Victor Oladipo might have finished runner-up for Rookie of the Year in the league, but basketball has always been a team game. The 30 franchises that make up the NBA have generated a revenue pie in excess of $5 billion. The digital age has enabled this game to reach its worldwide audience anywhere, anytime. Teams can build up their own local fan base through the sundry of platforms available.
Much like our #NFLTechSeries, this time SportTechie delves into the digital strategies–from web, social media, mobile apps, and any other technological connection–of each team and analyzes them, including insights from some of the digital executives involved. Today, the #NBADigitalSeries 2013-14 concludes with the Orlando Magic. Thank you for supporting the season-long coverage of our #NBADigitalSeries.
With the NBA Combine underway in Chicago, the time nears before the Orlando Magic must make another important draft day decision. The development of their young players has been an integral part of the long-term plan in place to rectify everything after Dwight Howard left. Each step along this path proves to be an internal realization and desire to improve organization-wide.
The Magic’s home, the Amway Center, remains one of the stellar venues in the NBA. While some of the initial hope behind this building was to serve as a reason for Howard to stay, it still cements forward-thinking progress. This line of thought continues to crossover among the team’s digital channels as well.
In virtually similar fashion to the Philadelphia 76ers, the Magic have completely overhauled their site, too. The homepage’s design and intuitiveness instantly attracts users and it’s close to identical to the aforementioned team. While the header doesn’t contain a designated spot for a presenting sponsor, instead, they have three of them, KIA, Amway, and CenturyLink in between borders of the content, the latter of which is a directly link to their site. There’s some subtle differences with respects to its main menu tab: added social button in Pinterest, a ticket login feature for fans, and a language translator widget to include the Hispanic audience. They’re one of the few teams that digitally promotes its own city’s hospitality organization for visitors within its ticket sales tab, which is a convenient way to welcome tourists from everywhere. Again, it’s the body, though, that places a stamp on the redesign emphasis; with the wide, image-rich visuals of the content, followed by an enlarged video hub with a playlist juxtapose to it, and then more content as shown above it with an updated social widget to the side. This whole layout demonstrates a commitment to staying ahead of the curve, and complements the team’s core and fan base.
By the same token, their social mediums offer a consistent lens into this ongoing rebuilding stage.
The Magic have reached well over two million likes on Facebook, and have had a top volume compared peers for a while now in spite of being a small market. Their cover photo only changed twice all season, which currently still convey the slogan created in support of the Los Angeles Clippers They don’t feature several applications for fans to engage with, sans for an odd polling widget. The tone is inquisitive and straight to the point; there’s a consistent template that begins with a simple sentence, call to action in boldface, followed by a link, and then an image–all of which is digestible for the user. On game days, there’d sometimes be branded posts to show broadcast, sometimes halftime ones, and branded post-game scores if they won; most of this didn’t transpire until towards the end of the year.
On Twitter, the volume of 1.16 million would receive a balanced amount of in-game tweets, including video links and images. The same tone of the copy that presides over Facebook is apparent here as well. Internal and external influencers gain retweets from them insofar as to show they’re a part of the conversation. Most importantly, however, they sufficiently interact with their fans in a meaningful way via replying to them on a daily basis and sharing the best photos they tweet out, too; it’s extremely atypical for any team to have a two-way dialogue in this manner.
As for Instagram, the team closed in on 60,000 followers by season’s end. A lot of the images from their other social channels derived from here. Although the majority of the posts happen to be of the behind-the-scenes-type, there was only original branding to them on occasion. A couple of the differences that stand out are the birthday ones–similar to the graphics the NFL’s official account–and those reserved for community service initiatives–not to mention the username including the “NBA” phrase kind of like the New Orleans Pelicans do. On the whole, there’s been a concerted effort to populate this platform often, due in part to this season being their 25th anniversary. And again, the tone of the copy remained consistent to their other mediums, besides including more hashtags in order to try to build it accordingly.
Moreover, two of the most notable experiences the Magic delivered to their fans are Google Glass and Apple’s iBeacon.
“The Magic is always looking for new ways to engage and enhance the fan experience,” said Alex Martins, the team’s Chief Executive Officer.
“Google Glass and CrowdOptic provide a unique and organic opportunity for fans to see a different viewpoint of the game.”
This in-game event occurred, fittingly, when they played another tech-savvy team, the Brooklyn Nets. CrowdOptic, a software platform, allowed the Magic to capture and funnel the content from Glass in order to then project it on the tallest high-definition video board housed in any NBA arena that they possess. Jason Maxiell, Tobias Harris, Stuff, the mascot, and the local broadcast crew were the personnel fans were able to see through their respective vantage point. The successful debut will prompt the team to craft personalized, surprise giveaways and showcase fans’ reaction on the video board for future events next season. This entire endeavor stems from Victor Oladipo’s highly-publicized Glass test almost a year ago.
Even though the Golden State Warriors utilized Sonic Notify in conjunction with iBeacon, the Magic claimed to be the first NBA team to leverage it in a game. They placed 20 iBeacons throughout the venue that would respond with their app. Fans that opted-in to this experience received specific push notifications and special in-game-only offers. The goal of this micro-location data would be to enhance customer service aspects and behavioral elements, both pertinent to each fans and groups of them. Despite activated towards the last few home games, they’re just scratching the surface to its potential.
Ryan Unger, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Chicago-based Punchkick Interactive, mentioned these iBeacons can be “correlated from a big data perspective by understanding were behaving at the time.”
“It allows us to build on our mission of providing legendary moments every step of the way,” said Martins.
The Orlando Magic just finished paying tribute to their 25th year as a franchise. Their luck in the NBA Draft Lottery has produced the likes of Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway, and Howard.
Who would have known, however, that their latest draftee, Oladipo, would be the prodigal, ominous one pointing towards the Glass future that the Magic, themselves, covet?
Is either Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker next?
via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1r1ROyk
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire