Lance Armstrong, Web geek

There was his digital picture, posted on a Web site, indicating that he was scheduled to speak at the 2008 Omniture Summit, a conference in Utah focusing on Web analytics. There he was again, this time being quoted on Interwoven’s site on how the content management system company “has made an effort to make both team performance and individual achievement part of the Interwoven culture.”

So in his retirement, the former cyclist now wanted to rack up a string of Webby Awards?

It turns out that has Interwoven sponsored Lance’s team at the Tour de France and other events, and that Armstrong first spoke at one of Interwoven’s conferences in 2000. His official Web site is actually a group of brands: LanceArmstrong.com, ThePaceline.com (Lance’s team), The Lance Armstrong Foundation (his non-profit organization promoting cancer awareness) and Team Discovery Channel (which goes straight to the Web site of his team’s main sponsor).

Sadly, Sportsbiztech was unable to obtain an interview with the seven-time Tour de France champion himself; Katherine McLane, the Foundation’s communications director, did the honors instead. Interestingly, they skipped my question about the Interwoven partnership but provided these answers to the rest:

Sportsbiztech: I noticed that you were recently involved with Omniture at their Summit in March. Can you talk about the extent of your partnership?

McLane: Lance recently spoke at the Omniture Summit, where he shared his story of surviving cancer and the history behind the LIVESTRONG movement. He also invoked upon the audience the notion of active citizenship and encouraged everyone to bridge the gap in society between what we know and where we actually are.

How have your various Web sites — personal/official, Foundation, ThePaceline — changed or influenced the way you do business?

The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we [at the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF)] do business. Most of our communication with constituents is now done entirely via e-mail and the Internet so we are able to reach more people in a wider geographic scope. We have also increased connectivity/interaction with the public through our newsletters, blog and Facebook and MySpace applications. Additionally, the LAF’s Web site has affected our fundraising by making it easier for people to make donations and purchase merchandise.

Are there any particular Web sites that you like to use for research and information-gathering, or as resources to promote your Foundation and other work? (social networking, other Web 2.0 initiatives, etc.)

We primarily promote the LAF through our Web site, livestrong.org, and our blog, livestrongblog.org. As previously stated, we also utilize Facebook and MySpace to reach a wider range of people.

* * *

Although we’re disappointed that we didn’t hear from The Man himself, it’s great to see Lance and his Foundation branch out into a number of social networking initiatives. Here are the links to Lance’s official MySpace and Facebook pages (beware of the many imposters on both!):

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/lancearmstrongfoundation
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2407181412

Apr. 30 clarification: Edelman Public Relations wanted to clarify that the answers in the Q&A came from the LAF’s communications director, not themselves. This has been corrected above. Also, Edelman wanted to mention that the LAF is not involved with Interwoven, which is why that answer was omitted.

Sports strike out in search engines?

A couple of weeks ago, Hitwise – a firm that measures online usage and data (or “online competitive intelligence”) – released its figures for March searches in the United States. Not surprisingly, in a sample of 10 million users, Google came out on top of the four engines with 67.25 percent of searches that month, followed by Yahoo! (20.29 percent), MSN (6.65) and Ask.com (4.09).

But then the numbers for “category traffic” told an interesting tale. “Sports” is one of 172 different categories that Hitwise keeps track of, containing, at last count, 6,628 Web sites alone, according to Matt Tatham, the firm’s director of media relations. The percentage of category traffic from search engines for last month was just 12.93 percent, which was lower than categories like “Health and Medical” and “Shopping and Classified.” The Google numbers for the Sports category weren’t high either (for the full report, go to Hitwise’s Apr. 7 press release). Which begs the question: why?

“Search plays less of a role for the more popular sports like Football, Baseball and Basketball,” Tatham told Sportsbiztech. “We noticed that more of the outlier sports like Boxing, Soccer, Fishing, Track and Field, etc. are on average receiving more traffic from search engines year over year.”

In other words, if you’re a Yankees fan looking for the team’s official site, chances are that you pretty much already know which URL to go to without having to consult Google for help. Be afraid of the big brand. Be very afraid.

Cool trends in sports and technology

To see how profound an effect technology has had on sports and business, one needed to look no further than last week’s Sports Events Marketing Experience (SEME) East 2008 in Washington, D.C., where an entire panel was devoted to the subject. Titled “New Technologies: Impacting the way we view and market sports,” panelists Earl Patton, Jr. (sports marketer for Sony Electronics), George Assimakopoulos (founder of EyeTraffic Media) and Eric Herd (director of sales and business development for an online sports site that is so new, he couldn’t disclose the name quite yet) identified trends to watch for in sports business and technology. Here are a selected few:

• Interactive Voice Response (IVR): You’re probably already, unfortunately, acquainted with this thanks to automated voice messages whenever you call a customer service line. Thankfully there are positive uses to IVR, which provides answers to your voice responses, such as the MySportsPulse site that I mentioned in an entry last week. Assimakopoulos provided a non-sports example: 1.800.GOOG.411. Yes, Google has done it again, providing yet another free tool that will change your world, in this case, providing 411 services for free. The advantage for marketers is that they can link your cell phone number to targeted search results (although in my case, I don’t know how well that would work because I have a Virginia cell phone number in New York).

• An increasingly engaging experience at the stadium: Kangaroo TV (http://www.kangaroo.tv/) seems to be leading the way in this area, providing handheld devices that emit DirecTV signals to fans at events like NASCAR and Formula One races, and soon the NFL. Instant replay, real-time statistics and more are available through a handset that the fan can operate right at the event. So if a favorite driver or runner only crosses your path every lap, a fan can still track his or her progress (just don’t look at the handset too much or you’ll miss all the live action).

• Creative forums for social networking communities: Traditional fan sites are a thing of the past, with previously far-fetched ideas and campaigns now gaining steam online. One of these is NYCforLeBron.com, which collects money to buy LeBron James incentive gifts like Yankees season tickets in the hopes that he’ll join the New York Knicks in 2010 if he opts out of his contract with Cleveland. If he doesn’t join? He doesn’t get the loot, and all the money goes to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Another site is www.yooknew.com, a sports ticket stock market site developed by an MIT graduate that takes wagers on future match-ups with tickets serving as the prizes. The site resembles a large database, so the basic gist is this: Let’s say that that the Yankees will play the Cubs (I know, it won’t happen, but work with me here) in the 2011 World Series. If I put down $1 and I’m right, I can win a ticket to go to the 2011 World Series…for just $1. It’s an innovative take on what is referred to as the “secondary ticket market,” and it certainly beats some of the high prices on StubHub.com and similar sites.

Patton also compared sports to social networking, indicating that the success of combining both worlds was due to the fact that sports already provide a “pre-populated social network without technology,” making it that much easier for advertisers to determine which segments to target. How true this statement is. How many times have people immediately bonded upon learning that the person they just met is or isn’t a Red Sox fan?

What’s in a name?

At the recently-concluded Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in New York, I stopped by the kiosk for Dozier Internet Law and asked a couple of the lawyers there to tell me what some of the most pressing issues were concerning sports, technology and the law. They immediately said online identity theft, particularly when it came to reusing images and swiping names for URLs.

The latter sounded particularly appealing to investigate. Surely there have been some stories of crazed fans, crazed fans and even more crazed fans snapping up URLs not with the intention of building Web sites, but to eventually profit from a trademark that belongs to someone else by selling said URL to that same someone else. It’s a practice called “cybersquatting,” and for athletes and sports teams, the issue has lingered for years with varied results. Those seeking to reclaim the cyberspace that they think is rightfully theirs can initiate an arbitration proceeding under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy rather than file a lawsuit, which costs more and takes more time to process.

A look into the historical database of proceedings on the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Web site is pretty telling. Everyone and everything from celebrities to companies to movie titles to spelling variations (like deliberate typos) are listed here, complete with rulings. There are way too many sports examples to cite, but here are some from the WIPO database, while others that didn’t make it to proceedings are listed here anyway for sheer entertainment value. You be the judge:

Domain	What happened	Result
Danmarino.com	Dan Marino himself registered the domain but forgot to renew, so someone else snatched up the name.	WIPO ruled in 2000 that the domain be transferred back to Marino.
Giambi.com (last name of baseball players Jason and Jeremy Giambi)	The Giambis said that their surname alone was famous enough. The brothers also complained of being ripped off because they offered $500 for the URL but Tom Meagher, who registered it, wanted $12,000. (And you make HOW much?)	WIPO ruled in favor of Meagher, stating he bought the domain first, so he could do as he wished with it. (Also, neither of the brothers’ first names appeared in the URL, which reportedly may have played a role in the ruling.)
JaapStam.com	Oliver Cohen, then affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University, had been the one identified as the registrar when the complaint was filed in 2000.	WIPO ruled that the domain be transferred to the former Dutch international and Manchester United soccer player.
JacksonvilleJaguars.com	Rusty Rahe, who bought the domain, also purchased a number of other URLs containing the names of four other NFL teams in 1997. One of the reasons stated for doing so? He said “that his use of the Domain Names was for noncommercial education of his children Jordan (age 10) and Alexa (age 8).”	WIPO ruled that all URLs be transferred to their respective teams, then closed with the following: “The Presiding Panelist also encourages Respondent’s children Jordan and Alexa to continue using and learning about the Internet. Dispute resolution is a common and necessary part of using the Internet. The transfer of the Domain Names to Complainants should not discourage Jordan and Alexa from choosing other domain names unrelated to Complainants and participating in this wonderful, new world of information sharing.” Wow.
Marianorivera.com	SFX, which represents the Yankees reliever, wrote a letter to the Webmaster in July 2007. Unlike other cases, this isn’t a situation of cybersquatting – a fan actually does maintain this site, which appears to be devoid of ads.	Still pending. Mar. 25 update: The Webmaster wrote to Sportsbiztech to say that SFX had, in fact, sent the letter to him in error and that he could continue operating as usual.  Read more in the comments below…
Michaeljordan.org	Previously owned by the Progressive Universal Life Church, who let the domain expire in March 2004.	But did His Airness buy it? No. The current site is now a spam site with Jordan’s picture on it. Interestingly, .com and .net are not official sites either, as MJ opted for campaign-driven URLs provided by Nike.
Phoenixcoyotes.com	Firm who owned the URL offered to sell it to the pro hockey team for a six-digit amount. They refused to buy it.	When the URL expired, the Coyotes purchased it and it now redirects to coyotes.nhl.com.

Oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the database on the WIPO site at http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/cases.html.

News of the week

Sportsbiztech is back with the latest sites and gadgets to hit the cybersphere, saving you trips to the bar, trips to the library, trips to school and trips to your head:

This takes the “couch potato” tag to new levels: The first virtual world for sports fans, Sports Blox, features online bars among other social networking goodies. Who needs to watch sports in a real bar where Yankees and Red Sox fans can’t co-exist in harmony anyway? [www.sportsblox.com]

Sports Illustrated launches “SI Vault,” an incredible online resource spanning the history of sports dating back to magazine’s founding in 1954. Videos, blogs, shared content with other sites like Wikipedia and eBay, 150,000 articles, 2,800 cover images and half a million photos await, although just how comprehensive it really is remains to be seen. For example, a search for “Michael Chang” somehow resulted in zero (!) photos which is a bit difficult to believe given the length of his career. However, his name brings up more than 100 videos pulled from MSN, YouTube and other sources, ranging from his recent Tennis Hall of Fame announcement to his incredible 1989 French Open victory. [vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com]

My dad has a knack for pitching ideas that come to fruition years after the fact. When I was a kid, he said that teachers should find engaging, tangible ways to educate kids about math through the use of sports statistics. But I don’t think he would have guessed that mobile devices would serve as the messenger. The University of Central Florida has developed My Sports Pulse, a service to help K-12 students become engaged math, science and technology through sports-related questions delivered through interactive voice response, text and video messages. The university worked with a number of partners, including professional teams in Orlando and Kansas City, to get the product off the ground, and the Florida Virtual School was just announced as one of the first clients. [www.mysportspulse.com]

The Arena Football League has incorporated a number of interesting changes this season, the most intriguing being the “Shockometer” device developed by Schutt Sports. Attached to a player’s helmet, the device switches from green to red if a player receives a particularly hard hit, signaling doctors to take a look for particularly worrying head injuries like concussions. [San Jose Mercury News]