Minor Sports in Emerging Media

FACULTE DES SCIENCES DU SPORT, UNIVERSITE DE POITIERS, FRANCE

EXECUTIVE MASTERS IN SPORTS ORGANISATION MANAGEMENT MASTER EXECUTIF EN MANAGEMENT DES ORGANISATIONS SPORTIVES

MEMOS XII Sept. 2008-Sept. 2009

Strategy to Enhance Sports Exposure in Portugal

João Querido Manha PROJECT TUTOR – Luc Vandeputte

July 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 – Introduction ...... 3 2 – Methodology ...... 5 3 – Literature Review ...... 8 The Communication Process of Sport Information ...... 8 The Impact of Media and Technology ...... 8 Brand Equity ...... 9 Minor Sports ...... 11 The Long Tail Theory...... 12 Niche Culture ...... 13 Communication in Sport – Media opportunities ...... 14 Social Networks ...... 16 Web 2.0 ...... 17 Social Media ...... 18 4 – Data Collection ...... 21 Mapping the Stakeholders ...... 21 The Portuguese Sport – History & Tradition ...... 22 The Portuguese Sport – Communication systems ...... 24 The Portuguese Media and Sports Coverage ...... 28 Social Networks applications ...... 32 New Media Awareness ...... 34 5 – Focus Group ...... 37 6 – Survey ...... 40 Olympic Image in Portugal …………………………………………………… 42 7 – Strategy ...... 44 Build a Personal Brand ...... 44 Network Journalism ...... 45 How to Implement Solid communication ...... 46 8 – Action Plan ...... 47 Strategy - Short Term ……………………………………………………………. 48 Strategy- Long Term …………………………………………………………..… 48 Communication Model ..………………….……………………………………... 50 Model ……………………………………………………………………………. 50 Human Resources ……………………………………………………………….. 50 Budgeting ……………………………………………………………………….. 51 Enhancing Sports Exposure in Emerging Media ………………………………… 53

Appendices

References

1 – Introduction During 30 years as a journalist, including a five year phase as Communications Manager on Portuguese Olympic Committee, frequently heard complains and remarks of athletes, coaches and officials from Olympic individual Sports regarding the lack of exposure on Media and the excessive attention given to Football clubs and players. The key argument was the technical comparison between Football and those so-called Minor Sports, which manage to obtain further better results and classifications on Major competitions, like World and European Championships or the Olympic Games.

In the opening day of 2004 Athens Games, when rider Sergio Paulinho won the silver medal in the Road Race, two out of three national «sports newspapers» have dedicate more space and bigger headlines to a friendly pre-season match of top football club Benfica. The front page picture instead of gold medalist was a young player who scored one goal in that match. Five years later, his name is barely remembered and plays in a Minor League while Paulinho rides at Tour de France teaming Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador. This short story shows the gap that Minor Sports people had to fulfill willing to conquer some space in Media.

The question is: how to do it?

Technological advancements during the past two decades have made it easy to deliver larger audiences and great exposure to sports organizations and sport personalities. Technology has improved the speed of delivery as well as the range and may blur the lines distinguishing the traditional forms of the Media and to change the working relationship with sports organizations.

In the book «Media, Sports and Society», Lawrence A. Wenner, professor of Mass Communication at the University of San Francisco, emphasizes the transactions between key elements of the exchanging process, alerting for the role of the sports organizations in order to exercise influence on the structure, popularity and character of sport, through the relationship with Media. Wenner sees

 A symbiotic relationship between Media industries and Sport Organizations, each one needing the other to create a large marketplace.

 Mass Media organizations profit with the distribution of contents and entertainment, and the Sports Organizations benefit from publicity and exposure.

Newspapers power depended on the control of production tools, but in the last decade news started to pop-up in screens and not only on printed paper anymore. Suddenly, any person with a computer and an internet connection could have the same power of a big news company.

With the launching of personal pages and blogs became less and less clear the distinction between professional and amateur journalism – as in each self interest area the bloggers are better informed than journalists and quicker. In many cases, as in- participants, they have better access to information than reporters: think about an athlete blogging directly from the locker-room where reporters are not allowed.

This possibility urged the International Olympic Committee to forbidden blogging from Beijing Olympic Village, where accredited journalists only could enter by invitation of Chef de Mission during day light, to protect sponsors rights and limit the possibilities of ambush marketing involving athletes of officials fueled by companies rivals of IOC official partners, but one year later IOC stepped back surrended to the power of social media and blogging.

However, to Minor Sports this kind of divulgation means are crucial. Judge Professor Richard Posner expressed in a literary revue in New York Times that a blogger is able to reach a public segment much more exclusive than newspapers or television ever could think of and almost absolutely free. Social networks (like blogs) steel the readers one by one exactly for being a niche while traditional Media are mass. And despite the danger of mistakes and hoaxes, blogs and social networks are self correcting and have the ability of filter spam and abusers with much more efficiency and accuracy than traditional media, at electronic speed.

Each person is a reporter and the whole network functions as a sole company, like a global news agency, with millions of reporters, specialized and costless. No conventional media can beat this, otherwise considering that the endless virtual and digital world may carry so much more information than any Media, like comedian Jerry Seinfeld once noted: «it’s amazing how a so huge quantity of events happening all over the world can all fit in daily newspaper».

It can’t on a newspaper, but it can in the Web. 2 – Methodology The space for the answer to address to Minor Sports people who seek for more Media exposure was not totally blank when this study was proposed in September 2008. The solution was on Internet, but the final strategy was found on the deep research that revealed the growing potential of Web 2.0 and Social Media.

The strategic and performance cycle from Analysis to Control was followed, passing through the Vision of the objectives and the Action Plan (Chapellet & Bayle, 2005). Internal and external analysis of the problem and of possible solutions made possible to draw clear goals within the Vision and the Mission for an improving service of new Media tools. They can provide fair coverage and exposure for Minor sports athletes and organizations.

The Literature Review led to the Analysis GRAPHIC 1: Strategic and of Sport Communication theories, Sports Performance Management Cycle and Media Relations, the impact of Media and Technologies, the development of Marketing and Media promotion theories, one of them, the new Long Tail theory [page 12], fitting the Portuguese Sports hierarchy, in results, number of athletes or visibility in the Media.

Kotler & Keller (2009)1 suggest that the image and the success depends on brand equity and the building of athletes name and visibility as a brand is essential for increasing its awareness in a very competitive market as sports, which gives so many options to potential consumers.

Despite the empiric knowledge and the persistent complains heard to athletes and Minor Sports people, is important to analyze the actual significance of them to the Media. To measure it the number of news published by sport and by month during the year of 2008 was counted, using two representative Media, the national news agency («Lusa») and the largest circulating sports newspaper («Record»). This research was never done before in Portugal but the results reflect the common knowledge of lack of exposure.

1 Authors «of Marketing Management», now in 13th Edition. Philip Kotler is one world’s foremost experts on strategic marketing, Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management of Nordwestern University in Chicago. Kevin Lane Keller is a Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College acknowledged as an international leader in the study of brands.

This deductive research was complemented with an online Survey on Sports and Media members which confirmed the availability for the solutions proposed by the Inductive research: Social Networks [page 17] and Web 2.0 [page 18] usage on behalf of Sports exposure and new markets.

The inductive benchmarking and cases study comprehended previous Sports Federations communication experiences, like the International Triathlon Union and the Portuguese Rugby Federation. They both used pushing tools to increase the media exposure, triathlon spreading worldwide through the established community and rugby buying space in Media to broader expose the quality growth of national team.

The Portuguese rugby case shows the danger of artificiality when sudden overexposure (pushed by sponsors and economic power) doesn’t reflects the actual team’s sports level. The references learn on a workshop with United States Olympic Public Relations Association in 2006 especially about crisis management are helpful to keep in mind that takes ten years to build a reputation, but just ten seconds to ruin it.

The solution is to be consistent with the dissemination of information, using every communications tool available.

The Working Group «The New Ways of Communication» of European Olympic Committees recommendations for Internet Website of NOC, before 2000 Sydney Olympics, already underlined that «secret is interactivity». By that time the tolls were

 Using e-mail to alert the audience

 Registering on top ten search engines

 Developing relationships with complementary Websites that could co-link.

Years before Web 2.0 and Social Network, the principle already was to be interactive, but not many S.O. succeeded, maybe because they were not ready for so profound changes.

Simultaneously with the research and the study for setting up an Action Plan, the boost evolution of the Social Networks as Media tools, in the world and in Portugal, increased the growing of internet as social aggregating mean.

Many international top athletes have begun to use these tools in the past twelve months, most of them already in 2009, enlarging exponentially the range and the frequency of their exposure. These examples show that this strategy can be adopted by top Portuguese athletes missing the Media and fans follow-up.

The theoretical search led through Media Management frequent strategies, despite the beta (on-going) process of New Media evolution being a new discover, not yet sufficiently experimented, in what regards the professional communications systems. The inductive research included Focus Group representative of the main communities, whom this question addresses to, confirming that they generally think that the solution depends on Internet, despite not being sure and totally aware of the best tools to be used. The model adopted to develop the Strategic Action Plan was Kotler & Andreasen’s as presented in Chappellet & Bayle (2005, p.8).

3 – Literature Review

The Communication Process of Sport Information On «Media Relations in Sport»2: «The Mass Communication involves a process through which the Media delivers written, audio and visual messages to a large audience, an audience diverse, invisible and many times unknown, generating a very slow process of feedback. Differently, the interpersonal communication is a one-to-one process which eases to identification of the communicators and clarify any misunderstanding. Group communications among individuals, within organizations, and between organizations also make possible to both parties to clarify very quickly any misinterpretation, regardless the means of communication: speeches, audiovisual presentations, letters, reports, Internet. In contrary, it’s very difficult and hard to analyze, using sophisticated tools, the effectiveness and impact of mass communication. Researchers agree that the large volume of information created, reproduced and disseminated by the mass media daily contributes to the way people make sense of their immediate surroundings and the world in general».

Wenner identifies the key questions regarding the process, function and influence of sport communication: the nature of the relationship, the meaning of sport contest for the audience and how much power media and sports organizations handle in determining how audience members consume and interpret the sport.

The decision of making and producing news is a prerogative of the Media and the content results of an individual approach. So is very important, perhaps decisive, the way Sports Organizations provide the elements that may or may not influence so much the audience.

If Media can dictate, in many respects, how the audience understands the game and the realities of sport, even if the interpretation is inaccurate, the Sports Organization must be in position to better determine what information to emphasize to the Media. For instance, frequent coverage elevates the credibility of an athlete. A working knowledge of media practices and mass communication may provide direction on how to take a low-profile sport and boost its media coverage.

The Impact of Media and Technology The new technology has made possible to a sport organization communicate directly with corporations, fans and media electronically, thus eliminating the media’s translation of the message. By creating their own websites, sports organizations began to deliver information directly to the sporting public; consequently, the sport organization dependence on the traditional media for visibility began to decrease. It started with the static internet (Web 1.0) and can be improved with the social networks on the Web 2.0 age.

2 «Media Relations in Sport», of Sport Management Library, is described by its authors (Williams Nichols, Patrick Moynahan, Allan Hall and Janis Taylor) as providing understanding of the formalized working relationships between the mass media and sport organizations. Even if no one can predict the death of traditional media, it is now sure that in the 21st Century any single person with a computer (or a simple cellular phone) and an online connection can instantaneously enter in what Brian S. Brooks3 anticipated in 1997 as «an entirely new form of communication», thanks to three unique assets (linking, layering and research), the World Wide Web – which applications provide to users a direct access to information content without passing through the media interpretation.

«Media Relations in Sports» authors also predicted that new technologies make sports organizations and Media equal partners in the delivery of information. Sports organizations keep communicating to Media, using the traditional tools (releases, press conferences, media guides and so on), but can utilize the Web as a new outlet for dissemination of information, a complementary link to both media and sports audiences, increasing the word-of-mouth strategy for further interactivity and enhancing the marketing efforts.

The essential elements of a good communication remain the same, despite all the advances:

TABLE 1 – GOOD COMMUNICATION

ELEMENTS GOALS

 Words  Attracting traffic on behalf of sports organization’s (or  Sounds athlete’s)

 Pictures  Communication

 State of the art Editing  More exposure

 Updated Stats  More Interactivity

 Schedules  Direct connection with the audience.  Quotes

Brand Equity The American Marketing Association4 defines a brand as «a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors». So a brand is a product or service that can differentiate from others under the form of a

3 Brian S. Brooks associate dean of the Journalism School of University of Missouri.

4 AMA definition is quoted by both Ferrand & Torrigiani’s «Marketing of Olympic Sport Organizations» and Kotler&Keller’s «Marketing Management» (p.276).

distinctive designation, usually called «mark». The earliest signs of brands in Europe were medieval guilds’ requirement that craftspeople put trademark their products to protect themselves and the costumers against inferior quality or forgery. Later the big artists, painters, began to sign their fine arts with the same purpose.

Brands identify the source of a marker allowing the costumers a ready and easy identification and stimulate the long-term relationship normally based on trust and recognition. The identity between a brand and its followers is difficult to measure sometimes, but is based in a profound loyalty that Kapferer (1998) drew up a list of functions, quoted in «Marketing of O.S.O. » by Ferrand & Torrigiani, applied to a Sports Organization profile.

TABLE 2 – BUILDING BRAND EQUITY

VALUES STAGES OBJECTIVES

Situating Identify the target audience Audience identification with the sport

Practicality Determine the Long-term outlook compromising communications objectives with success

Guarantee Design the communications Stable results and positive overall image

Optimization Select the communications Frequent occasions for exposure channels

Personalization Establish the budget Hero-like character building

Permanence Decide on the Familiarity, devotion and communications mix interactivity

Hedonism Measure the results Pleasure and satisfaction with proximity

Ethics Manage the communications Special ecological relationship process

Marketers can apply brand virtually anywhere, like a car (physical good), a bank (service), a supermarket (store), Algarve (place), IOC (organization), freedom of speech (idea) or a tennis player like Andre Agassi (person).

 An athlete, like any performing artist, can build a very successful brand

The image of Sport Organizations creates value. Its qualities corresponding to the core of its brand equity must be communicated in order to establish an advantage in a narrow spectrum of visibility. Ferrand & Torrigiani suggest three important steps to select the relevant image dimensions: 1. Diagnostics relating to the image – how is the sport organization (or athlete) perceived at present?

2. Definition of identity – how does the sport organization wish to be perceived?

3. Choice of positioning – part of the identity of the sport organization that must be communicated actively and that reveals a competitive advantage compared with its rivals.

The crafting of a brand positioning relies on developing and communicating a Positioning Strategy on the short-term, like a «breakaway brand», and its development on the long-term. It starts with an impact campaign, taking some controlled risks to increase the audience curiosity, and rapidly build a differentiation.

Minor Sports From athletes’ point of view, there are no minor Sports, as hard work, dedication and expenditure of time and talent are just the same of any «major sport». The difference, a huge gap in most cases, lies on Media exposure and in what way journalists dedicate space and time to do them justice.

The authors of «Media Relations in Sport» underline the decisive influence of Media on the success or the collapse of each Sport: « Those sports receiving consistent coverage by cable, broadcasting and newspapers fit into a class of high-profile sports. Those sports not receiving extensive coverage fall into a group of low-profile sports. »

Media exposure reflects on public audience, sponsors attraction and participants’ number: when all these levels are grounded, the Sport is definitely minor.

Much of this discrimination towards athletes and sports that don’t get the recognition they deserve is due to unaware rules and details of most of the sports that are not universally embraced, by writers and editors that really condition the public opinion the audiences’ preferences.

The challenge for Minor Sports communication strategy is how to overcome this handicap, when major media relegate them and women’s sports to marginal slots on the end of the broadcasts or in short footnotes on football driven newspapers. Many fantastic stories and great effort achievements are never told or absolutely out of the mainstream.

The Long Tail Theory The Long Tail Theory is a niche strategy of business that consists in selling large number of unique items in relatively small quantities, revealed for the first time in an article by Chris Anderson5 on Wired magazine, in October 2004. After that he wrote his theory on the best-selling book «The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More». However, the concept was drawn in part from a previous essay by Clay Shirky6, «Power Law, Weblogs and Inequality».

Thanks to the Internet the Long Tail Theory applies to sport exposure expansion, as Minor Sports break through Major Media black-out to reach their niche audience in a regular and consistent feed. From The Long Tail – Wired Blogs

Coverage of a table tennis or badminton competition is too much expensive to regular Media considering the little audience they attract, but if there is a way of providing it on a regular basis the sum of all those little niches would raise the global audience of the Media. And that can be ensured by self-broadcasting from athletes and coaches through widgets, even providing photos and video streaming to the Major Media websites when permitted by the rights owners – that are free on most of cases of those Minor Sports events.

«We often think of the Long Tail as a force of fragmentation, but it can be a force of unification for the already-fragmented», Anderson expressed on his blog, when reflecting about the diasporas of not so popular sports in the United States, like Cricket, Soccer or Sumo, managing to reach their niche audiences in the immigrant communities.

In 2008, Beijing Games where presented by Microsoft and NBC as the first «Long Tail Olympics» after an agreement that made possible on-demand internet broadcast through nbcolympics.com on MSN, delivering more than 3,000 hours of content that anybody would access otherwise.

5 Chris Anderson is the Editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and a blogger in www.thelongtail.com

6 Clay Shirky is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of the Internet technologies, who teaches New Media at the New York University. Niche Culture

Niche market is described by Tim Hindle in «Management Ideas and Gurus» as a small group of costumers who share a characteristic that makes them receptive to a particular product or service.

Launching a product into a niche market is far cheaper than launching a mass market product – and the Internet has features that make it ideal for niche marketing.

The niche culture is reflected in the changes of Media industry. Chris Anderson notes that news were the first segment to really feel the impact of Internet, existing now a whole generation growing up with the expectation of having news on-demand, regarding any issue at any time and for free. This is being tragic for traditional Media business, with newspapers circulation declining about one third TABLE 3 – BROADBAND on last twenty years, confirming the PENETRATION RATE demolishing effect of the Long Tail on industry establishment. Broadband penetration rate in Portugal is People want to see and to read what 14,5 per cent, lower than more developed they are interested in. Regarding to E.C. countries, due to technological and Sports, is common sense that Media economic reasons. It is expected to reach lost audience because the public is 50% of the market by 2010. not being served of what they seek for and are transferring to side Danemark 37,2 % offers, mainly in the internet. Netherlands 33,1 % If mainstream TV only shows football matches all weekend long, Germany 16,3 % some of them meaningless to the Spain 14,7 % main audience, anyone who cares for table tennis or badminton would Portugal 14,5 % spontaneously divert to any channel able to provide him the favorite Italy 13,9 % sport. United Kingdom 11 % With the broadband expansion going on it will be a reality on SOURCE: Arthur D. Little & Autoridade da medium term period (see table 3) , Concorrência (April 2008) as the new generations grew up with Internet and developed routines of consuming media (news, music, films) online on the dimension of a computer screen. Traditional television (hit) lost audience to cable TV first and now to internet and digital TV channels (niches) or even to videogames, which also can transmit a lot of real information regarding sports, transforming in a

profitable vehicle for many TABLE 4: Launching a Niche Market Product top athletes to spread their image and data among a Niche Requires understanding of the specific but sports oriented information celebrity-driven environment in audience, as well. which sports now resides, with fans willing to have an on-going Communication in Sport in-sight into the lives of their – Media opportunities favorite athletes, clubs and Sports Management sports. Consultant Jon Wigley7 wrote an article for SportsBusiness Personalization Consumption seeks for magazine exhorting how the personalized, fashion and adopters of new technologies lifestyle statement, requiring are consuming sports content relations management tools. and how to find the necessary Interactivity Essential within a fan community tools to perform effectively requiring clear understanding of and reach out that what data is for public community. consumption and how to use it to This great potential provides enhance promotion and PR what Wigley calls an activities. unprecedented challenge to Rich Media Users are finding ways against sports governing bodies laden Consumption devices bandwidth limits, mostly with opportunities. The on video streaming, searching for challenge is how to capture, contents. store and distribute digital content and how to finance Content creation Valuable content created by such developments, highly skilled users will support reminding that it cannot be the growth in strength of done in isolation. On the affiliations and networks. contrary it demands a strategy that embraces branding, sponsorship, merchandising, PR and promotion, in the three main areas: editorial capacity, technology infrastructure and management, and funding.

Wigley points out that sports rights holders’ need to seek partnerships with broadcasters and technology companies to exploit the broadband potential is also an opportunity for middle and Minor Sports, if they manage to get themselves on the radar of such partners, with the help of multisport governing bodies.

The best way for those sports increase the exposure that they get during the Olympic Games is to focus and develop their role in the period between Games, possibly by uniting various bodies within a sport, or sports with common root, to develop a shared

7 Jon Wigley is a sports management consultant, specialized in the strategic exploitation and integration of commercial rights and major event management, who made a study for Intheteam – an enabling internet platform for creating amateur sports team websites. solution which would bring considerable efficiencies and economies of scale. When Jon Wigley developed this idea (May 2003), Social Networks were giving the first steps, Facebook and Twitter were still to be invented.

After Sydney Olympics, IOC assumed that Internet and the digital transformation was demanding deep changes in the understanding of information and in the organization of institutions and decided to modify its communication policy. During the first stage (1995-2000), the usage of Internet was institutional and limited to promotional information, without signifying changes in the strategies of communication, but by that year IOC assumed «things have changed radically». The theme was crucial at the Conference on New Media and Sport, organized by IOC in Lausanne in December 2000, demonstrating «the disproportion between the Internet projects of the Olympic Movement and the large, speculative projects of companies in the communication sector».

IOC then adjusted Olympics guidelines regarding information on the Web to what it called «New Paradigm of communication in the digital era», as shown in Graphic 2.

GRAPHIC 2: Communication in the Digital Era

SOURCE: multimedia.olympic.org

Eight years later, Web 2.0 is changing the paradigm again and Sports Organizations must adjust to the relations forces expressed on Graphic 3.

GRAPHIC 3: Communication in the Social Network Era

Adapted by João Querido Manha from multimedia.olympic.org

Social Networks Fritjof Capra8 defined them as «communication networks involving a symbolic language, the cultural boundaries and the relationships of power», better known in the solidarity field causes and fight against poverty and/or social exclusion. Thanks to the development of information technologies and the globalization,

 Social Networks spread political and economical ideas, divulging new values or theories, which are shared by the participants

 Social Networks unite individuals organizing them with equity and democratically, regarding the aims and objectives that they all identify to.

Social interaction in the internet is often strong, through the weblogs, the fotologs or virtual networks like Orkut or LinkedIn. The blogs are considered social networks

8 Fritjof Capra is an Austrian-born American physicist and author who studied the particle physics and systems theory because they rely on friends’ enlistment, sharing texts or images, but also work as hubs, as they develop the social connection among people that interact on that space.

The virtual social networks are powered by specific software, called Web 2.0 applications, which allow the individuals to publish profiles, thoughts, archives, photos and video footage, which can be watched and republished by the other members. Most of these groups are created by affinity and share the space for discussions, debate and presentation of common interest contents.

The Technologies Predictions of Deloitte9 for 2009 announced that it would be the breakout year for social networks. Internal and external spending on social networking solutions from IT providers and carriers may approach $500 million. Social networks are likely to be considered an inexpensive solution in what is a financially constrained IT spending environment.

 Globally, social networks have enjoyed a 25 percent visitors’ growth during last year. Some sites have doubled their user base.

 Social networking is no longer a tool just for high school and college students. On some networks, around 40 percent of users are over 35.

When this study began, in September 2008, most popular applications like Hi5, MySpace were more related to young people connections and interests, YouTube and Flickr, for video streaming and pictures storage, or Plaxo and LinkedIn, as interactive address book. None of them had the characteristic of a Media tool adjusted to increase Minor Sports athletes and organizations communication.

Research alerted to other emerging applications that could suit the needs, such as Facebook, on first place because of its wide world utilization by famous athletes like Michael Phelps10 or Twitter, which was becoming very popular in the journalists community, after Obama’s campaign.

Web 2.0 On English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Web 2.0 is described as all about collaboration and conversations with communities of people with something in common who interact with each other. It’s the result of a business revolution in the computer industry, a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services, like social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies, with the aim of facilitate creativity, collaboration and sharing between users.

9 Deloitte Touch Tohmatsu is a major international accounting and consulting firm.

10 Michael Phelps created a page on Facebook on August 24th, the Closing day of Beijing Olympic Games where we got eight gold medals, which reached ten months later 2,5 million registered fans.

Despite Darcy DiNucci11 first referred to it in 1999 in her article «Fragmented Future», the definition was definitely coined during a conference brainstorming session between Tim O’Reilly12 and Media Live International in 2001. Dale Dougherty, web pioneer and O’Reilly, noted that internet was more important than ever, with new applications and sites popping up, denying the general idea of dot.com collapse, after the crash of so many companies around the world. They wondered if something new was rising and called it Web 2.0. One and a half year later, the term «Web 2.0» counted more than 9.5 million citations in Google, despite a great divergence regarding its meaning.

In the article «What is Web 2.0», issued in September 30, 2005, Tim O’Reilly explained the main differences to Web 1.0, clearly defining the concept evolution on mass communications through the web.

Despite the delivering TABLE 5: The Two Ages of Internet on global scale, the Web 1.0 Web 2.0

individual positioning DoubleClick Google AdSense

is very clear: you Ofoto Flickr control your own Akamai BitTorrent data, regardless the mp3.com Napster Britannica Online Wikipedia adopted delivering personal websites Blogging mechanisms. Evite upcoming.org and EVDB And the approach of

internet users start domain name search engine considering it like an speculation optimization

attitude, not a page views cost per click

screen scraping web services technology, as Publishing Participation perpetual beta, never finished and with content management Wikis systems more user friendly software. directories (taxonomy) tagging ("folksonomy")

Web 2.0 stimulates Stickiness Syndication the joy of play and the hack ability, inspiring the rich user experience and the right to remix, by trusting the users allowed to the network. Is time for The Long Tail Theory, which encourages the collective power of the small sites to make up the bulk of the web content, is time to develop the niches opportunities, through the addressability of the contents.

Social Media All this new services spread through the Internet without any advertising or marketing strategies and were adopted by «viral marketing», mouth to mouth recommendations among users. O’Reilly expresses that if a product relies only on advertising to get the word out, it isn’t Web 2.0.

11 Darcy DiNucci is a columnist and author on digital and interaction design

12 Tim O’Reilly is the President and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc. The evolution of the web from static webpages to dynamic websites opened the opportunity for blogging. The traditional personal home pages were transformed into diary format, increasing the deliver through a new technology called RSS, which permits not only to link to a page but to subscribe it with notification for each change. It allows only a kind of one-way communication, but awoke the possibility of tracking back the information and finally gave birth to two-way communication systems, generally called social networking.

After the normalization of standard browsers, easing the cross-over for new applications, a whole wide range of opportunities came up. Gmail provided the first big innovations, turning accessible from anywhere and combining voice capabilities to the web applications. From the technological point of view, devices and programs connected to the internet are no longer software artifacts, but ongoing services, added as new defiant features for the user’s experience on a regular basis.

After 2005, many applications were forged always aiming specific communities linked up, but some of them grew very fast and spread globally, becoming very important tools for the modern communication. They can be used for fun or for work, or both, offering the possibility of instant contact with hundreds of thousands of people, free of charges. The New Media, called «Social Media», is emerging after 2005 and becoming very attractive not only for commercial purposes, but spotted as a great communication tool by Media and Politics, in first place.

 It represents media that users can easily participate in and contribute to, in different forms

o Blogs

o Forums

o Content communities

o Virtual worlds

o Wikis

o Social networks

The world of Sports took more time to find these opportunities, despite the popularity of some of the Social Networks, like Hi5 or MySpace, among the young athletes who got acquaintance with them in schools and universities where they really spread out in the first place.

The years of 2008 and 2009 gave birth to a new era, thanks to some events that really helped the popularity of applications like Facebook or Twitter.

During the 2008 U.S. Elections campaign, Barack Obama exploited them to reach more supporters and raise money and will be known as the first great user of Web 2.0, like Churchill used radio and Kennedy used television to reach people. Nothing is more effective and costless to anybody who wants to show his work or divulge a message – and according to Nielsen Stats by the end of 2008 Social Networking had overtaken email in terms of worldwide reach. 4 – Data Collection

Mapping the Stakeholders Why Minor Sports lack media exposure? How do they relate with media organizations and with fans?

The first step to define a strategy to enhance sports exposure was stakeholders mapping, on three major groups depending of media exposure. The Media includes all companies, institutions, journalists and fans (readers and viewers). The Sports Brands are the athletes, coaches, federations, clubs, agents and families. The Sports Organizations comprises the members, volunteers, technical departments, communications systems and event organizers. State and Government, Sponsors and New Media unite the three major groups, despite the variable interests and depending on funding and budgets, information tools and sports results.

The Portuguese sports’ system rely on governmental money and most of national federations have not been able to afford the best tools and depend more on the creativity and initiative of their members.

Usually, the sports organizations in Portugal don’t measure their external performances, concentrating much resources and attention on internal growth and consolidating the «social climate» within the institution.

As explained on Chapellet & Bayle’s «Measuring the Performance of OSO», is fundamental to evaluate

 Media coverage of S.O. (athletes individually and sports as a whole)

 communication among members and among all of those practicing the sport through S.O. channels

Athletes usually complain about how organization’s failure in the relationship with the outside community, missing the support of fans, the indifference of potential sponsors and the intermittence of Media attentions, blaming the organizations for those alleged malfunctions. But they also agree that neither them neither their agents approach the «targets» in a sufficient aggressive way.

The groups need to melt through a communication system passing from the traditional Mixed Zone (Players inside, Media Outside) for an interactive Zone Three, referred by Portuguese Communications Agent Luis Paixão Martins13, including in the middle

13 Luis Paixão Martins is a former journalist who runs the biggest Portuguese communication agency (LPM), pacing communication strategies to country’s top companies and politic leaders, like current Prime Minister José Sócrates.

easing and helping the communication to flow, which can be a formal communication agent or a much more simple, direct and permanent channel, like a social network.

Three major groups in turn of Football (Family, Media and Fans) are external conditioners of other sports communications, all of them with low interest regarding what is happening outside their community.

But in what regards to influence, the Family (Federation, clubs, players, coaches) and the Media make high pressure. The relations among Minor Sports develop below Football, with almost none connection, an ideal environment for the Social Networks to develop.

GRAPHIC 4: Stakeholders of Sports Communication in Portugal

The Portuguese Sport – History & Tradition Portugal is one of the oldest independent countries in Europe, almost 900 years old, and also one of the first to associate to the International Olympic Movement, actually the 13th in the World, by 1909.

Sport developed first among traditional and military organizations, the reason why more successful in the first half of the 20th Century were Fencing, Equestrian, Sailing and Shooting – and Football. The explosion of popular sports occurred after the 1974 Revolution that deposed the 48 years dictatorship regime and put the country back on the international family, raising the contacts with other countries, contracting many foreign coaches and developing sports among youth.

Athletics, Tennis, Judo, Volleyball and Basketball were the most developed in the first years of the democratic times, followed later in the 90s decade by Triathlon and Canoeing. World European and Olympic Champions emerged with crescent regularity, breaking down the hegemony of Roller Hockey14, a non-Olympic sport on top of popular preferences by 1970, after Football, due to a winning history which granted no big credit on the international scene, as this sport was played on a very limited number of countries.

In its 100 years old history Portuguese Olympic TABLE 6: Number of Medals in Committee presented 653 athletes of 26 different Major International Events sports in the Games since 1912, with Athletics (152) followed by Swimming (63) and Sailing (61) SPORTS WC OG and ahead of Football (50). Half of the sports Shooting 36 1 participated with less than 10 athletes, forming a Athletics 20 10 Long Tail curve, with a fair number of options. Sailing 13 4 Judo 2 1 Sixteen of the 22 Olympic medals were conquered Triathlon 2 1 after 1976, including all four gold’s Carlos Lopes, Equestrian 1 3 Rosa Mota, Fernanda Ribeiro and Nelson Évora, all Fencing 1 1 in Athletics’ specialties. Football 1 - Cycling - 1 Shooting is the most rewarded sport in international competitions with a total of 36 medals on Major championships, followed by Athletics (20) and Sailing (13). In the Olympic Games, Portugal got 22 medals in eight different sports, with Athletics dominating in the last 30 years, as shown on Table 6.

Portugal has about 10 million people, but less than 600,000 registered athletes, with football gathering up to 35%. As shown in Graphic 5, it’s another very clear Long Tail curve, which reveals a majority of Olympic sports with less than one thousand (0,5 per cent) active athletes each.

14 Roller Hockey was exhibition sport at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, but Portugal failed to get a medal (was 4th) in the beginning of the decadence process of a former chronic European and world champion.

GRAPHIC 5: Number of affiliated athletes in Portugal in 2007

SOURCE: Instituto Nacional de Estatística (December 2008)

The State funded training programs support about 400 top performance athletes, non- professionals, one’s of the lists not topped by Football. The others are the titles and medals on World and Olympics championships, as football’s best result was the 3rd place in 1966 FIFA World Cup.

The Portuguese Sport – Communication systems Along the years, Portuguese National Federations didn’t pay much attention to communication, an attitude which permitted the Media to shape the most convenient hierarchy according to editors’ preferences and options.

The history of sports Media in Portugal is consider to have began in January 28th, 1894, the date of nr.1 of «Sport», the first newspaper that proposed to make readers «updated with what is going on the sports’ world»: a football match picture made that first front page, definitely marking the future of the relationship between sport and media in the country.

Another newspaper launched in 1895, called «O Tiro Civil» («The Civil Shooting») paid more attention to other activities (shooting and hunting, sailing, rowing, fencing, walking, gymnastics and even bull fighting), relegating football to the «and more» columns. From this newspaper, had born «Tiro e Sport» (Shooting and Sport») in 1904 and finally «Os Sports Ilustrados» («The Sports Illustrated»), a newspaper owned by major national paper «O Século» («The Century»), which was directed by Mr. José Pontes, one of the leading sports officials in the foundation of Portuguese Olympic Committee and Chef de Mission of Portugal to their first Olympic Games, Stockholm 1912.

With football conquering space in the Portuguese society, the new sports newspaper «A Bola» («The Ball») appeared in 1932 calling itself the «newspaper of all sports», but football was dominant and still is. However, in the decades of 60 and 70 of last century, «A Bola» accompanied very closely the international careers of two top Portuguese athletes of all time, cycling rider Joaquim Agostinho15 and Olympic Marathon Champion Carlos Lopes16. Their adventures throughout the world before television age were told with details and turn out very inspiring for the Portuguese people to find passion in sports other than football.

Nowadays there are in Portugal three sports newspapers where football occupies about 80 per cent of the space and a Sports TV chain with three cable pay-per-view channels (500,000 subscribers), which also carry football in about 65 per cent, despite an effort to broadcast some of major international events of Tennis, Golf and team sports, like the Basketball NBA or the Rugby World League. However, the audiences for these broadcasts are very low.

The national TVs (State Owned RTP and privates SIC and TVI) have different approaches towards sports. RTP is obliged by a public service contract to broadcast other sports and most important international events like the Olympic Games, but the two private channels only care for football, fighting hard for the rights of the Portuguese league and the European Champions League. Of air free TV a football national team match may reach 2.5 million viewers or more and a top national league up to 1.8 million. Instead, a basketball or volleyball match will not pass 200,000 viewers at the most. Each one of these companies also owns a news channel on the cable and as they need content a new window of opportunity for Minor Sports can be opening in the near future.

Sports Organizations (Federations, Clubs and athletes individually) tend to stay passive and expectant for eventual Media interest following-up a results dependant agenda.

A benchmarking on the information system of the Portuguese NFs concludes that they fail to push news and content to the Media and stay on hold of their fans eventual visits to the respective websites. Those are generally «first generation» web’s (1.0), with exceptions (Basketball, Judo, Volleyball) regarding Web 2.0 new applications, like YouTube footage uploading, podcasting archives or even Web TV with live streaming.

On many of their official websites the Organizations preview multimedia contents, like video podcasts, but are not able to feed them on a regular basis, keeping too many blank pages, a circumstance that upsets visitors and kills potential audience. When an organization launches a website with the goal of information, it must commit itself in

15 Joaquim Agostinho was twice 3rd in the Tour of France and once 2nd in the Spanish Vuelta. He died in 1984 in a race accident in Portugal after colliding with a dog.

16 Carlos Lopes won two Olympic medals (Silver in 10,000 meters in Montreal Games and Gold in 1984 Los Angeles Marathon) and was three times Cross Country World Champion. He’s now a vice-president of the Portuguese Olympic Committee.

serving frequent content refreshment. And the better way to ensure it is to promote uploads with discreet but effective pushing to the targeted audience.

This pushing activity can be done by email to a mailing list (media, athletes, coaches, clubs, officials and registered fans) or utilizing the New Media tools, like the social networks, which can spread the same content over a large audience outside the mailing list inner circle. Between 2004 and 2008, this model was used by Portuguese Olympic Committee, providing regular updates on a daily basis which resulted on regular news published on national Media and the biggest traffic among the major Sports Organizations besides football ones. That strategy was implemented also during the Beijing Games period, with the creation of a special website featuring interactive tools and video presentations of all Portuguese athletes, which confirmed a great potential, with more than 4,000 visitors and 40,000 page views each day, according to InterWorx stats – six times more than average statistics of regular COP website.

After 2008 Olympic Games and the downsize of COP communications services, Olympic Media exposure decreased from up to 40 monthly news bulletins published on national Media to barely 10.

During this year also COP website stepped down from rank 7 to rank 6 on Google’s PageRank23, due to exposure efforts decrease.

COP rank 7 of importance was Table 7: Portuguese N.F. communication systems leveled to big newspapers «A Federations Mag Web TV Blog New Bola» and «Record» and ahead N’letter PR17 casts Media of third sports newspaper «O Archery 4 Jogo», which is ranked 5, on a Athletics 5 scale 1 to 10. Badminton 5 Individually, despite having Basketball 5 ● ● ● agents and sponsors, athlete’s Boxing communication also lacks Canoeing 6 pushing traffic to their personal Cycling ● 5 websites, all still on Web 1.0 Equestrian ● 5 age style, with more graphic Fencing 4 concerns than interaction. Last Football ● 6 two Games medal winners’ Gymnastics 6 ● webpages (Vanessa Fernandes, Handball ● 4 ● Nélson Évora and Francis Hockey ● 4 Obikwelu) all rank 4 on Judo ● 5 ● PageRank. Highest ranked Modern Pentathlon 5 athlete’s website belongs to Rowing 5 walker Susana Feitor (PageRank 5), who promoted Sailing ● 4 among the Media the page’s Shooting 5 launch a few weeks before Swimming ● 5 Beijing Olympics and regularly Table Tennis 5 updates her own blog within Taekwon-do 5 the website, maintaining really Tennis ● 1 interactivity with her readers. Trampoline 3 Susana Feitor is a persistent Triathlon 5 ● veteran athlete, five times Volleyball ● 5 ● ● Olympic, but was never on top Wrestling 4 of popularity. Her home page is the most recognizable on web because of her persistency and care and attention to details.

17 PageRank, on a scale 1 to 10, is a Google functionality, a link analysis algorithm, which «measures» the relative importance of each webpage within the set, as an indicator of the page’s value, based on number of links which page receives and from which pages. It is vulnerable to certain manipulation, but still is the best tool to rank the visibility of each website.

The Portuguese Media and Sports Coverage In Portugal there are three daily sports newspapers, which circulation has been falling down in the past six years at the same time their websites stay on top of most visited of the country. According to Media Research company Marktest, «A Bola», «Record» and «O Jogo» print about 180,000 copies each day, reaching estimated one million readers, but count 10,000 million plus visits per month on each Website.

For the first time in Portugal it was possible to measure the net coverage of Sports by two very influent and national wide Media: a daily sports newspaper Record, one of the oldest in the country and the national news agency, Lusa, which produces information for every Media in the country and also for international media.

The question to address was «how many news bulletins of each sport did they publish in 2008, by month? »

Data was collected with the help from Record Archives manager, Ana Rita Rodrigues, and Lusa Sports Editor, Emídio Simões. For extracting the results they used the filters and tags of each news editor, Millennium at the newspapers and Luna in the Agency.

The research was made during the month of March 2009 and counted all sports news published both in the newspaper and by the Agency during 2008, with the results of the Long Tail clearly influenced by the Olympic Games in the summer, otherwise the gap between Football and the others would have been wider.

 In appendix, please see the tables with the numbers by month and by sport.

The Long Tail is (again) reflected in the graphics 6 and 7, regarding the total of new published during the whole year. These pictures are eloquent in what regards to Football hegemony on Media coverage panorama and to the difficulties each Minor Sport and its athletes face when they seek for sponsors on a very small and competitive market which depends on public awareness and visibility.

 Most recent example of discrimination: Benfica football club signed a sponsoring contract with a brewer company for 40 million euro for the next 12 years, more than the State grants to the whole Olympic Projects for the next eight years (two Olympiads).

Without exposure and as broadcasting companies invest more and more in football’s immediate return, Minor Sports activities watch their slim image turn into invisibility.

Comparing the two Long Tails the different positioning of Tennis, the «major» Minor Sport at Record pages justifies for a long and traditional relationship between this sport and the newspaper, which is the major sponsor of the Portuguese Open, Estoril Open.

GRAPHIC 6: Sports News Published by newspaper Record during 2008

GRAPHIC 7: Sports News Published by Lusa News Agency during 2008

Another analysis, considering 2008 was the Olympic year, is the curve along the months, showing up a positive hit during the Games month, August, which allows the conclusion that even football minded Media can be sensitive to news, regarding the people’s interest about what was going on with the Olympics in Beijing.

April is usually a month with more Minor Sports news traffic, very obvious in Record’s graphic, due to the Tennis Estoril Open coverage. The other small peak on Record curve, in March, is due to the indoor Athletics World Championship.

GRAPHIC 8: Minor Sports News Published in 2008 Record & Lusa (without Football)

The different numbers mean that in the newspaper there are usually more entries, often more than one per sport each day, mostly individual small references, results or quotes, although in the Agency they barely get one a day published.

But during the Olympic Games month the relation overturned: this is the only month in every four years when the News Agency beats the sports newspapers.

Each bulletin, news of feature issued by Lusa sports desk is republished by the majority of printing Media, including national newspapers and local press.

In the next graphic 9, we can compare the gap between football (the hit) and the whole group of the other sports (the niches), regarding the space in the same written Media. The interesting fact is the confirmation that in August, Lusa issued less football news than other sports’, but in the sports newspaper the relation between football and sports is steadily 1-to-5 and after the Games 1-to-6. This typical relation is also as pronounced in Television or Radio shows, which concede to Minor Sports no more than 10% of their airing news along the year. Athletes insistently protest against exaggerated attention conceded to lateral activities of football players, including live reports from major clubs training camps, «robbing» exposure time to achievements and top classifications in other competitions of Minor Sports.

GRAPHIC 9: Minor Sports News Published in 2008 in Record & Lusa (with Football)

Social Networks applications To find the best solution, the study overlooked the main social media tools available in the Web most adequate to help enlarging visibility for Minor Sports, under priority guidelines which are nowadays teach in Journalism Schools (see Table 8). Most popular networks were analyzed

TABLE 8: Social Media at a Glance  MySpace A place for Friends, Messages, forums and music  Hi5 Your friends, your world Experiences and photos for youngsters  LinkedIN Relations matter Professional network service  Orkut Who do you know? Viral messages  Flickr Share and stay in touch Storage and exchange of photos  YouTube Broadcast yourself Videos storage and share  Facebook Connect with People in your Life Friendship and common interests  Twitter What are you doing? In 140 characters, like a microblog

The conclusion pointed out Twitter as the most appropriate and Facebook and YouTube as potentially supporting tools to reach a wider audience and helping to build the sports brand and a miscellaneous community. MySpace and Hi5, very popular among youngsters are also excellent to allocate content which can be accessed through Twitter links.

Twitter

Twitter was launched in March 2006 by Obvious Corp., as both a social network and a server for micro-blogging18, with a user’s friendly software and very short message profile ready for urgent and precise communication, like sports results, linking or quotes.

Most important news is being published on Twitter ahead of traditional Media: last year’s Brazil earthquake erupted on Twitter 51 minutes before the first news bulletin on major Brazilian news agency.

More recently, pop singer Michael Jackson’s dead news turn the world around in few minutes through Twitter and Facebook (I read it in Twitter myself), and started to be commented online by millions of people, long before it broke up on News agencies or Google: Twitter was reporting his dead, but CNN was reporting he was in coma and search engines didn’t have a clue of what was going on. Sure it could be a hoax, but the speed of information on this social network is unbeatable.

The founder of Twitter, Biz Stone19, said during a conference in Lisbon, in June 2009, that he does not consider it a social network: «I see Twitter more as a communication and information network». And New Media Strategist Joseph Ferrara selected Twitter (along with a blog) as the adequate piece for an «opinion leader with a robust knowledge wanting to raise awareness»

The first study to document the coming shift in the use of social media as a helpful tool for a variety of communication needs, the online survey «The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications – Separating de biz from the buzz»20 concluded that «the smaller the company, the more frequently social media is used to improve external communications».

Branding (71.8%) and information sharing (70.8%) are the business functions which the companies use more social media to improve, ahead of public relations (65.8%) or

18 Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user.

19 Biz Stone is a co-founder and creative director of Twitter who also helped to create the social networks Xanga, Blogger, Odeo and Obvious, who worked for Google until 2005.

20 Social Media Today is an online social community focused on issues in the social media world and this study refers to a survey collected between March 13 and April 4, 2009. The whitepaper was edited by Josh Gordon, president of Selling 2.0 and recognized expert on selling.

internal communication (32.1%). On the smaller companies, of 1 to 10 employees, branding rises to 76.5%.

LinkedIn was still the most used network (79.3%), ahead of Facebook (77.2%) and Twitter (76.3%), on top of blogs (68%) and YouTube (49.1%). Only 17.2% of organizations use MySpace for business.

And to the question of which social media network or tool is most considered using in the future, Blogs (18,1%) and Twitter (17,5%) get more preferences, suggesting that their «ability to reach a mass audience with a personal point of view and invite comments is very powerful».

According to this survey, Twitter delivers the ability to communicate minimally, but immediately. Twitter’s most commonly used functions are

 Sharing Breaking News...……………………..72%

 Extending a personal face to customers……… 63,7%

 Keeping in immediate touch with customers…. 55,1%

Twitter is the fast growing Social Media in the world. According to Nielsen Online stats, published on June 20, Twitter grew 1,500% in May 2009 regarding year-to-year, rising up to 18 million users who spend more than 17 minutes every day.

Looking to the future, this application emerges as a shift toward more customer communications. And it is clearly pointed out as a «great way to connect with media outlets», as digital gadgets, lighter, thinner, with interactive screens proliferating and technology erasing the frontier between the web and television, defying networks to figure out new business models.

New Media Awareness Social Media awareness in Portugal is high, but Hi5 is still the most used network, very popular among young people. According to June’s report of Alexa and Google Trends, Portugal and Romania are the only two European countries where Hi5 is still on first place, resisting to Facebook’s offensive.

Facebook is rising like in all Europe, United States Canada and Australia, but Twitter made a turnaround in the early months of 2009, becoming very popular on the media community and being discovered by sports people for direct communication with fans and journalists.

According to Google Trends, Twitter has reached a search volume in just 15 months that took two and half years to Facebook to accomplish.

Sports people consulted on Survey expressed preference for Hi5, in line with general numbers of the country. Journalists show clear inclination for Twitter, both in Survey and on the TwitterPortugal21 registration. On this list of active Portuguese twitters, journalists are one of the top groups with more than one hundred members by the end of May 2009.

Also in a Twitter Census22 made in May 2009, with 2,200 respondents, 70% of the Portuguese users said they only discovered this network in 2009, 84% define it as an «excellent communication tool» and 46% also considered it like «true social network».

According to Netscope of Marktest, the online and digital Media observatory which ranks the Portuguese websites, there are about 8.2 million users in the country and connection to 48% of homes. TABLE 9: Top Social Networking Sites Among US users A study of Winona State May 2008 May 2009 % change University about Facebook 35,594 70,278 97% the relationship MySpace 73,691 70,255 -5% between the Twitter 633 17,592 2,681% sports Digg 6,321 8,613 36% organizations and LinkedIN 3,933 7,470 90% the customers is Tagged 2,763 6,248 126% very critical to Hi5 3,433 3,848 12% S.O. attitude, Social Networking category 131,808 147,009 12% which are Total Internet Audience 190,858 193,825 2% described as still believing the only *thousands of unique visitors and % change way to market Source: comScore Media Metrix as published in Inside Facebook, June 15, their products is 2009, in www.emarketer.com to win on the field.

This is also a general thinking in Portuguese sport, except football, as Federations and top athletes do very little work in order to increase their exposure, limiting to fight for the best results. Last June, Olympic Gold Medalist Nelson Évora criticized the very little crowd on Athletics European League, in Leiria, despite the quality of the field, but in fact absolutely no promotional work was done before the competition. The problem is worst among the S.O.s not even achieving results.

By the beginning of successive studies quoted by Winona State University’s conference23 (Mullin et al., 2000; Funk & James, 2001; James et al., 2002)24 conclude

21 Twitterportugal.com is a webzine of twitter and social networks in Portugal.

22 Twitter Census was promoted in May 2009 by Portuguese Blog webmania (web 2.0 pt).

23 «Customer Communication in Professional Sport. Looking for Improvement five years later», Conference by James W. Bovinet and Judith A. Bovinet, of Winona State University.

that is a «basic communication objective» to build social ties with consumers (fans) who have a strong connection to the athletes, in many forms like postcards, e-mail, letters, newsletters, recognition events, regular surveys or focus groups. Nowadays all those solutions can be increased through new internet media tools.

Sports Management Consultant Jon Wigley noticed on SportsBusiness magazine that at the same time the uptake of broadband internet and the adoption of mobile 3G technologies are adding another considerable twist into the management of sports media assets, a real opportunity for many sports to take the necessary steps in order to benefit.

He says that «if New Media potential is exploited it it’s possible to have a direct control over the content, image and brand of a sport, as well as forge a direct relationship with the fans within an enhanced online community».

24 Bernard Mullin (with Steve Hardy) is the author of «Fundamentals of Sports Marketing» and , J.D. James and D.C. Funk are researchers and the authors of «Consumer Loyalty: the Meaning of attachment in the Development of Sport Team Allegiance 5 – Focus Group QUESTIONS

Officials (NOC and NF) 4 1 How do you evaluate the . information about sport in Coaches 3 Portugal, non-considering football, regarding

Athletes 3 a) Athlete’s exposure

Sports Editors 3 b) Results

Sports Marketers 1 c) Image

Agents 1 d) Passion

e) Promotion The Focus Group established to address the question covered all the areas and was f) Values objectively sharp in pointing out the real 2 What is the reason for under- problem, generally agreeing on the key reasons exposure of Minor Sports on . and declaring the need (and will) of change, Media? approving the solutions purposed within the 3 Do you consider that New Media instruments. . Organizations and athletes take fair advantage of new Victor Fonseca da Mota, former Secretary technologies? General of Portuguese Olympic Committee, 4 Do you think they could increase analyzed the Portuguese journalists whom he . Media exposure using new considers having a «deficient sport formation», communication tools to push their as the general population. Frederico Valarinho, promotion? simultaneously a journalist and president of 5 Could it be a solution the athletes Fencing Federation, call it a perversity: «People . and officials, beside the only know what’s on Media, but Media only organizations, take control of publishes what Editors judge interesting to editing and distribution of their People». own news, results and quotes?

The way to solve it was clearly suggested by 6 What’s your perspective regarding . the use of Social Networks as Tiago Bento, Sports Marketer and former . communication means? Marketing Director of Portugal NOC, exhorting athletes «to learn how to endorse themselves and 8 Can you make a suggestion for take advantage of their occasional moments of . increasing Minor Sports exposure glory». Is it possible? Antonio Tadeia, deputy on Media? director of sports newspaper «O Jogo», who admits to pick ideas from Twitter («and not necessarily from journalists»), thinks that more than possible it’s very simple: «Create alert services for the Editors for small but interesting events».

«It’s the direction the World is going: every athlete, club, Federation must be in Social Networks, connected to their fans. Nobody can stay out of virtual world and it’s more accurate if the information is issued and delivered by sports people», defends Mr. Bento.

Daily Record Director Alexandre Pais justifies football hegemony at Media by economic reasons, considering newspapers «industrial products»: coverage of football or another sport costs the same, but football brings incomparable revenues, also because Minor Sports in a small country are not able to create many protagonists able to generate passion. «A Minor Sports newspaper wouldn’t sell more than 5,000 copies [Record football driven sells 70,000+], so I see a better solution through internet, creating networks with people specifically interested in».

Mario Santos, lawyer and President of Canoeing Federation, thinks that New Media should be the «priority way, maybe the only way, because the impact is immediate and cost is very low», adding that «through the traditional path we’ll never get there». He also noted that the web 1.0 mode, with S.O. waiting for people to find static content in old websites, is no longer the answer carrying insufficient traffic, which resumes to specific family of each sport.

The general findings of this Focus Group regarding Portuguese Sports other than Football were very clear to the respondents, as these difficulties are very common on their day-by-day. The image is aged and traditional because journalists tend to follow easily team sports more connected to popular clubs and the editorial criteria is football- driven. Some examples of sports like Cycling, Judo or Table Tennis attract more Media coverage when some of big clubs are involved.

The specific content for Minor Sports lack specialists on Media and the knowledge of rules and concepts and various sports is very low or absolutely none, which is very visible during the Olympic Games, when the journalists are confronted for the first time with athletes and performances they had never seen before. The history of Portuguese Missions reports several incidents due to misunderstandings caused by journalists’ ignorance. In the other hand, Federation leaders admit their staffs are not ready and sufficiently aware of new technologies, needing coaching and external help.

Athletes tend to take revenge of previous lack of coverage when they accomplish a major result and Media is obliged to come after them. Two major episodes of this negative approach:

 2004 Olympics Bronze medal Rui Silva tried to shut down in Media black-out after his achievement, protesting for being mistreated in the previous months

 2008 Olympics medalists Nelson Évora and Vanessa Fernandes not wearing the medals at arrival in Lisbon, because a personal adviser and agent considerer it unfashionable

The ideas coming up to face the problem demand two steps process: first, define targets and strategies within the sports organizations willing to increase exposure in attachment to their development in the field of play; second, start pushing information to Media. The resources to achieve the objective are definitely the virtual world of internet and Social Network, the New Media is believed to do what «old Media» failed. The new technologies are very simple to handle and control, provoke quick impact and are costless.

GRAPHIC 10

The Long Tail in Portuguese Sport 6 – Survey Preferences The Survey was launched online on website Qualtrics.com25 on April 7, 2009 and was open to participants till the end of May, when the results were recovered and analyzed. The universe of respondents (online) was recruited by mail, following the mailing list of journalists, athletes, coaches and officials registered in the Portuguese Olympic Committee and also the listing of Portuguese fans that registered and paged in the Portugal Mission official Website during Beijing Olympic Games. I also used a personal account on Social Network Twitter to invite my small following community to participate. And some athletes and coaches living at the National Training Center in Jamor, Lisbon, were personally invited to fulfill a paper inquiry, which results were later added in the Qualtrics account.

About 500 people were invited to participate and we received 244 replies, with 96% completion, corresponding to TABLE 10: Favorite Source for Sports 235 valid responds. The majority of the respondents are men How do you follow sports Overall Men Women (80%), just a little upon the information? gender relation both in Media and in Sports, still Men’s By TV 73 % 71 % 80 % universes in Portugal [Olympic By Internet 72 % 76 % 56 % Team on Beijing Olympics was composed by 67% men and 33% By sports newspapers 63 % 67 % 49 % women]

The questions addressed were simple and seek for a better understanding of the profile of Sports and Media universe, regarding sports preferences and internet awareness and habits. The question regarding predilection in Sport, upon the list of the sports represented in the last Olympic Mission to Beijing Games, resumed in a Long Tail shape answer, with Football on the head and the long list stretching down the line, as seen on Graphic10.

It was asked what kind of Media they prefer to get sports information, if they are up-to- date with social networks and Web 2.0 and if they would consider receiving regular information regarding their favorite sports issued directly by sports persons, including athletes through their blogs and the social networks. A large majority (86%) of the respondents agreed with the idea of online news feeding from the field of play issued by

25 Qualtrics.com is online survey software existing from 1997 and used by many top companies, Universities and non-profit organizations.. the participants (or their staff and agents) as a good way of overcoming the absence of coverage or the poor detailed reports regarding minor sports activities.

Internet already passed sports newspapers largely as best source to get news and sports information and is even with television, confirming the change of routines in the modern civilizations. Television only keeps the overall first place because of women’s preference, very diverse from men’s. On the male’s routine, Internet already beat the concurrent, approaching the 80% - four out five use the Web to get sports information, an indicator which clearly justifies an increasing of online news service. This result on my Survey is in line with Havas research on Media Consumption in Portugal, which realized that between 2006 and 2009 Internet passed Newspapers has preferred source for news, rising from 52% to 70% in just two years.

Among athletes, Hi5 is clearly the most popular network (82%), followed by Facebook (27%), with Twitter still unknown for the majority, as only three of the 33 positive responders (out of 42 athletes replying the inquiry) admitted using it. On the other hand, among journalists Twitter is much more popular (33%) and Facebook tops Hi5 (both on the 58%). And among youngsters Hi5 almost makes the unanimity TABLE 11: Which Social Network do you use? (95%), with Twitter (19%) approaching Facebook (24%). This Network/Age <25 25/40 >40 means Twitter and Facebook are still in an ongoing process, but also that the audience for sports information Hi5 20% 52% 28% (the journalists) is more familiar with these tools. On the fans community, Facebook 7 % 54% 39% Twitter already reaches 22%. It seems easier to the sports community to learn how to use Twitter than the Twitter 10% 62% 28% journalists to turn to Hi5, which profile is more dilettante and less LinkedIN 0% 60% 40% professional.

By sport, the most interested in this MySpace 15% 54% 31% model of communication are, according to the Survey, those related to Basketball, Canoeing, Fencing, Judo, Sailing, Triathlon, some of the Long Tail of Sports. Among them, the «Very much -Interested» are even more than those only «Interested» and there aren’t almost none «Not Interested».

Olympic Image in Portugal Another study, ordered by Portuguese Olympic Committee to Cision Portugal26 to measure the awareness of the Olympic Image and the popularity of athletes and Sports during Beijing Olympic Games, confirmed the general idea and my Survey findings. Football National League and European Football are considered major events than the Olympic Games and Football still appears in 3rd place among the answers to the question «Which are your favorite Olympic Sports?», despite the TABLE 12 – Cision Study on Olympic Sports national team did not qualify for Awareness in Portugal Beijing tournament.

Best known Olympic athletes in May 2008 This poll was made when the (before the Games) and in October 2008 memories of the Games were still (after the Games)? fresh and confirms the same sort of preferences, with small differences Athlete Sport 5/08 10/08 and an intriguing choice, as Portugal didn’t compete in four of the eight top Vanessa Triathlon 13% 26 % favorite sports. Gymnastics is one of Fernandes the most seen Olympic competitions Nelson Èvora Athletics 9 % 25 % on TV despite Portugal didn’t participate and has no international Naide Gomes Athletics 15 % 12 % top athletes. Swimming surprising 2nd place was justified by Cision as a Francis Athletics 16 % 9 % result of the media effect of Michael Obikwelu Phelps performance and victories in Telma Monteiro Judo 8 % 5 % Beijing (none Portuguese swimmer qualified for the finals). Rosa Mota * Athletics 8 % 4 %

Carlos Lopes * Athletics 6 % 3%

Rui Silva Athletics 8 % 2 %

*retired athletes

CISION poll questioned 500 people among October 10/12, 2008, 60% in Lisbon and 40% in Oporto.

26 Cision Portugal is a branch of Cision, one of the world leading provider companies of PR evaluation, PR analysis press and broadcast monitoring and media tracking services. Cision Portugal is a partner of Portuguese Olympic Committee. Another topic in this study showed the popularity of Portuguese top athletes, with TABLE 13: Which are your both medal winners, Vanessa Fernandes and favorite Olympic Sports? Nelson Évora, climbing to the top of preferences thanks to their performances. It would be revealing to ask the same question Athletics 24 % by the end of 2009, after twelve months of very little activity ofthese champions. Carlos Swimming 21 % Lopes and Rosa Mota, first gold medalists in Football 14 % the eighties (1984 and 1988 Games), are still among eight most popular sports persons of Gymnastics 12 % the country, ahead of Fernanda Ribeiro and Rui Silva who conquered their medals more Triathlon 4 % recently and still compete at high level, but Cycling 3 % were absent in Beijing. Basketball 3 % None of these athletes was frequently on Media or starring a notorious advertising Tennis 2 % campaign in 2009.

7 – Strategy

Build a Personal Brand Author Scott Kirsner27 studied the emerging business model of musicians on MySpace concluded that musicians and authors who build an audience through social connections as an ongoing dialogue over the Internet develop devoted fans who are more likely to buy a product because they feel a personal connection to that artist.

Peter S.Fader, Wharton Marketing professor and co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI)28, says establishing a personal brand is important in an age in which consumers are more skeptical and seeking a level of comfort an trust. Before, receivers would usually play a passive role and accept a product because in was there, but now they want to know what source of credibility is and why they should trust.

Building an online identity also takes patience. Marketing Wharton professor Jonah Berger, who recommends using social networking sites or a new media endeavour such as blogging, very useful to reshape someone’s career into a new kind of profile, defends that at beginning is usually helpful to build a following to give something away, like nuggets of information or personal wisdom, transmitted by blog posts or through commentary on Twitter. An attractive online personality could widen one’s list of contacts more include more people.

Professor Eric Bradlow, also co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Iniciative, believes that it’s important to reach out to people who are «influencers», who will use the word-of-mouth to spread information about the person to their own wide network of social contacts, concept also described by author Malcolm Gladwell in his book «The Tipping Point»: «You need to seed the right people to develop a word-of-mouth army, everyone should have a list of 20 or 30 people who will act as their ambassadors».

Eric Bradlow also recommends patience saying that branding is a long-term investment, noting that Coca-Cola spends millions in an advertising not to increase sales but to build brand awareness.

On June’s 140 Character Conference, venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson29, admitted that Twitter and Facebook may surpass top search engines, as most used tool to drive users and deliver more and better traffic through the internet, because the links they carry are more valuable than Google’s: «Twitter and Facebook links deliver a better conversion rate than Google, which is not surprising when we think about it, because passed links are trusted links». He says that Social Media is good at driving

27 Scott Kirsner writes a column for The Boston Globe and is the author of the book «Fans Friends and Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age»

28 WIMI is a data-driven research effort on interactive and digital media at the Wharton University of Pennsylvania.

29 Fred Wilson is Managing Partner of two venture capital firms in New York, who helps to start and build technology companies. traffic to the Internet, especially systems like Twitter and Facebook that can deliver both money and value.

Network Journalism US President’s Obama online tactics are a primary example of how someone can take their messages beyond social networking, using Facebook, text messaging (Twitter) and YouTube. Other successes that helped put Twitter in the map have been breaking news stories in the last twelve months, like the Mumbai attacks, the plane landing in the Hudson River in New York, and most recently the events after Iran elections. In all those situations Twitter was far ahead of the news media, providing real-time insight as well as pictures from the scene. In Australia, Twitter was incorporated into mainstream news coverage of the «Black Saturday bushfires», in February 2009, and a few months later during storms and flooding in the states of Queensland and New South Wales.

Professor Sue Robinson30 calls it a kind of mass network journalism, or crowd sourcing. Twitter becomes a new form of real-time communication, which really can help sports people and organizations with difficulties to break through the walls of traditional media and reach an avid community.

Though it cannot be considered journalism, but just a platform, like radio or TV, but with unfettered interactivity, the act of tweeting can be as journalistic as the act of headline writing. The platform can be used for real-time reporting as a broadcast news live report. And for that, all it takes is a phone.

Australian freelance journalist Rachel Hills describes her upfront tweeting as being consistent with the need for interactivity between the reporter and the audience in the digital age – the same need of Minor Sports athletes and organizations: «I view the future of media as being about hosting and facilitating conversations. Interacting with the people who care about the work you do is vital».

This also explains the grow of companies on Twitter, big companies touching directly their consumers and off course all the Media which started to flash out the headlines with links to their websites content. In 2009, some of the bigger sport events also started to use Twitter and Facebook for instant communication. Golf PGA Masters and Wimbledon Tournament were two of the first big events, launching event’s pages to fans all over the world, where significant news appeared in first hand, like draws, schedules and quotes.

As main targets for sports organizations media networking strategy, is important to observe how journalists use Twitter. They are logged all work day long using the platform to spread links to content they or their news outlet have produced in an effort to build a new audience and even use it to share images, audio and links to other online

30 Sue Robinson is a teacher from the School of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin

contents they find interesting – a good prospect for anybody who want to breakthrough, like anonym minor sports people. Many journalists also use Twitter to source contacts, story angles, background, case studies, polls or questionnaires, and also to monitor public debate.

Even though the social media press release format and the desire to get news in feeds, grew out of a journalist’s frustration with traditional press releases the perception, the stats show that journalists have been adopting social media tools at a ready rate, every year. According to Sally Falkow, of Econsultancy Digital Marketers United, this year 70% of journalists surveyed wanted organizations to provide a page in the online newsroom, containing links to every social media environment in which that company participates and 38% prefer to receive information via company tweets.

How to Implement Solid communication Unlike Shaquille O’Neal or Lance Armstrong, most of the sports people and even PR people on Sports Organizations aren’t ready to interact on the best way with fans and media, through social network. That’s a reason why for Sports Organizations social media doesn’t seem a high priority, still seen as an experiment, not an effective tool.

The solution of Coca-Cola for this question seems to be much appropriated for Sports Organizations. Instead of naming a new employee Table 14: P & P Theory charged with social media updates, Coca-Cola prefers Patience Passion that all employees in Don’t waste time and Results are not immediate; marketing and money doing things you one must be persistent, calm communication do that work, are not up to. Must enjoy and resilient about the task. assuming that’s the only way it. to the communication to be genuine and real. In Sports, that authentic and straight communication is fundamental and it will be much appreciated if reported by different members of the staff (athlete, coach, manager) in the same network.

Gary Waynerchuk (wine Library) in the Web 2.0 Expo in New York exhorted people to adopt the P&P theory in the moment of embracing a communication or marketing strategy through the Web. 8 – Action Plan To enhance Minor Sports exposure, the obvious conclusion is emerging New Media and social networks, because I found it the most appropriate tool to reach a wide and interested audience.

As in Chapellet & Bayle (2005, p.8) we’ll adopt the classic model of Strategic Marketing Planning Process for nonprofit organizations, having in mind the specificity of Communications and Information regarding Marketing and following Ferrand & Torrigiani steps (Table 15, page 54).

In the sports field, as in show business industry, the first step is difficult to set up, due to the challengers disputing the same space or even some rights and preferences that condition free publishing, mainly in big events such as World Championships or the Olympic Games. Developments regarding the second step are proceeding far more rapidly, thanks to all the developments online

Even in those specific cases of huge limitation of content use, social networking can be used to help consumers to find that exclusivity, linking to the official pages, which in case of Minor Sports are usually lost behind the glamour and media frenzy of the main events. One athlete of water polo or canoeing can easily call for attention for his result or his quotes, attracting traffic to the exclusive web site or podcast through his own Twitter page, for instance. Indirectly but effectively his enlarging the knowledge of his followers and creating more value to his image, without any effort or investment at all. It’s important not to stick with just one distribution channel, because the consumer’s habits are different, but provide different content feeding (text news on Twitter, but also linking to photos or free videos) to help build a consistent profile and be very careful and attentive to the follow-up of information, to avoid bad use.

The Brand Equity construction of a Sports Organization must be diversified and complementary, with regular actions seeking to alert eventual audience. Many of these actions can be carried out through New Media instruments, reducing costs and netting the stakeholders in a long-term strategy of creating confidence and identification to the brand, by propagating content (image, video or audio files), set up Social Networks accounts (personal and corporate) and Social Networks Profiles/Groups, podcast on expertise topics and create a Wiki31, paying special attention to Web 2.0 evolutions as in software as in new electronics and gadgets.

31 Wiki (acronym of «What I Know Is» and Hawaiian word meaning «fast») is a website that uses online software that allows the easy creation and edition of unlimited number of interlinked web pages. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is the best-know wiki.

Strategy – Short Term

The first steps must lead all internal stakeholders to awareness of technologic changes of the «mass market» into niches and the opportunities that are opening on the Web. Show and teach new tools and philosophy, create channels to comprehension and push minds on a steady and persistent way.

Sports leaders must know how to take advantage of Social Networks in first place, plunge into Twitter (plus Facebook and YouTube and as many networks as possible), learning how to communicate frequently with their potential followers, especially opinion leaders and journalists.

Twitter is the best tool to use, as it serves to instant communication and also for alerting others to new stories or to invite feedback.

Strategy – Long Term

After the acknowledge of New Media (and Twitter’s) potential, S.O. Marketing Departments or the Athlete’s Agent must draw a long-term Program, being conscious and determined in never announcing any action that they cannot provide. Little, simple and true initiatives will create a goodwill relation among a percentage of fans or occasional readers and time will assembly that curiosity into a larger audience. It is very important to never deceive the followers, especially if they were journalists or opinion leaders.

 ADVERTISING – Use New Media to advertise every sort of initiatives related to sport. Competitions, reunions, assemblies, refereeing courses, results, divulging actions at new communities – every sort of event must be advertised through org’ website, blog or Facebook page, giving the opportunity to be frequently quoted and linked to by Twitter messages, before, during and after.

 DIRECT MARKETING – Divulge campaigns regarding the rules, the modernity and the appealing community of the sport can be communicated through viral marketing (newsletters, mailing lists) to potential fans, spotted through clubs’ or regions’ connections. Direct Marketing demands a profound knowledge of each community, to avoid repulse.

o Simple but friendly actions involving athletes can help, by giving away autographed memorabilia that can disclose good will of the recipients and generate news or photo’s opportunities to later propagate through Twitter.

 INTERACTIVE MARKETING – Establish a technologic venture with sponsor or supplier under sports theme divulgation, available through phone and internet gadgets, following the evolution and updating results through Twitter, to strengthening the community.

 PUBLIC RELATIONS & PUBLICITY – Traditional means help reaching the formal audience of Media and Publicity, along with communication tools, through alerts and links on Twitter to attract a wide audience unaware of those activities or unreachable.

o Press Releases and Conferences

o Blogging

o Photo-sharing

o Audio podcasts

o Video streaming (which very soon can be live streaming using a common telephone).

 PROMOTION – Set up Promotion actions as solid opportunities for fragmentation through Twitter, in related events associated to direct marketing actions and athlete’s regular availability

o Mixed Meetings with the Media

o Press Conferences

o Selected Interviews.

. Sport Fairs

. Sponsor’s Events

. Finals, Regional Finals, Training Camps

 WORD OF MOUTH – Studies by Burson-Marsteller32 and Roper Starch Worldwide33 found out that one influential person’s word of mouth tends to affect the attitude of other two people, on average. But that circle of influence, however, jumps to eight online, as internet visitors also help to increase the communication, forwarding the message.

o Benchmark of Lance Armstrong’s and Shaquille O’Neal’s Twitter pages shows how simple the personal brand building can turn into by a cautious, persistent and text-rich messages.

 EVENTS & EXPERIENCE – On the long-term, the Action Plan must contain significant Events and Experiences which will allow measure the impact and the public awareness growing, building a community at the same time.

32 Burson-Marsteller is a global public relations and communications firm which provides strategic counsel in the digital age.

33 Roper Starch Worldwide is one of the world’s major market research and strategic consulting firms

Twitter (and Facebook) allows creating regular conversations with readers, without needing to call for a special Forum, cover live events under personal point of view or offer personal interviews to followers which will amplify them in the Web, developing an under-control method of personal branding.

Communication Model

Shannon and Weaver basic model of communication is appropriated to the message path for Minor Sports to reach a greater audience through social media network.

 Athlete and S.O. are the sources

 Twitter (and Facebook) is the Transmitter

 Internet is the Channel

 Each Follower is the Receiver

 Global Audience is the Destination

Content

As Battenfield (2004) concluded in his study regarding the Sports Information Directors, there’s a wide range of responsibilities and a diversity of technical skills to develop by whoever takes care of the enhancing exposure project, like gathering, producing and disseminating news, generating publicity and publications design and production. He/she also must perform statistics assembly, game management, advertising, fund-raising, special events and other tasks such as maintaining relations with external publics and the media, with a increased volume of work due to the growth of media (cable TV, radio sports shows, specialized press and the internet) and the modern-era duties like web publishing, electronic databases and live internet broadcasts.

Human Resources

On Focus Group Athletes and Coaches alerted for lack of time to do the extra work of divulging their own results and update blogs or social network’s personal pages. Off course, athletes like Lance Armstrong or Shaquille O’Neal show exactly the opposite, as they turn this activity an anti-stressful and enjoyable task that helps them to overcome death hours and focus in a new strategy to attract more support.

Sport organizations already have a Professional or amateur communications manager and it’s his responsibility to adjust the goal of enhancing exposure to new technologies solutions. And athletes are a specific case of empowerment at the Centre of Olympic Organisations (Chelladurai & Madella, 2006), occupying a central position in the Olympic movement through Athlete’s Commissions and performing an increasing impact on the decision making.

Both S.O. communication managers and athletes, coaches and their personal agents can assume the responsibility for the communication task, regardless of paying for professional help or not, but for running the branding process and to sharpen strategic focus on developing the identity progression between the brand and the public is adequate to charge an executive. Media training for players and coaches is fundamental at the beginning of this process, making them conscious of law and ethics and of privacy issues, the dark side of social network that threatens the most famous persons.

The Olympic Charter (Rule 4934) forbids the athletes to act as journalists during the Games period and inside the Olympic sites (including the Olympic Village), under threat of immediate eviction from the Games. This question was quite sensitive during Beijing Games, when hundreds of athletes were shut down on their purposes of writing columns and upload footage and photos from the Olympic premises.

Since August 2008, the new social network phenomena is exploding all over the world (significant the fact of Michael Phelps had create his Facebook page on the evening of August 24th just after the Closing Ceremony) and forced IOC to change its policy regarding athletes’ blogging during next 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics: «The IOC considers blogging, in accordance to this guidelines, as a legitimate form of personal expression and not as a form of journalism», the new guidelines published in June 15th say.

This development changes totally the hard line against athlete’s homepages and blogs, issued after 2000 Sydney Olympics and taken very seriously during 2008 Beijing Games. With this change, despite some restrictions still on regarding video and photos uploading and interviewing other athletes, IOC is opening a great opportunity for athletes to control their own communication «at their own risk» and expressing their own views into the Olympic life by blogging in a way that journalists can’t deliver.

The NOC Public Relations service may coordinate a large number of minor sports or athletes’ communication through New Media, managing an editorial calendar and the final work product of several sources, proposing and executing strategy to leverage social media platforms to drive traffic and increase awareness and facilitate access to athletes and create content sharing opportunities

Budgeting

The Democratization of production tools and of delivering tools (Force 1 and Force 2 of The Long Tail) mean that anyone can produce his own content and post it into personal blogs, associated websites or Social Networks at very low cost.

Internet and communications rates are going down and electronic devices are accessible to anyone. This Action Plan doesn’t require more money, if implemented by internal resources in the National Federation already having a Media and Public Relations

34 Rule 49 of the Olympic Charter. «Only those persons accredited as media may act as journalists, reporters or any other media capacity».

service. But in the case of an enlarged service involving the NOC and several sports Federations, a coordinated service should be set up.

The hardest thing when someone starts out in Social Media like Twitter or Facebook is how to get Followers and it demands a professional and dedicated assistance, despite it should be simplified by the relative notoriety of athletes and sports people involved. In the case of Minor Sports it demands a previous search of people connected to the same sport which already use some of those tools and start from them to enlarge the group of users, setting a steady and interested community. The followers must not be asked or contacted at the same time, but through a crescent process, enlarging the field to all stakeholders (other athletes, officials and coaches, journalists, broadcasters, fans).

US Olympic Committee created in May 2009 a New Media Director job for a coordinator and manager «to develop and manage the activities of a variety of freelance content developers (including athletes, journalists, sports event specific writers, photographers), lead content development and management of social media programs and implementation of new digital functionality across emerging media platforms (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) ». USOC rewarded this new job with a salary between $46,614 and $86,598 (between 32,000 € and 61,000 €) and it can be used as a reference, depending of the qualifications and background of the candidates.

In case of one-Federation or one-athlete service, it would not request a full job. Author AnnaLaura Brown35 recommends just an hour a day as the right amount of time to someone to spend on Social Media marketing.

35 AnnaLaura Brown is an academic librarian, network and internet marketer and blogger in Salt Lake City, Utah.

TABLE 15: Enhancing Minor Sports Exposure on Emerging Media

Mission Enhance Exposure

Objectives & Goals  Ensure regular presence on Media

 Raise public and sponsors awareness. Analyze Organization Culture  Minor Sports looking at How is the Organization (or themselves as a niche Athlete) perceived at the market. moment  Eventual legal restrictions (ex.: Olympic Charter)

Strengths & Weaknesses Content control against inexperience dealing with sudden exposure.

Publics to be served Media and Fans

Competition Head (Football) and Tail (other sports)

 Niches against Hits

Social, political, technical, Social networks offer a economic macro- two-way relation (internal- Analyze External environment external), at low cost and Environment very easy usage, giving How wants the Organization response at different (or Athlete) to be perceived levels.  Cognitive (aknowledge, Awareness, Credibility)

 Emotional (Attachement, Preference)

 Behavioral (Loyalty, Relationship)

Mission  Brand evangelism (you have to do it yourself)

 Personal branding

Objectives & Goals Minor Sports break Marketing/Communication through the blockade of Major Media, reaching its Choice of Positioning, part public and creating a new of the identity of the sport audience. organization that must be communicated actively and  Increase Stakeholder that reveals a competitive focus advantage compared with its rivals  Create and Develop Relationships

 Enhance the value relationship (Media exposure and Fans support)

Tactics Viral Communication

 Make everything available

 Help to find it

Benchmarks Social Network linking Sports Organizations and World Famous Athletes

Implementation Action Plan

Strategy [please see table 16]

Review Performance Implement Interactivity, opening channels to conversation and permanent diagnosis

 Manage crisis situations, over expectations or unexpected bad results

 Order Image and Awareness studies

The Action Plan should be developed in according to the strategy to accomplish the increasing of sports awareness among three different targets: first Sports Media journalists and specific Sport audience and finally General Public and fans, as shown in Table 16.

TABLE 16: Action Plan

ACTION TASKS RESPONSIBILITY TIMELINE RESOURCES BUDGET NOC Planning PR Director Budgeting NFs 1 month Officials Implementation Training Athletes Create Followers 2 months Coordinator

NOC 30,000 Coaches Up to 1 year [Assistant Up to Increase [before, journalist] National 75,000 € Media Followers Federations during & after Major events] Video service Fans NOC Photo service After 1 year

Follow-up [before Major NFs T.I. service Analysis International

Event] Government

APPENDICES

Appendix 1 – Survey

Tables of Questions and Answers

Appendix 2 – Sports news on Portuguese Media

Appendix 3 – Social Networks

Brief description of Social Networks studied 1.

APPENDIX 1

Table of questions and answers to Survey on qualtrics.com

QUESTION 1 – Who are you?

Men 194 80 %

Women 48 20%

QUESTION 2 – How old are you?

Age Overall Men Women

Less than 25 11 % 10 % 12 %

25 to 40 42 % 42 % 46 %

Over 40 47 % 48 % 42 %

QUESTION 3 – What kind of relationship have you with Sport?

Overall Men Women

Athlete 17 % 16 % 21 %

Fan 20 % 21 % 19 %

Official 4 % 5 % 2 %

Journalist 45 % 48 % 39 %

Coach 7 % 9 % 0

No relation 6 % 1 % 19 %

QUESTION 4 – Which is your favorite sports (up to 3 answers allowed)?

Overall Men Women

Football 68 % 75 % 40 %

Tennis 30 % 29 % 33 %

Athletics 27 % 29 % 21 %

Basketball 23 % 26 % 13 %

Handball 22 % 10 % 4 %

Cycling 16 % 14 % 21 %

Swimming 12 % 7 % 33 %

Volleyball 8 % 7 % 13 %

Gymnastics 7 % 1 % 29 %

Hockey 6 % 5 % 8 %

Sailing 3 % 3 % 6 %

Judo 2 % 3 % 0 %

Triathlon 2 % 1 % 10 %

Table Tennis 2 % 3 % 2 %

Badminton 1 % 1 % 0 %

Canoeing 1 % 2 % 0 %

Fencing 1 % 1 % 2 %

Rowing 0 % 0 % 0 %

Taekwondo 0 % 1 % 0 %

Beach Volleyball 0 % 1 % 0 %

Another 24 % 27 % 13 %

None 1 % 1 % 2 %

QUESTION 5 – How do you usually follow the sports information?

Overall Men Women

By TV 73 % 71 % 80 %

By Internet 72 % 76 % 56 %

By sports newspapers 63 % 67 % 49 %

QUESTION 6 – What kind of Internet user are you?

Overall Men Women

Always connected 41 % 41 % 40 %

Frequent 47 % 47 % 35 %

Regular 10 % 10 % 21 %

Occasional 1 % 1 % 4 %

No user 1 % 1 % 0 %

QUESTION 7 – Are you aware of Web 2.0?

Overall Men Women

Yes I know 63 % 63 % 64 %

Don’t know what is 37 % 37 % 36 %

QUESTION 8 – Are you a member of any Social Network? If not, go to next question. Up to three answers allowed.

Overall Men Women

Yes I do 64 % 64 % 62 %

Hi 5 63 % 63 % 63 %

Facebook 45 % 42 % 53 %

Twitter 25 % 27 % 17 %

LinkedIN 16 % 18 % 7 %

MySpace 8 % 9 % 7 %

Flickr 3 % 3 % 3 %

Another 21 % 18 % 30 %

QUESTION 9 – Would you consider receive regular updated information regarding your favorite sports issued by respective federation or even by the athletes and coaches like in a social network?

Overall Men Women

That interests me 46 % 47 % 42 %

It interests me very much 40 % 40 % 42 %

I’m not interested 14 % 12 % 17 %

QUESTION 10 – Do you consider that athletes, coaches and officials issuing information bulletins about their own sports activities as

Overall Men Women

Credible 58 % 58 % 63 %

Very much credible 21 % 22 % 19 %

Tendentious 20 % 20 % 19 %

Without credibility 1 % 1 % 0 %

Appendix 2 – Sports news on Portuguese Media (sports daily Record and News Agency Lusa)

Record was launched in 1949 and has been most of its life the second most important sports publication. After 1994, when Portuguese sports newspapers turned dailies, Record defied «A Bola» supremacy and climbed to the first position in sales, advertising and audience, having been bought by the biggest printing company in the country, Cofina, in 1999. Record was also the first Portuguese newspaper to launch a website, in 1996.

It’s the first of three sports dailies in Global Audience with 859,000 readers each day and 67.3 million pageviews monthly, according to July 2009 reports Marktest’s Bareme (newspapers audience survey) and Netscope (internet audience survey).

Number of published news (unique content) on Record sports daily newspaper in 2008, by sport and by month, according to publishing software Millennium tagging:

NEWS PUBLISHED IN RECORD IN 2008 BY SPORT AND BY MONTH

Record in 2008 JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC TOTAL Football 2425 2361 2485 2584 2520 2364 2480 2428 2400 2790 2800 2635 30272 Tennis 79 69 70 144 67 60 55 77 55 75 27 40 818 Athletics 56 100 71 43 45 47 45 70 53 44 33 42 649 Basketball 70 59 64 60 46 30 33 48 50 52 50 52 614 Cycling 35 58 47 38 59 52 55 80 70 45 43 26 608 Handball 53 32 39 31 39 21 40 69 62 52 64 68 570 Volleyball 37 30 38 43 39 35 34 35 27 22 30 60 430 Roller Hockey 30 37 59 25 27 27 33 27 29 27 30 25 376 Sailing 29 23 26 26 25 19 17 34 15 12 13 19 258 Swimming 13 13 32 20 13 22 21 40 15 13 12 30 244 Table Tennis 13 18 14 15 20 12 8 22 12 22 16 19 191 Triathlon 2 4 4 18 15 12 13 30 8 11 12 12 141 Judo 14 9 13 12 11 8 14 20 12 7 11 8 139 Badminton 6 13 17 11 15 9 7 4 1 16 9 9 117 Fencing 3 10 10 7 8 8 5 25 0 4 2 2 84 Beach 1 0 1 3 14 10 12 8 0 3 1 3 56 Volleyball Gymnastics 4 7 4 8 4 0 4 6 1 4 3 7 52 Rowing 1 1 1 0 0 2 3 12 6 0 1 1 28 Taekwondo 2 1 2 2 2 10 0 6 0 1 0 0 26

More information in www.record.pt

LUSA is the state owned national news Agency, which has a Sports Desk and feeds online text, photos, video and audio information to more than 1,000 clients, including national, regional and foreign newspapers, radio stations, TV Stations and web portals.

In 2008, LUSA issued 150,000 unique content (75% text, 16% photos), what means that sport information correspond to 15% of the production total. In what regards to photo edition, 26 % of the pictures published were about sports, more than Politics (22%) or Arts, Culture and Entertainment (13%).

NEWS PUBLISHED IN LUSA IN 2008 BY SPORT AND BY MONTH

SPORT JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Total Football 1033 967 1065 970 1109 1111 701 821 853 983 1185 885 11683 Athletics 33 62 73 34 25 42 74 236 39 32 25 36 711

Cycling 10 51 31 38 92 48 74 139 73 47 18 24 645 Tennis 31 38 27 124 27 42 55 63 59 52 28 7 553 Basketball 14 27 24 63 39 12 24 32 40 17 27 23 342 Swimming 6 11 36 26 3 17 12 153 7 7 13 21 312 Handball 28 24 24 30 37 4 9 11 20 24 25 15 251 Volleyball 12 17 27 20 27 23 18 15 7 11 22 18 217 Sailing 24 11 17 5 9 6 12 101 8 4 0 2 199 Judo 14 10 10 60 3 3 10 62 0 3 5 0 180 Canoeing 1 6 10 6 28 15 18 38 4 4 0 0 130 Triathlon 2 5 6 12 24 7 7 39 5 2 1 4 114 Fencing 2 10 10 4 1 4 1 14 0 0 0 1 47 Rowing 0 2 1 0 0 1 1 29 3 0 0 0 37 Shooting 0 0 0 0 3 1 2 29 0 0 0 0 35 Table Tennis 0 1 0 8 5 1 0 14 1 4 0 0 34 Equestrian 0 2 2 0 3 4 2 15 2 2 0 1 33 Gymnastics 0 0 0 6 2 0 2 16 2 1 1 0 30 Badminton 4 1 5 5 2 0 1 7 0 1 2 0 28 Taekwondo 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 12 0 0 0 0 15 Archery 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 7 0 0 0 0 8 Water Polo 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 1 3 0 0 8 Modern Pentathlon 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 3 0 0 5 Boxing 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 5 Hockey 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

More information in www.lusa.pt

Appendix 3 - SOCIAL NETWORKS

Brief description of Social Networks studied:

MYSPACE – was created in 2003 by Tom Anderson and Christopher DeWolfe and is considered the biggest social network in the world, with more than 110 million registered users. In 2005 it was bought by News Corporation, the Rupert Murdoch’s media company that owns Fox TV, for estimated $US 580 million, turning into a business and giving birth to the concept of Social Media. It offers an internal email system, forums and groups, but the most popular feature is the possibility of hosting MP3 files, encouraging thousands of musicians and bands to create there official WebPages offering up to six songs for downloading. Its fast development created new possibilities, like video storage, interactive photo, virtual karaoke, classified advertising or RSS news feeding.

Young Portuguese singer Ana Free is one of the most successful cases of fine use of MySpace, aside with YouTube, to launch a performing career. Her song «Chained» videoclip reached one million views on in March 2009.

HI5 – was launched in January 2004 by a former student of the University of Illinois and is now one of the top 20 most frequented websites, claiming 60 million active members by the end of 2008. The system offers the possibility of each member create his own page, presenting his main interests, age and zone, but the feature that really turned it so popular is the possibility to upload member’s own pictures, offering them to be commented and shared by the other members, as well the favorite songs.

Hi5 was the most visited website in Portugal in the year of 2007, according to Alexa.com rankings. Hi5 is very popular among teenagers and young sportspeople. According to my Survey, it is also the most known and preferred social network among Portuguese athletes.

LINKEDIN – is a business network created in December 2002 and launched five months later, which has about 20 million registered members of more than 400 economic regions, as they are classified by the service. The aim is to offer a detailed list of users, connected to some businesses and companies they trust in, offering the possibility of finding jobs or specific skills, both by the candidates and the employers. There are other similar websites like Plaxo, Ziggs, XING or Yahoo! Kickstart, but all of them are decreasing as Facebook gets more popular and interactive.

ORKUT – was created in 2004 by a Stanford University student, Turkish born, Orkut Büyükkökten, and launched by Google, enabling the connection between people. Each member is shown under the shape of a profile and the system allows direct connections from friends or indirect from people interested on the profiles, and direct messages change on a viral basis (one to group) many times considered spam. It is now 63

operated from Brazil, due to its immense popularity in the country, but despite the idiom it didn’t generate extra traffic in Portugal.

FLICKR – is a photo and other pictures host and share website, the most known example of a flog. It was created in Canada, but in 2005 was bought by Yahoo! Inc., when it was already recognized as one of the emblematic Web 2.0 applications, due to the high interactivity it allows to the users, through the tagging system which consists in naming each item by popular tags to ease the search.

YOUTUBE – was created by three employees of PayPal, in February 2005, under the slogan «Broadcast Yourself» and less than two years after it was bought by Google by US$ 1.65 bn. It consists of store and share video footage that can be accessed by other websites or blogs. Time Magazine named it the best invention in 2006 for «creating a new way of millions of people entertain, educate, shock, rock and grok one another on a scale we’ve never seen before». The company estimates that more than 70 million videos are viewed by people on the site every day.

FACEBOOK – is a social network launched in February 4th 2004 by a Harvard student, called Mark Zuckerberg, aiming to connect exclusively the Harvard College community. In two months it was enlarged to M.I.T., to Boston University and other popular schools and universities. It grew very fast and has now estimated 145 million users, all over the world, according to Nielsen Online36 stats, with more than 60 million pictures uploaded every week. Facebook’s main feature is the Wall, a space for personal messages that generate comments and replies to friends, on open or restrict mode. Messages through Facebook tend to change SMS messages or email changing, because it’s easier, quicker and absolutely free. And since July 2007 posting in the Wall can be enriched by attached photos and other pictures or footage.

TWITTER – was launched in March 2006 by Obvious Corp., as both a social network and a server for micro-blogging allowing users to update only-text messages, information and comments with 140 characters or less, that can be sent by phone, e- mail, website or through exclusive applets like Tweet-Deck. Updates respond to the slogan-question «What are you doing now? » and are shown on real time on user’s page and sent to his followers. Nicholas Carr, author and Technologist, simple describes it as «the telegraph system of Web 2.0».

Twitter can be integrated in other common tools like Messenger and allows posting photos, through Twitpic, as well any kind of links to websites or specific pages. Many applications are popping up to increase the publishing on Twitter, including the possibility of programming future posts through TweetLater, that allows anyone to release information simultaneously with the event. Twitter is largely the most popular micro-blogging tool, but either Facebook or MySpace are also featuring it under the name of «status update».

36 Nielsen Online is a service of The Nielsen Company, a global information and media company, that delivers comprehensive, independent measurement and analysis of online audiences, including advertising, word of mouth and consumer behavior.

REFERENCES

References

Anderson, Chris (2006), The Long Tail, why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (Portuguese version), Editora Actual

Anderson, Chris (2006), «Long Tail, The – Wired Blogs, The Long Tail»

Battenfield, Frederick L., The Florida State University (2004), «An Ethnographic Study of the Culture of Communication in the Sports Information Office, in a Division I-A Athletic Program»

Beaumont, Claudine, telegraph.co.uk (2009), G20: Protesters use Twitter, Facebook and Social media tools to organize demonstrations

Bovinet, J.W. (1999), Customer communication in selected Professional sports (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA); A Test Sport Marketing Quarterly

Brooks, Brian S., University of Missouri (1997), «Journalism in the Information Age». Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon

Buteau, Michael & Levinson, Mason, Bloomberg.net (2009). Tweets should follow Birdies on Golf Tour

Castells, Manuel (1999), «A sociedade em rede. São Paulo: Paz e Terra».

Chapellet, J-L. (1996), «Sport Management: An International Approach»

Chapellet, J-L. & Bayle, E. (2005), «Strategic and Performance Management of Olympic Sport Organizations»

Chelladurai, P. & Madella, A (2006), «Human Resource Management in Olympic Sport Organizations»

Condron, Bob (2006), «US Olympic Committee Olympic Games Media Policies»

Cravens, Jeff (2006), «Making the Most of Your Publications»

Cunningham, George B., Texas A&M University (August 2007), «Creating and Sustaining Gender Diversity in Sports Organizations»

Deal, David (2009), Zappos, Shaq, Whole Foods, Twitter and you, Superhypeblog.com

DeSensi, J.T., & Rosenberg, D. (1996). Ethics in Sport Management.

Eaton, B., Patzke, R. & Whitney, M. (June 2006), «Dealing with the Chuckles of Your Sport»

Falkow, Sally (2009), How Journalists Use Social Media

Fardo, José António (November 2005), «A comunicação via Esporte» («Communication through Sport») Ferrand, A. & Torrigiani, L. (2004), «Marketing Management of Olympic Sport Organizations»

Ferrara, Joseph, selsiusrealestate.com (2009), «Building a Company with Social Media»

Flores, José A. (April 2000), «Women’s sports coverage still lacking»

Friedman, A. (1994). Successful ways to increase media sales: 500 great sports promotion ideas.

Fritjof Capra (2002), «The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems»

Gant, Scott E. (2007), «We’re all journalist now: the transformation of the Press and reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age»

Goldman, Alex (2009), «Could Twitter Top Google»

Goldman, David, CNNMoney.com (2009), «Facebook is king but Twitter makes waves»

Harris, Richard J. (2004), «A cognitive psychology of mass communication, 4th Edition»

Heald, Emma, editorsweblog.org (2009), «Twitter for Journalists and Newsrooms: sourcing, publicizing, connecting»

Heil, Bill & Piskorski, Mikolaj, Harvard Business School (2009), «New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets»

Helitzer, M. (1995). «The Dream Job: Sports Publicity, Promotion and Marketing»

Henry, I & Ping, C.L. (2004), « Governance and Ethics in Sport», in the Business of Sport Management

Hertz, Leba (January 2001), «Women in Sports – Measuring progress»

Huggins, Sally (1996), «Study shows that women’s sports lag behind men’s in terms of media coverage»

Kayes, Paul (2008), «Writing wrong stuff about sport»

Kelly, Tom, US Ski and Snowboard Association (2006), «Managing Victory»

Knowlegde.Wharton.upenn.edu (2009), «Advertising Yourself: Building a Personal Brand through Social Networks»

Kotler, Philip (2008), «FAQs on Marketing, Answered by the Guru of Marketing»

Kotler, P. & Keller, K-L. (1997-2009), «Marketing Management», 13th edition 67

Littlejohn, S.W. (1999), «Theories of Human Communication», Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Lopiano, Donna A. (2006), «Media Coverage of Women’s Sport is important»

Mathias, Mark, living-with-technology.blogspot.com (2009), «Social Media goes mainstream»

Mattei, Al (1999), «Media Watch: Sports Journalism on Life Support»

Miller, Craig (2006), «Professional Athletes – A Public Relation Dream or Nightmare»

Nichols, W., Moynahan, P., Hall, A., Taylor, J., Sport Management Library (2002), «Media Relations in Sport»

O’Reilly, Tim (2005), «What Is Web 2.0 - Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software» Pitts, Brenda G. & Stotlar, David K. (2002), «Fundamentals of Sport Marketing»

Posetti, Julia (2009), How Journalists Are Using Twitter in Australia

Press-Feed.com. (2009), «Socialize your Website Content with News Feeds»

Reagan, Gillians (2009), Contacting Reporters Via Twitter

Recuero, Raquel da Cunha (2008), «Redes sociais na Internet: Considerações iniciais»

Rubio, K.. Universidade da São Paulo (2002) «O trabalho do atleta e a produção do espectáculo desportivo» («The athletes’s work and the production of the sport show»

Sá, Daniel & Sá, Carlos (2008), «Sports Marketing, As novas regras do jogo»

Screen Digest (March 2003), «The Global Business of Sports Television Report», published by

Seijdel, J. (2007), «Rise of the Informal Media: how search engines, weblogs and YouTube change public opinion»

Shank, M. (2004), «Sport marketing: A strategic perspective (3rd ed.)»

Sibilia, Paula (2008) «O show do eu», Nova Fronteira

Silva, Antonio Braz de Oliveira e; Matheus, Renato Fabiano; Parreiras, Fernando Silva; Parreiras, Tatiane Aparecida Silva (2006). «Análise de redes sociais como metodologia de apoio para a discussão da interdisciplinaridade na Ciência da Informação. Ciência da Informação», Brasília.

Silva, Antonio Braz de Oliveira e; Matheus, Renato Fabiano; Parreiras, Fernando Silva; Parreiras, Tatiane Aparecida Silva (2005), «Estudo da Rede de Co-Autoria e da Interdisciplinaridade na Produção Científica Através de Métodos de Análise de Redes Sociais», Florianópolis.

Smith, Maggie, BBC News (2009), Can Twitter survive the hype cycle Stoldt, G.C., Dittmore, S.W., & Branvold, S.E. (2006), «Sport public relations: Managing organizational communication»

The International Sports Press Survey (October 2005), «The world’s Best Advertising Agency: The Sport Press»

Umphlett, Wiley Lee (2006), «From Television to the Internet»

Wasserman, Todd (2009), «Do You Need a Social Media Marketer?»

Wigley, Jon (2003), «The future media challenge and opportunities for Sport», Sport Business Magazine

Withaker, Francisco (1998). «Redes: Uma estrutura Alternativa de Organização»

Women’s Sports Foundation Research Report» (2006), «Women in the 2006 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games»

Worth, Phil (2006), «Getting Publicity»

Zuk, Ryan (2009), PR Tactics and The Strategist Online

Abstract

This paper contains a proposal to solve a common difficulty for a large group of sports, called Minor because lower exposure in the Media. In the year 2009, the World watches a global explosion in terms of mass communication, as new features of the digital era make possible to any person, without complex software or profound computers skills, to address any kind of content at the speed of light. The Web 2.0 is offering the unflavored sports new tools and sharp solutions to shorten the gap relatively to hegemonic Football. This is not an exclusive problem of Portuguese Sports, but the research shows that the small and old country on West Europe is ready to face the challenge. A new generation of athletes and journalists may join forces within the new spaces of Social Networks, developing niches of interest in order to provoke the curiosity and, finally, the follow-up of the general public, through a slow but progressive engagement according to a Communication Strategy.

The research done confirmed with numbers collected for the first time that Football fills up to 80 per cent of pages and spaces in Major Media, leaving no space to many sports, despite some outstanding results and performances, especially in the individual sports. Many Olympic Sports, involving thousands of athletes, counted less than one news bulletin published per week on national Media.

On his final report, Chef de Mission of Portugal to 2008 Beijing Games Manuel Boa de Jesus, also member of Portuguese Olympic Committee and president of the Gymnastics Federation, urged the NOC to elaborate a Strategic Communications Plan, mobilizing all the Federations and seeking for further involvement of athletes, and at the same time increasing the knowledge of sports journalists for a better coverage.

When the search for a solution began, it pointed out to create a platform to conduct Minor Sports evidence to unaware Major Media. But the work coincided with the world discovery of Social Networks power in the era of Web 2.0, also called New Media, the emerging Media.

The study ends with the draw of a Communication Strategic Plan, adoptable by institutions or by single athletes in order to reach wider audiences.