The football off-season used to be a time for coaches to whip flabby linebackers into shape, draft promising college grads, and diagram new plays. No more. Now, the barren months between last season's Super Bowl and this year's opening kick-off belong to the webmasters. It's time to firm up the Java, beef up the CGI, and digitize the video in preparation for the new season, which gets under way Sunday.
Why the emphasis on flashy, high-gloss Web sites for a sport that centers on cracking heads and crushing bones? Just like a star quarterback negotiating a new contract, it's all about money. Individual teams are beginning to realize that their Web sites, if heavily trafficked, can provide new opportunities for high-priced sponsorships. And the National Football League, which runs NFL.com, sees the Web as a tool to cultivate younger viewers as it competes with professional basketball for the hearts and minds of America's couch potatoes.
"Football teams didn't see the Web as a revenue generator initially, but they do now," says Dan Migala, the associate editor of Team Marketing Report, a sports marketing newsletter. "It's like in the '80s when they first started selling signage in the stadium. It's a major shift."
This shift shows up in a number of ways. First, more teams - 12 out of 30 - are creating stand-alone sites. "Teams can't get sponsorship revenue if the NFL does their site," said Migala. "That's why the Dolphins and the Patriots and the Packers are producing their own sites."
Secondly, teams that strike out on their own need to build traffic to attract sponsors. Shockwave trading cards, player chats, and voting opportunities have become standard fare. The Patriots went so far as to include a 10-minute "Cyber Sideline" video round-up along with constant updates for stats-hungry fans.
"People won't come back if it's not updated," says Rhett Ticconi, who runs the Dolphins' site, where the team's 500-page media guide is available to one and all. The Dolphins' site counts Compaq, First Union Bank, and Norwegian Cruise Lines among its sponsors.
And teams promote their Web presences. When the Jacksonville Jaguars debuted their site last season, they presented a laser show at a pre-season game, complete with the URL spelled out on a giant video screen. The Patriots hang banners in the end zones, and the Dolphins advertise their site in the game-day program.
The goal is to turn the Web site into a marketable venue for sponsors, just like scoreboards, soda cups, and blimps. "We want to have another piece of inventory that sponsors can use to promote their products," says Fred Kirsch, who produces Cyber Sideline. Sponsors on the Pats' homepage include McDonald's, Sprint, and NEC Computers - and Kirsch says that's just the start.
Ticket and merchandise sales are going digital too. The Patriots offer an online discount for team sweatshirts; the Dolphins' site links fans to Ticketmaster to secure seats at the game, and the Jaguars have experimented with selling four-game ticket packages on the Web. "We're seeing ticketing and merchandising slowly but surely increasing," says Migala. "They're still fighting the perception that it's unsafe to send your credit card over the Net."
At the NFL's flagship NFL.com site, the perception being battled is a different one: that football is less cool than basketball. In addition to twice-weekly video programming, the site has introduced "Play Football", an area geared toward children who worship Michael Jordan but couldn't pick Brett Favre out of a line-up.
At the same time, the league is aggressively protecting its intellectual property online. Before a recent preseason game, for instance, the Jaguars required photographers from the Jacksonville Times-Union to pledge that none of their shots would appear on the paper's Web site. The Jaguars and the NFL argued that visitors to the site could have mistaken it for the team's official Web outpost. But, the paper protested, and the league backed down.
"It's important for us to strike a balance between encouraging newspapers in reporting on the NFL on one hand, and on the other hand protecting our legitimate business interests," said Ann Kirschner, vice president of NFL Interactive.
As the NFL considers intellectual property in cyberspace, individual franchises are more interested in turning a profit in the short-term. Migala of Team Marketing Report says the teams that haven't set up sites and signed up sponsors will be watching those who are. "It's going to be a trial by fire," he says. "What we're seeing is that some teams are ahead of the game, and some are still on the sidelines."
