An excerpt from the interview of Russell Scibetti - initially a quiet guy working in IT services before he went back to school and earned his MBA in 2008. A dozen years later, he’s one of the most visible business intelligence experts in all of sports. From 2007 to 2014, he has worked for Arizona State Athletics, Comcast-Spectacor (Philadelphia Flyers) and the New York Jets to manage and implement CRM, database marketing, market research and other technology-based sales and marketing initiatives.
Q) How have you seen teams and leagues approach the shifting landscape of media and fans? Have they been adapting to the changes?
A) If you go back 10 years, it was pretty much - you sell your season tickets, your memberships, you sell your single-game tickets, your sponsorships, and you sell your suites. Media was tied up in these big overarching media deals, you definitely had your big sponsors, but everything was a lot simpler.
The thing now with the generational shifts and the decreasing attention spans and the focus on mobile and all these entertainment options and an interest in following athletes on social and streaming, just grabbing highlights, the whole on-demand economy.
"There’s so much fight for attention that the whole model needs to adjust to allow for flexibility in terms of consumer interests. Flexible consumption is the trend to follow."
That's the biggest thing happening right now, and that's taking shape in a lot of different ways. It handles the fragmentation in consumer behavior and gives more options for how you consume live events.
The fragmentations are there on digital content too. Think about how many platforms you need to produce content for now if you’re a professional sports team - Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Weibo. You need to tune that content for the different channels.
How do we monetize that content? Maybe it's through partners and integrating sponsorships into that content. Some teams are exploring their own OTT channels, their own direct-to-consumer subscription products, the leagues have been doing that for their different products.
"The best thing that teams have to their advantage is that they have the most valuable content in the world. Not just what happens on field, but everything about their athletes and their brands and everything that's happening behind the scenes is incredibly valuable and drives a ton of engagement."
An executive from the NHL the other day was talking about their most engaging social content. It isn't highlights, it's off-the-field stuff. It's all the fun, interpersonal things. So, these teams need to turn that into content factories and figure out the ways to manage these different channels, both from the production side as well as from the financial side.
To watch the complete interview, please click here