Facebook Places Equals A Big Opportunity For Savvy Sports Marketers

Heads up sports marketers, this may be the opportunity you’ve been looking for. Now that Facebook has made its long anticipated entry into geo-location space, all of a sudden you have a very relevant new marketing vehicle to explore. Yes, services like Foursquare have been around for a while and perhaps there are a few teams who have experimented with them.

But with Facebook Places and its 500 million users entering the arena, this contest may be over sooner rather than later. Here’s how it works: Lets say you’re at the Portland Trailblazers game and you want to let your Facebook friends know where you are. Simply check in at the Rose Garden using your iPhone’s Facebook mobile app. Once you do, your update will appear on the Place page, your friends’ News Feed and your Wall (remember, every Facebook user has an average of 130 friends!) You can also tag friends you are at the game with allowing them to be part of your update. And finally, you can see which of your friends are at the game or near by if they’ve already checked in. Make no mistake; this is a killer application for sports.

With Facebook Places you can reward fans in real time for checking in inside the stadium, ballpark or arena. And in the sports world, where fans gather in the tens of thousands, you have the ability as a marketer to create a very noisy social experience. Facebook Places provides a platform to combine very relevant information in the form of offers or incentives with location-based data on users. Why not reward fans for checking in at the game by offering a special on jerseys in the merchandise store? Or better yet, roll back prices on stadium beers for everyone who checks in.

Imagine the wall posts that would drive on game day! We know from Facebook data that almost 30% of all Facebook activity is driven through their mobile application. We also know that people who use Facebook on their mobile device are twice as active as those who don’t. Having access to such a large and engaged audience can really be a game changer for franchises who are willing to experiment and adopt a more aggressive social media approach.

So the question isn’t weather or not this can help sports marketers further engage their fan base, the question is which teams will be the first to embrace this new opportunity.

(Chris is a veteran sports marketer having held senior-level marketing positions at EA SPORTS, Nike and Converse. He now heads up strategic accounts at StepChange Group – a social media agency in Portland, OR and can be reached at cmike@stepchangegroup.com)

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