say why you want to go and you’ll be in with a chance of winning this money-can’t-buy prize.  We’ll be in touch to let you know if you are going!

You have to be 18 or over and resident here in the UK and must be able to make it to the event on Saturday.  There is no travel as part of the prize, only entry to the event.

So what are you waiting for??  Get writing now….

Every year, the great British institution of Gumball3000 turns 3,000 miles of public roads into an international rally course.  The event pits around 120 of the most eye-catching and/or head-turning cars against one another in the ultimate road trip adventure.  This year, Berkshire-based digital agency, Rawnet, have unleashed their passion in designing and developing the official website to the point where you can almost catch the whiff of petrol in the air.

As the Official Digital Partner, they were keen to apply their digital savvy to create a compelling online meeting place for all the participating Gumballers, as well as the hundreds of thousands of fans worldwide.  Among the more high-profile entrants in this special 15^th anniversary rally are David “The Hoff” Hasselhoff, musician and actress, Eve, skateboarding legend, Tony Hawk, bands Cypress Hill and Nero, rapper, actor and TV host, Xzibit and Formula One Driver, Kimi Raikkonen, to name but a handful.

Rawnet are helping everyone to track the Gumballers’ progress en route from Copenhagen to Monaco with their Interactive Live Map.   Gumballers simply capture a picture on their phone, then tweet the photo adding the hashtag #rawnet.  By enabling Location Services on their mobile devices, they can share moments and memories from the rally on the Live Tweet map in mere seconds.  It’s a great way for Gumballers to update all of their followers, fans and fellow drivers on their position while effortlessly creating their own photo blog throughout the event.  Whoever takes the picture that best captures the ‘Spirit of Gumball’ will win a Nikon D5100 along with a signed copy of the winning picture from founder, Maximillion Cooper.

As part of the new website, Rawnet have also built Gumball an interactive Entry Grid for 2013 that allows fans and Gumballers alike to get their favourite team on pole position for the starting grid in Copenhagen by raising money for the Gumball3000 Foundation.  The team that raises the highest amount as of Sunday 19^th May will be leaving Copenhagen first under the chequered flag.

The Gumball3000 Foundation is a non-profit charitable trust that has been established to benefit underprivileged youth through Education, Infrastructure and Environmental projects.

Show your support by donating today as all monies raised will go to this fantastic cause. Just choose your favourite team and click the donate button.  The total raised so far is £49,789 with Team 86 from Italy in the lead www.gumball3000.com/rally/entry_grid

So, get involved and experience a taste of the action at www.rawnet.com/gumball3000 from Sunday 19^th May 2013 where the adventure begins in Copenhagen.  Accompany us on a journey that winds through Stockholm, Helsinki, St.Petersburg, Riga, Warsaw and Vienna before rocking up in Monaco just in time for the Formula 1 Grand Prix on Sunday 26^th May.

Squawka is a second-screen web app that provides real time data visualizations of football matches across Europe and runs this alongside social media accounts. The depth of data provided is unique amongst consumer applications and the format encourages use of this data in discussions on social media.

Squawka launched in June last year, and have experienced a meteoric take-up from consumers in 192 countries who are spending, on average, an astounding 39 minutes dwelling on the web application during Premier League matches. The founders realised the opportunities that second-screening offered brands and have provided never-before-seen real time and personalized sponsorship campaigns. This is one of the unique selling points for Squawka, whose work with Dominos Pizza and Ladbrokes in particular, has been seen as ground-breaking. These results have seen Squawka Highly Commended at the recent Performance Marketing Awards and also a shortlisted at the upcoming Revolution awards.

With the continuing upsurge of ‘dual-screening’, Squawka is well positioned to exploit a number of opportunities that will arise. After their astronomic growth in the last year, founders Sanjit Atwal and Leo Harrison have announced that Squawka has attracted a funding round from some of the top names in the UK Performance Marketing and Advertising industries. Included on the list of investors are Forward Internet Group (with founder Neil Hutchinson appointed to the board), FusePump CEO Rob Durkin and BBH founder Sir John Hegarty. Further to these, Lastminute.com investor Thomas Teichman, Spark Ventures director Kiko Duffy and Entrepreneurs Eric Lumley and Jay Taylor have all invested in the potential of Squawka.

Neil Hutchinson from Forward commented:

“The early data we have seen around user engagement and viral growth since we first invested has been impressive and we look forward to the next part of the journey!”

Rob Durkin added:

“The potential of Squawka to capitalise on the second screen phenomenon with quality relevant advertising made investing in it a no-brainer for me.”

Information on where the funding is to be used has yet to be released but it’s safe to assume a portion of this will be allocated to a mobile application that is scheduled for the end of the year. Whether or not Squawka intends to branch into other sports is also an unknown.

If you haven’t used Squawka before, now is a great time to get involved: http://www.squawka.com/

This month sees the launch of a new event and it promises to be the best yet!  At the the last UKSN Meetup where we spoke to leading digital leader Richard Ayers and gained some great insights into his career and his thoughts on social media.  Now we are looking at a different topic within social media, one that has really come to the fore this last year….. video.

http://uksnvideo.eventbrite.com

The venue is the fashionable Bar Kick in Shoreditch and we have some great guests coming along to speak. They include;

Mark Coyle - Head of Digital Production, BT Sport
Stephen Nuttall - Senior Director (Sports), YouTube EMEA
Tim Hines - Digital Content Strategist, The Rugby Football Union
Richard Welsh - Creative Director, BigBalls Films & Copa90

This last year we have seen the role of video within social media become more prominent. With Twitter launching Vine, YouTube backing their ‘Originals’ channels and sport starting to realise the potential these platforms offer.  When YouTube worked with Red Bull on ‘Red Bull Stratos’ they proved to the world that they can handle huge amounts of traffic and that live events have a place on the platform. With 8 million people (!) from around the world tuning in at any one time it really was a massive global event.

Twitter have been pushing new products and making the user experience richer without them having to leave the app. Personally I’ve worked with Livestream to push live content through Twitter that helped launch a new product and it was great. You can also do the same using Ustream and YouTube.

In the football world we’ve seen Man City’s ‘Tunnelcam’, England’s live streaming of training sessions and even QPR using Ustream to connect with fans on a weekly basis. And there is much more besides.  But are we missing a trick? How engaging is video content for fans? And what can we do without using game highlights?

This and much more will be discussed at the event. There are still spaces and you can book at http://uksnvideo.eventbrite.com

The event is being kindly sponsored by Pusher and Somersault Video Productions (it will be filmed and we’ll release edits from the event in the weeks after it runs).

Below is a lovely pic from our last event at the Sports Bar where I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr ‘Datatainment’ himself, Richard Ayers.

Guest Post:  Tom Kelk is a tech/sport blogger and Account Exec at global social media agency We Are Social.  You can find him on Twitter (@TomKelk), LinkedIn and his blog.

Eye of the Fan is a neat campaign run by Turkish Airlines to attempt to promote the basketball Euroleague through social media. Whilst basketball doesn’t have the biggest UK following, it is massively popular in mainland Europe and therefore, Eye of the Fan has received the required interest to return for a second stint.

Simply put, Eye of the Fan is a series of cameras attached to a ‘fan’ who has been given behind the scenes access to basketball matches and reacts to live requests from contributors. The heart of the campaign is its integration with social media. Those following the action can tweet their requests to the ‘Fan Cam’, who will duly oblige to the requests chosen by the ‘Up Team’ in London, and a team in Istanbul which will deliver tweets right to the ‘Fan’ in the O2 Arena. Further to this, these teams will keeping an eye on activity within the stadium and direct the Fan towards events of interest. This responsive caveat brings the fans closer to the game, but also engrosses them in the app.

This a great use of the popular go-pro equipment and fantastic to see it revolving around social media engagement. How well it captures the atmosphere of the stadium and an event is yet to be seen but there is clearly potential. The access to athletes away from the traditional media will certainly attract interest from the majority of sports fans who rarely see players in an ordinary light. The most important aspect to the success of this is the completely free-rein of the Fan who “will be going everywhere cameras normally can’t or won’t go to offer fans and media an exclusive behind the scenes view.” Fans can ask him to joke around with a player, chat with a manger or find the best-looking person in the crowd (see video…).

In my latest blog I spoke about Vine and how it could be used to capture an atmosphere and how clubs were not making the most of their assets and behind the scenes footage; Eye of the Fan manages this with a real-time and responsive element added-on.

Here is the video of the 2012 ‘Final Four’ and this gives an indication of what can be expected this time around. There have been no significant changes since last year’s campaign but the ‘Up Team’ intends to interact with contributors to a higher level than previously:

All the footage will be accessible on a constantly updated website and, once watermarked, can be fully integrated, embedded and shared across websites. Footage of the game itself will not be available due to licensing regulations.

In 2012 the Eye of the Fan Facebook app received 150000 visits; Eye of the Fan posts on the Turkish Airlines received 15000 likes in 3 days. Overall, the 2012 event received 3.7m impressions. It is hoped that the 2013 Eye of the Fan campaign will exceed these numbers by quite some distance.

Regardless of your interest in European basketball, this is a fascinating campaign and should be looked at. Eye of the Fan can be seen from 10-12^th May when the Turkish Airlines Final Four will be broadcasting from the London O2 Arena. The ‘Final Four’ is the culmination of the Turkish Airlines Euroleague – the ‘Champions League’ of European Basketball. The top sixteen teams are currently fighting out to be involved in the ‘Final Four’. Before the Final Four tips-off, you can follow @eyeofthefan on Twitter and see what it has to offer.

It will be interesting to see where Eye of the Fan goes from here. There is a great potential in the idea. At the moment, Turkish Airlines have indicated that they are keen to focus on further communications through basketball and would welcome any opportunity to increase engagement and buzz alongside improving the content output.

There must be opportunities to translate this forward thinking approach over to other sports and hopefully brands will take a close look at the ideas behind this campaign.

Following nearly 1 year of preparation, my business partner and I launched MySeatz.com, in August 2011. MySeatz was launched to become the destination for deals on Football League tickets.

MySeatz aimed to increase attendances throughout the Football League by working directly with clubs to make tickets available at a discounted price through sporadic, time limited, and often last minute deals for tickets on the MySeatz web platform. MySeatz was the first dedicated UK Football ticket deal website.

The state of Football attendances seemed to support our theory. Taking each League as a cohort, The Championship, League 1 and League 2 only filled an overall average of 68.7%, 42.7% and 43.4% respectively of stadium capacities in the 2010/2011 season. (These stats haven’t changed much in the last 18 months, incidentally).

It was great…all of this was fuel for the MySeatz fire.

Much of the preparation time my co founder and I spent pre launch was on considering the viewpoint of the Football club, particularly as we understood that clubs wouldn’t be eager to devalue their own ticketing infrastructures.

From a fans perspective, they were able to visit MySeatz.com and register their interest in receiving deals from any one of the 72 Football League Clubs. When we had a deal for their club, we’d email it to them…simple!
We were therefore building fan networks for each Football league club, then offering clubs a cost effective opportunity to sell ticket deals to their registered fans on MySeatz.

However, after over 1 year of efforts, and little positive response from Football Clubs, we called time on the MySeatz journey due to a lack of traction.

Why?

After our de briefing on the failings of MySeatz, we offer the following advice from our experiences for those looking to offer products or services to Football clubs:

Don’t be seen to compete

It sounds obvious, but even we didn’t think we competed with the Clubs. Our self perception was that we empowered clubs by giving them an off the shelf network of fans to tap into. They viewed us as potentially taking fans that were already theirs, and reducing their income by selling cheaper tickets to those fans.

Clubs like control

Feeding off the previous point, Clubs want to retain control over how they sell their products. Third party suppliers can in no way be seen to compete with, or cannibalize sales of the partnering Club. We recognized this and made our service as flexible as possible with no commitments or upfront payments being asked of the clubs. This wasn’t enough.

The clubs wanted control over our network of fans, however without control over our network we had very little leverage, so we were unwilling to allow them direct access to it, which in turn created another barrier to partnership.

Clubs accept empty seats

Clubs understand that empty seats will always be an issue, and many of the clubs we spoke to seemed fairly content in this regard. The general consensus was that whilst they had measures to increase attendances, none of these would be prioritized over the de valuing or cannibalizing of full price ticket sales of regularly attending fans.

The “We’ve done it this way for many years” approach

I don’t want to over emphasize this point, because respectfully, there are many clubs doing many new and innovative things. However, there were certain clubs who were particularly unwilling to consider new ways of approaching an issue, such as ticketing, which has traditionally been managed the same way for some time (although the internet/mobile has changed their distribution channels of late). With these clubs, we didn’t get much of a look in.

Empower the Clubs

On reflection, a better version of MySeatz would have been to provide a “platform as a service” white label solution to empower the clubs to directly offer their own deals using the technology in our ticketing system, without the brand of MySeatz. They could then use the system to further build their own network of fans, rather than feel like we were offloading their fan network to MySeatz.

In the end, there’s a whole lot of opportunity out there for new products and services to offer Football Clubs in terms of ticketing, merchandising, marketing, data analytics, for those ready to disrupt.

In our case, empowering rather than outsourcing would have been a better strategy.

Best of luck to the next hopefuls.

John Henwood

Andy Meikle and Arron Shepherd are today thrilled to announce the launch of Sportlobster. In an ambitious first for the sports and technology industries, the young British entrepreneurs have developed a free-to-join social networking site entirely dedicated to sport.

A new way for sports fans to engage with sport and with each other, Sportlobster is a place where passionate fans can express themselves. The dedicated sports environment provides real time information and social interactions so the users are always engaged in their sporting experience.

With a myriad of different sports out there, and recognising that sports fans are only going to be interested in a select number of these, Sportlobster offers users a truly tailored experience; right down to being able to tailor their user experience to individual sports teams. Users can receive custom news, write articles, make predictions, pick up live score feeds, interact with other fans and athletes and much more. Individually, all of the above are essential for the true sports fan, but it’s not enough. Sportlobster intelligently consolidates all this and more, in a personalised global community.

Champions aren’t made in the gym.  Champions are made from something they have deep inside them.  A desire.  A dream.  A vision. 

Muhammad Ali

No more trawling through pictures of weddings or cats, complaints about the weather and boring status updates on existing social networking sites. Sportlobster goes straight to where it matters, giving sports fans a world to inhabit in which all their fellow social networkers want to live and breathe sport, sport, sport!

Proud of their British roots, Andy, 28 and Arron, 25, are delighted to launch Sportlobster in London – in an age where so many technology entrepreneurs and companies are American. However, Andy and Arron are not simply two businessmen putting together a sports site. Sport runs through their veins; they don’t go a single day without watching, listening to or reading about sport, and the fact that Sportlobster is designed by sports fans for sports fans makes it pretty special.

Andy Meikle, Co-founder and CEO: “Today is a very exciting and proud day for everyone involved in Sportlobster. It’s a dream that Arron and I have had for over a year and it’s a fantastic feeling to finally be able to share the site. I’m a massive fan of sports – it runs in the family – and found that the online experience for anyone who follows sport was too irrelevant and disjointed. The past year we’ve worked on creating a global community where people can become fully immersed in a personalised environment that’s dedicated to sport. Today we are able to realise that dream and begin sharing the site with sports fans across the world.”

Arron Shepherd, Co-founder and COO: “We’re absolutely thrilled to be sharing Sportlobster with you. It’s been under development for the past year and, as the world’s first dedicated sport’s social networking site, we truly believe we are introducing a brand new way for sports fans to engage with sport and with each other. This whole process has been a real labour of love, and we’re so excited that the time has come to share our vision with the world. I love existing social networking sites for what they offer, but strongly feel there is a need for a dedicated environment for the millions of sports fans out there to interact with likeminded passionate sports fans, and now we have that place.”

Register at: www.sportlobster.com

Xirrus®, the leader in high-performance wireless networks, today announced that Liverpool FC – one of the world’s most historic and famous football clubs – has deployed its Wireless Arrays at Anfield, the home of the Club since its formation in 1892. The first phase of the deployment covers the two-tier, 12,000-seat Centenary Stand and adjoining corporate facilities, enabling fans to access and share digital content during games as never before.

The Wi-Fi network will be available to Liverpool fans for the home game against West Ham on Sunday 7 April. By offering Wi-Fi to its fans, Liverpool is hoping to improve their overall match day experience and encourage them to share the excitement of the game with the global Liverpool fan base. It also opens up a new way for Liverpool to gain insight and feedback from its fan base which hasn’t been possible up to now.

Andrew Robinson, Head of Digital Media and Technology at Liverpool Football Club, explains:

“Running our own data network based on Xirrus technology means we can provide our fans with a dedicated, robust and high quality experience. The added reliability and performance of high capacity Wi-Fi over 3G connections will encourage our fans to use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to share their experiences with fans unable to make it to the game.”

Robinson continues:

“A massive driver for this new network is that we can gain more insight into our fans than ever before. Sign-in will be via a one-time registration process using an email address and fans will be encouraged to tell us their likes and dislikes. The technology will allow us to find out what devices fans like to connect with the Club on so we can invest in digital platforms accordingly. We will also find out more about how fans use the stadium and its facilities so we can adapt these to better serve them.

“The experience that we’ve created from day one is something we think fans will get very excited about. We’ll be providing in-match stats, food and drink offers, access to online retail, in-play betting in partnership with Paddy Power and also the ability to engage with a global audience outside of the stadium through social media platforms.”

This development is one we have seen start to take a hold in sport.  Despite clubs being activate in promoting the use of mobile around games, the inability to even send a text message never mind a tweet has been something that has needed to be addressed.  We saw how well it can work and enhance the fan experience at London 2012, now we are seeing more and more top football teams follow that lead.

It will be interesting to see the digital activations that will follow on from launch, taking advance of this new connectivity.  Are you a Liverpool fan?  What do you think of the announcement?

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.

Fans of the Australian Hyundai A league are being given the opportunity to help pick an ‘All-Star’ team to face Man Utd in a friendly in July.  The ANZ stadium has sold out it’s 77’000 allocated tickets in preparation for the match which will make up part of United’s pre season training.

Fans have already selected who the coach is to be and voted in Melbourne Victory head coach Ange Postecoglou. Along side his selection, fans will make up 50% of the vote of who makes the cut in the team through an online selector, 20% will be made from an ‘All-Star’ Committee, a further 20% from the PFA team of the year and 10% from Postecoglou himself.

The online selector allows for fans to pick from all the teams, choose a formation and also pick a captain.

Any amount from each team is allowed and from any nationality. They don’t have to be purely Australian.

Over 10’000 fans have already used the team selector and with over a month still to go to pick a squad that number is likely to continue to rise. After you’ve made you selections and submitted, users are invited to inform their friends or highlight the team they’ve picked through Facebook and Twitter.

Allowing for fans to pick who makes the squad is a fantastic bit of fan engagement. Not only does it bring the fan closer to the selection process but it also helps to unite rival teams. By allowing a fan selection percentage it will make it hard for any set of fans to cry bias and to avoid the game based on team loyalty. This way, the FFA have insured that the stadium is sold out, that TV views will be high and that (likely) kit and memorabilia on the day will be bought in the bucket loads.

Coach Postecoglou has already said that his team is “going to have a go at Manchester United” and with a fan selected set of all stars we’re hoping they win too.

Could you ever see this working in the Premier League? If so, who would make the team?

This article was written by Christian Baker from www.weplay.co