Hyperlocal Sports: Tapping Into Hometown Passion
by Matt on Feb 22, 2010 in Content, Guest Posts
(This is a guest post by David Brazeal. By day, as director of Learfield InterAction, David helps organizations figure out how social media fits into their marketing plans. By night, he produces RepublicTigerSports.com, a hyperlocal sports site focused on his hometown Republic Tigers in southwest Missouri.)
About six months ago, I decided to start a new hobby. I’ve always been a sports fan. I used to do a little sportscasting on a small radio station. And my Friday nights were free.
So I started a Wordpress website, RepublicTigerSports.com, to keep track of the local high school football team. I hoped to stream some play-by-play of the football games, get a few friends to listen, and maybe snag a sponsor or two.
But coaches and parents for every sport — football, softball, volleyball, etc. — jumped on the idea. They started sending me scores and stats and photos, even when I wasn’t at their games. They spread the word among their friends and relatives. Soon, people knew they could get up-to-the minute scores and in-depth game summaries from the website, instead of waiting until the next day or the next week.
I used my iPhone to record video, and uploaded highlights while the game was still happening. I posted quick status updates to Twitter. I over-delivered for what a community this size expects for its local sports media coverage. And the community embraced it.
I should say that there are lots of places to find information on high school sports in this area. The Springfield News-Leader covers all of southwest Missouri. The Republic Monitor has excellent weekly coverage (and their sports reporter has been great to work with). A recently launched website covers high school sports for al of southwest Missouri. And yet another sports reporter has started a site that is focused on the Central Ozark Conference, the league in which Republic competes.
But I think a few key ingredients differentiate RepublicTigerSports.com from those outlets.
1. Over-kill
Six months ago, the Republic Tigers got occasional coverage in the Springfield News-Leader, weekly coverage in the Republic Monitor, and sporadic mention on one of the local TV stations. Now, local fans can get real-time scores, video highlights, audio play-by-play, mobile phone updates, high-quality photos, and more. It seems ridiculous, really — but it’s not that hard to do, if you get creative with some free online tools.
2. Hyper-hyperlocal
Even the weekly Republic Monitor must cover sports in some nearby smaller towns. It’s the nature of the newspaper business that they need to sell copies in those other communities. I had the luxury of building an audience from scratch. If it doesn’t happen in Republic, I don’t cover it. If it’s not sports, I don’t cover it. Focusing so narrowly has helped me tap into the passion of the community in a way that a regional site can’t. And it opens the door for a great fit with local business sponsors, some of whom have already signed up.
3. Free stuff
I wanted to give something to the community, because this is my hometown. And because this is a hobby, I haven’t felt like I need to monetize every single thing. If I snap a good action shot, I post it to Flickr and tell the player’s parents how to download the full-size photo, put it on a thumb drive, and take it to Wal-Mart to print it. If I get a video or play-by-play highlight, I email it around. I’ve given stuff away at every opportunity.
4. Social media
On a lark, I started a Facebook fan page for the site and emailed a few friends. Within a few weeks, it had several hundred fans. Now, that number is around 1,000. In a town of 14,000, that’s not too shabby.
In fact, the Facebook page is now the primary place where people see and interact with the content. Interaction with my audience on Facebook is off the charts. I get way more feedback on the Facebook page than on the website itself. And Facebook allows me to deliver updates right into the news feeds of fans, instead of waiting for them to come to the website.
I don’t know where this site is headed. But less than a year in, it’s far more popular than I expected. And I built it with a Wordpress theme, an iPhone, a Facebook fan page, and a few free social media tools. I have a few generous sponsors who helped me buy a nice camera and pay for some bandwidth. And I’ll have enough left over for a gadget or two. All without really putting much effort into selling the site.
But the most important ingredient has been the passion of the community for local sports. Tapping into that community passion makes hyper-local sports a major opportunity for people who are willing to put in a little work and be creative.
If you have questions about how it’s worked in Republic, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at david@republictigersports.com.
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This just seems the direction things are goig. Local sports following is just another of the many niche’s where you’ll see what is most importan to people and more importantly, what they are passionate about. As for Facebook, I think this is moving to be a platform where people get recommendaions for things they used to Google.