HOMERUNS IS CURRENTLY IN STEALTH
The sports world is on the cusp of changing into a whole new paradigm because of information technologies.
- Mike Crowley, CEO/Founder, 94 Fifty
Sport and the mass media enjoy a very symbiotic relationship in American society… Virtually every surge in the popularity of sport has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the coverage provided sport by the media. Furthermore, each surge in the coverage of sport has taken place during a period in which the mass media have sharply increased their penetration into the nooks and crannies of American social life.
- Robert W. McChesney, Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication, University of Illinois
Like any human endeavor, sports evolve over time. Science and technology fuel these changes.
- Brooke Borel, TED
Social media has been a gamechanger in sports, forcing agencies, brands and properties alike to think more critically about how they can enable the sports experience to be shared. More directly, social is facilitating a truly borderless sports landscape… providing an enormous, previously unavailable opportunity for properties to position themselves more globally.
- John Kristick, Global Chief Executive of GroupM Entertainment and Sports Partnerships
Perhaps the biggest data mine is the field of sports.
- Tim Newcomb, FastCo Magazine
Looking at data from a consumer perspective is a new line of thought within digital sports marketing that’s becoming more and more prominent as it opens up a range of new digital media opportunities… There has always been huge appetite from sports fans to get information that can’t be gained from simply watching the live action.
- David Strachan, Digital Manager, GMR Marketing UK
Brands are stories. They want to embody a story.
- Ted Royer, Executive Creative Director, Droga5
There have never been more sports brands in the world… And there has never been more sports content… In this sea of competition, differentiation is critical… It’s becoming increasingly important to establish what your brand does best, and ripple this out through all of a sports brand’s coverage and communication.
- Trokia, Sports Branding and Marketing Trends
We are entering an age where agile creativity is going to be a competitive advantage.
- Greg Andersen, CEO, BBH New York
Industry is undergoing a massive disruption, in which storytelling, advertising, and technology are beginning to intersect. For brands to find success in new media, brands must look beyond traditional marketing and tell great stories without pushing messages.
– Brian Solis, principal analyst, Altimeter Group
Like industrialization, virtualization is an intellectual, technological, and economic transition… it’s a change in the texture of time.
- David Gelernter, Computer Scientist, Yale University
When sports participants win, this is shared with many who have nothing to do with the actual sport itself, but who use this as a form cultural identity. It can be equated with winning in our own lives.
– Todd Boyd, professor, USC
Technology will transform the social fabric of sport.
- Billy Beane, General Manager and Owner, Oakland Athletics
While, in the past, the actors in the sports/media complex had clearly defined roles, this is no longer the case in the new sports/media complex. It is apparent that the emergence of digital technology and the expansion of new media markets have driven this sports/media complex into a new dimension.
- Katrien Lefever, New Media and Sport: International Legal Aspects
With multiple devices (tablets, smartphones, connected TV’s) on which we now consume data and engage with sport and entertainment, and a small matter of social media to connect people and amplify a message, the possibilities are endless.
- Daniel McLaren, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, UK Sports Network
There are lots of sports startups emerging right now. Nearly all of them, it seems, are focused on one of two things: creating a second or third screen experience for die-hard fans, or fantasy/gambling. There are apps that allow you to discuss sports, trade trash talk, and get access to additional stats, but there isn’t a mechanism for getting answers, making sense of, or deepening one’s understanding of a sport or sporting event.
- Brian Reich, Entrepreneur
In the new world of immersive storytelling, stories become games, and games become stories.
- Frank Rose, The Art of Immersion
What we’re witnessing is the emergence of a new form of narrative that’s native to the Internet. Told through many media at once in a nonlinear fashion, these new narratives encourage us not merely to watch but to participate, often engaging us in the same way that games do. This is “deep media”: stories that are not just entertaining but immersive…
- Frank Rose, The Art of Immersion
Content, in the right context, is ultimately king.
- Deanna Brown, CEO of Federated Media Publishing
Data analysis and visualizations have become indispensable tools in science and business, but in the hands of a new generation of digital artists, data is undergoing a metamorphosis – from a unity of information into a fascinating, beautiful, and expressive medium… New types of creativity are waiting to be uncovered by anyone who takes this new technology and uses it to rethink old rules.
- Aaron Koblin, head of Data Arts team, Google Creative Lab
Identity will be the most valuable commodity for citizens in the future, and it will exist primarily online.
- Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, Google
Change suggests a modification that retains a prior “deeper” identity. Transformation implies supersession, or submergence, of an old identity and the acquisition of a new one. Between the two poles of change and transformation there is a third possibility in which transformation occurs yet the older form is preserved.
- Sheldon Wolin, professor emeritus of politics, Princeton University
The sports industry is poised to be the next major industry to face the digital media revolution…consider this the first quarter for all these [sports] startups.
- The Atlantic Magazine
Driven by fame and finance, the quantified athlete seems to be a very logical extension of the quantified self… Professional athletes are the living embodiment of the quantified self in that they are measured, assessed, tracked, tested and monitored on a daily basis.
- John Nosta, Forbes
Combining forces with sports’ innate power, digital is beginning to transform the ways that we interact with sports and we are only seeing the beginning.
– Nicole Brown, Author
It is only a matter of time before the mobile and online companies make a large-scale entrance into the media rights market for the top-tier sporting events and leagues… The opportunity associated with the increased growth and complexity in this space is more than capable of delivering the kind of ROI needed to sustain such an intricate web of media and marketing strings.
- Wes Harris, analyst, Exponential Technological Growth Impacting Sports Media Landscape
While massive datasets may feel very abstract, they are intricately linked to human culture.
- Kate Crawford, professor at the MIT Center for Civic Media
Today’s sports fans are swimming in data. Fantasy leagues, live streaming stats, custom apps — there’s no shortage of information to keep you busy before, during and after the game. But nearly all that data is geared toward knowledgeable fans… Data journalism or data visualizations are excellent at presenting information, but that’s not enough. The data must be engaging if it is to have any value, and engaging means entertaining. Making data entertaining is tougher than it looks, and no one has completely pulled it off.
- Jeff Beckham, Wired
It is the brand value attached to athletes, teams, sports businesses and sporting events that best measures their power in the world of sports.
- Michael K. Ozanian and Peter J. Schwartz, Forbes
Here you have the grandest example of how the traditional sports business model… is being replaced by a new formula. Now regional sports networks, modern stadiums, sponsorships, videogames and even reality television use teams and athletes as entertainment brands.
- Michael K. Ozanian and Kurt Badenhausen, Forbes, SportsMoney 50-50
Sports brands are different.
- Edward M. O’Hara, Sports Business Journal
The impact of the global economic downturn on sport has certainly started, and we find ourselves somewhere in the middle of what is rapidly becoming the most unprecedented situation facing the new world of commercialized, globalized sport.
- Dr. Simon Chadwick, Chair of Sport Business Strategy and Marketing, Coventry University Business School
The monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving… Media barons of today will be grasping to hold onto their centralized empires tomorrow.
- Nicholas Negroponte, Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab