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Forget Apps: ScoreTRAX Scores with SMS

March 26, 2012 by

In a world where everyone seems to be developing or using mobile-phone apps, a company called ScoreTRAX is betting that there is a big business providing sports fans with scores and updates via the simplest of technologies: text messages.

Instead of streaming video or interactive 3D, the Raleigh, N.C.-based ScoreTRAX gives schools and teams a simple way to send scores, messages and other information to fans via text messages, otherwise known as SMS (for Short Message Service), which is available on just about every cell phone, including cheaper feature phones. According to founder Mark Janas, SMS is a perfect way to provide exposure to “a whole group of sports teams that are underserved,” including high school teams, youth leagues, small colleges and even minor-league operations.

Entering its second full year of operation, ScoreTRAX is looking to push past its initial-season base of 50,000 subscriptions with the goal of having an audience of 1 million ScoreTRAX subscribers. To get there, Janas and his company need to find schools or teams who are looking for a way to simply keep fans abreast of what’s going on in bursts of 160 characters or less — with plans that call for little or in some cases no up-front spending by the teams.

The business model for ScoreTRAX is as simple as a text: Teams or schools sign up for the ScoreTRAX service, which provides templates for inputting scores and for sending messages. ScoreTRAX can also be used to set up an online portal, and to send the scores and messages to Facebook and Twitter. Fans then sign up for the teams they want to follow, a process that can all be done with text messages.

ScoreTRAX makes money by inserting national advertisements into the message stream, and teams can become revenue partners by opting to sell ads themselves. The service is free if a team doesn’t want to sell ads itself; there is also a $50 a month option for a mix of national ads and team-sold ads, and a $100 per month option for no national ads and unlimited ads sold by the team.

And though it’s not sexy or 3D, SMS does work when it comes to engaging fans, Janas said. “People read their text messages,” he said.

Next: The power of SMS

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Filed Under: Apps, Facebook, High School Football, Live sports via mobile, SMS, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

ESPN Adds Twitter, Facebook ‘Share’ Buttons to In-House Commenting

March 22, 2012 by

For a long time, we’ve wondered how ESPN was going to resolve the two different social worlds it was playing in — the comments on its own posts and games from “registered” ESPN users, and the Tweets and Facebook comments it used to add fan commentary to its shows, columns and more.

The answer? We just noticed in our ESPN bracket that if you comment in a group, you now have the option to “share” that comment to Twitter or Facebook. See the screen grab to the left:

When you Tweet it appends code showing the comment came from ESPNFantasy, which is a great way for ESPN to get people to play games on their site. Now all we need to complete the circle is the ability to “sign in” on ESPN with our Twitter handles so we don’t have to have all these logins.

Make it so, Worldwide Leader. Make it so.

UPDATE: According to the great folks on the ESPN PR team, Facebook and Twitter share have been a part of the site for almost two years now. But I would swear that I haven’t seen them integrated into the comments system, like they are for the fantasy games and now even in the regular story comments, like the one I just grabbed below. Anyone else notice these things before? Since I am not a “regular” ESPN commenter maybe I’ve just missed them.

UPDATE II: I think I am right and these things were added recently. If you look at the screen shot we took of the ESPN site when the whole “Greater than Tebow” thing erupted on their comments pages, you can see that the tools that are available now for sharing weren’t there last fall. So this has to be a recent, and much welcome, addition. Looking for the day that the whole ESPN and other-site registration thing goes away… we don’t need a personality for every site.

UPDATE III: According to ESPN, the new sharing buttons were just added this week. We stand by our story! 🙂

Filed Under: ESPN, Facebook, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

PlayUp Releases Version 2.0 of Fan-Interaction App

March 22, 2012 by

PlayUp has released version 2.0 of its fan-based social networking app, with improved navigation and “Live Now” scoreboards for individual sports.

PlayUp, which has signed several exclusive deals with college conferences and schools this year and also hosted NFL players for exclusive online chats during the Super Bowl, said the new features available immediately include:

— The ability to choose your favorite leagues to easily see live scores, stats and hangouts for the sports you care about most
— “Live Now” scoreboards by individual sports
— An enhanced interface with bigger and brighter graphics
— Improved navigation and user experience including faster load times, better calendars, and quicker access to live updates
— Enhanced Facebook and Twitter integration
— The ability to receive notification alerts when fans add you as a friend or when you are invited to a game
— The ability to message easily across multiple rooms with “Recent Hangouts” for the latest action you and your friends have been following

Screen shots of the new version of the app are below. Click here to download the PlayUp app.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Facebook, PlayUp, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

Warriors Fans Keep Booing — Online

March 21, 2012 by

After letting their displeasure be heard Monday night, fans of the Golden State Warriors are reverberating their booing online, filling up comments sections on the team’s Facebook page as well as on newspaper websites.

If you didn’t hear the news, Warriors fans disrupted a ceremony meant to honor former star Chris Mullin by booing loud and long when new owner Joe Lacob took over the microphone. Whether or not the fans were expressing anger over the Warriors’ recent trade of star player Monta Ellis, or over the team’s flirtation with moving to San Francisco, or with years of terrible front-office moves, is still open for debate. And that debate is healthy and ongoing, both on the Warriors’ Facebook page as well as on the San Francisco Chronicle website.

While some fans on both sites are expressing dismay for the negative outpour at Mullin’s jersey-retirement ceremony, many others are taking umbrage at Chronicle columnist Bruce Jenkins, whose column Wednesday was headlined “Fans’ faux pas might not be all about Ellis” and started off with a line that said “It was inexcusably rude for the Warriors’ fans to ruin Chris Mullin’s halftime ceremony with such relentless booing.”

As commenter Galacticmule said, “Bruce, if you’ve been abused as much as Warrior fans have been for the past 35 years, would you be courteous? Instead of being up in arms about booing, how about listening to the message behind the boos? This is the most fiercely loyal fan base in the league. And the only thing you can take away from fans, FINALLY, fighting back is that they are rude? Where have you been, man, where have you been?” As of 11 a.m. Pacific Time the post had 68 comments, with no signs of slowing down soon.

Over on the team’s Facebook page there is the usual you-suck type of comment battles but there is also some evidence of longtime fans continuing to vent their wrath at a new ownership that isn’t living up to its boastful promises. A post with Chris Mullin highlights has 233 comments and another post about Monday’s game has 402 comments, many of which are about the booing.

So far, the team doesn’t seem to be doing any editing or censoring of bad news or profane comments, but is instead letting its fans — who have filled Oracle Arena for years even though the team is a perennial dud — have their say. We’ve highlighted how the Warriors have used social media well to promote feel-good things like fan shootarounds and access to interviews with the players. Let’s see if Golden State can use social media to turn the tide of emotion now swelling against the ownership.

Filed Under: Facebook, NBA, Sports Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

MLS embracing Social Media

March 12, 2012 by

Major League Soccer has kicked off its season last weekend with it its new broadcasting deal with partner NBC. You might have missed the broadcasts because it seems that people are missing NBC Sports a good deal these days leading to very bad ratings.

NBC’s woes might not go away soon due to the fact that the MLS has not yet broken through as a ratings driver. Its troubles in this area are varied, and it has at different times come under fire for everything from when it starts to its trading window. A good look at some of the issues can be found in these transcripts from Eric Wynalda.

Yet if you attend a match the energy is great. Fans are knowledgeable and attendance is growing. So what more can be done? Well using social media and other tools to keep the sport in front of fans is one step, and one that the league is taking.

It conducted a Twitter-based contest last weekend called #FirstKick for fans attending their teams opening match. The rules were pretty simply and any fan with access to Twitter that attended a match could participate. All you needed to do was tweet a photo of you or your friends from a match to win.

The tweet needed a @MLS twitter handle; it needed the #FirstKisk hashtag, proof that you were actually at the game in the photos such as stadium, player, promo or sign visible in your photo and last a link to your photo available on public domain, ex. Twitpic, Lockerz, Yfrog, Photobucket, Flickr, etc.

Submissions were accepted from Saturday, March 10 at 6 PM EST and ends on Monday, March 12 at 11:59 PM EST, so there is still time to send your photo in! There will be a winner draw at random for each day.

Fans that are traveling, or have games that are not broadcast can watch the action via MLS Live, which the league has revamped for the current season. The program, which does have blackout rules, allows fans to watch games via computer, iPad or iPhone, Roku and can be integrated with Apple TV for broadcast as well. Cost for a season is $59.99 and the free preview unfortunately ends on March 12.

The league has the obligatory Facebook page that also has the ability to keep fans in touch with what is going on in games and the league as a whole. I was surprised to find two friends that I did not know were fans not only subscribed to the page but also wrote about the sport in blogs and posts elsewhere. I guess when you have 325,000 likes that is inevitable (the league not me). I did not check Myspace.

I feel that the aggressive use of outlets such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as revamping and increasing its online presence is vital to the success of MLS. The league has a number of soccer only stadiums that show off its product very well. But it is obvious that television alone will not get the message out.

Even as sports powerhouses Fox Sports and ESPN continue to turn up the presence of soccer in their sports programming, MLS often seems to be missing in the mix. Fox captured the World Cup broadcasts in 2018 and 2022 and has increased its broadcasting of soccer matches, just not US MLS. ESPN, after losing the World Cup to Fox has still increased its broadcasting and online efforts with things such as broadcasting the UEFA European Championships and upgrading its online presence.

MLS has been expanding and has seen strong attendance in the new towns like Portland where its games last season were sold out. However television viewership has been flat and this does not bode well for the sport. According to the Big Lead last weekend, MLS averaged 291,000 viewers on ESPN and ESPN2 last season and 70,000 viewers on FOX Soccer. That is just sad.

The league, which is kicking off its 17th season, does not have to worry about out of control salaries for players due to a hard cap, but this is a disadvantage because it will be hard to lure top talent from around the world or to keep talent that hears the siren call of a big payday. Glowing television viewership can change that, but it will take all of its tools, on-line, mobile and broadcast, to achieve this dream.

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, Facebook, Fox Sports, FoxSoccer, Live sports via mobile, MLS, NBC Sports, Soccer, Social Media, The Big Lead Tagged With: , , , ,

CBS and Lowe’s Team for March Madness Cube Contest

March 9, 2012 by

Do you have one of those so-called Super Fans in your office? You know the type- they always come in with a hangdog expression when their team loses a game. Some are one sports fans but most almost always include support for the NCAA March Madness Tournament.

Now all of their years adding team pennants, photos of their favorite coaches and pinning up headlines from newspapers talking about epic wins can pay off due to an event from CBSSports.com and Lowe’s.

They have launched an event called March Madness Cube Mania for the 2012 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship that rewards a few select fans with the most rabid cubicle. The event runs from now until March 25th and calls for fans to decorate their cubes with their favorite teams’ colors and logos.

Once the decorations are finished all a fan has to do is take a tasteful photo of the cube and post it at the CBS Sports page on Facebook (Facebook/CBSSports).

In addition fans are encourage to share the images over social media such as Facebook and Twitter and to try and get their friends to vote. It would be good to ensure your friends are rooting for your teams first — or at least open to bribes.

The images will be sorted in a variety of manners including by most popular, teams represented and participating companies. After the closing day for submitting photos, March 25th, the polls open and will remain open from March 26 to March 30, 2012.

Three winners will be selected by a combination of public votes, and judging by the Social Media department at CBSSports.com based on originality and creativity. Grand prize winner’s photo will be announced on March 31, 2012 during The Final Four Show on CBS and receive a $300 gift card to Lowe’s. Two secondary winners will receive $150 Lowe’s gift cards.

In addition the grand prize winning photo will be announced on CBS during The Final Four Show prior to the Men’s Final Four semifinal games on March 31, 2012 so your efforts will receive a brief national note. So as they used to say in Chicago ‘Vote early and vote often!’

Filed Under: CBS Sports, Facebook, NCAA Hoops Tagged With: , ,
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