Peyton Manning, the star quarterback of the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts, is famous for the accuracy of his passing arm. The team is hoping that the information it gains from its new social networking site for fans, MyColts.net, will help team sponsors connect to potential customers with similar precision.
One reason the Colts need that information is that Manning and the Colts have attracted a worldwide following, no doubt enhanced by the team’s victory in pro football’s Super Bowl championship in January. 10.5 million fans 12 and over name the Colts as their favorite team and 75% of the 1 million unique monthly visitors to the Colt’s primary web site, www.colts.com, come from outside of Indiana, says Pat Coyle, the team’s executive director of digital business.
While those 1 million monthly visitors to the main web site are anonymous, the new site, MyColts.net, requires fans to register with their address, age and gender. That would allow, for instance, the site to present an ad only to men 18-24 who live in Indiana for an advertiser who wants to reach such consumers. 5,200 fans registered for the site in the first week, Coyle says.
Fans who come to the free site can post blogs and photos, create personal profile pages, search for other Colts fans in their area, and form groups, such as of Colts fans in a particular city. Sponsors can also form groups, as telecom company AT&T has done, enticing fans to join that group with offers of game tickets and sideline visits. Sponsors can then market to members of their group, taking advantage of the demographic information gathered at registration.
The site also gives out points, called Colts Cred, that help move up a fan’s blogs, profiles and reviews to be more visible on the site. One way to collect those points is to do business with sponsors.
Coyle says revenue from the site will come primarily from sponsors, and not from merchandise, which is sold from the primary Colts.com site. But he is preparing one new piece of merchandise, a special MyColts.net t-shirt that will identify the wearer as a Colts fan from a particular city, such as Fort Wayne, IN. Of the 10,000 fans who preregistered for the site, more than half said they would buy such a t-shirt.
The Microsoft Technology Group at Crowe Chizek and Company LLC, a subsidiary of professional services organization Horwath International, worked with the Colts to rebuild their main site, Colts.com, on a Microsoft platform. Crowe Chizek also worked on the new social networking site.
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