April 2009

Big deals, smart moves and dreams of glory
With trade-by-trade updates from Score Mobile, fans never need to wonder who went where By Pat Atkinson

It’s March 4th, the morning of the National Hockey League trade deadline—a time and date the League office establishes, after which no player trades are allowed for the remainder of the season. This annual ritual generates tremendous buzz and anticipation among hockey fans and analysts, who speculate extensively about which players are likely to be traded and where they’re headed. A game of sorts in its own right, the trades reflect the strategic “play making” abilities of the teams’ general managers so aficionados tend to want to follow the action minute by minute, just as they would with any competitive sport.

This year, the 3PM deadline happens to fall on a Wednesday and most people—including hardcore hockey fans— are at work while the rumor mill churns and the number of actual player trades intensifies during the final hours. Not to worry, Dale Fallon, director of mobile services at Score Mobile, has it all covered.

“It’s almost like the Super Bowl for hockey fans,” he explains. “We have fans watching on TV but those at work tend to log on to our Web site and we hope a reasonable portion of them are also viewing the Score Mobile iPhone edition where we’re running a live, interactive blog,” he adds.
To achieve this, one of Score Mobile’s regular hockey bloggers sits in front of three television sets—concurrently watching the trade-by-trade action on three channels, composing interesting and entertaining copy, soliciting comments from his audience, and vetting their responses before posting them. It’s an impressive combination of skills that seems more akin to air traffic control than traditional broadcasting. At Score Mobile, live blogging is an enhancement of the real time, live sports experience. The media company hires freelance writers to follow, watch, and write creative, humorous, and somewhat cheeky synopses of the games as they are happening. The largest audience is attracted as games are taking place. “It’s fun, it moves along quickly and there have been some very sizable audiences participating in these blogs,” Fallon adds, explaining that although the idea was conceived for mobile, it is cross published to the Web site during live sports events. Live blogs are developed for 25 games per week across different sports — meaning the best game of the day in each major league is selected. When there is an embarrassment of riches, two games per day are chosen and during finals such as the NBA and NHL playoffs, every game features a live blog.

Score Mobile iPhone edition
Currently, 90 percent of Score Mobile’s audience is composed of iPhone users. This is partly a function of where Fallon's technical team has invested its energies this year, as well as a reflection of the device’s incredible popularity.

“I hope to change that equation,” he says, “not by losing iPhone users but by adding audience on the Blackberry platform and other popular devices. The next quarter is going to be very focused on developing a Blackberry edition while maintaining and enhancing our IPhone application,” he adds, noting that the new edition will be ready this summer.
Score Mobile began supporting the iPhone a year and a half ago—back when it became a hot commodity in Britain and the US. “For us, that activity started to become very meaningful in August 2008, when the device finally became available in Canada,” he stresses.

Revolutionary changes
In the first place, the iPhone’s comparatively large touch screen makes it easier for greater numbers of Canadian sports fans to actually view information and advertising and interact with each other and Score Mobile more readily.
The availability of generous and even unlimited data plans also has a big impact on the mobile edition’s viability, as Fallon explains.

“For a long time, general mobile users—particularly in Canada, were concerned about ‘What’s this going to cost me?’ ‘If I click on this, am I going to get dinged for two bucks?’ and that hasn’t gone away entirely. But with the pressure that Apple applied to the carriers who support the iPhone—in the case of Canada, Rogers—reasonable data charges were finally achieved here, which means that usage rates ramped up dramatically. So in addition to the device’s features, the pricing that came along with it contributed to our ability to provide a more viable mobile service.”

So did Apple’s launch last July of an app store for the iPhone and iPod touch, a move that the mobile application guru says completely changed the ground rules. “At last, there was a central distribution point that people could trust, which provided intuitive, one-stop-shopping for games, Score Mobile and countless other free and paid applications for the iPhone,” he emphasizes, noting, “It’s been a roaring success for Apple and our product.”

SMS
Unlike mobile carriers, The Score treats SMS as a complement to its television broadcasts rather than a medium in its own right. At various times of day, SMS is used to facilitate on-TV live chats, whereby viewers are asked to vote on sports topics, or make picks as part of a popular sports fantasy game. Fans use SMS to communicate their selections.
“We certainly use SMS and interact with thousands per week but the numbers aren’t as large as with our iPhone product,” Fallon acknowledges. “It’s kind of an important communication channel to open up with our audience and ultimately, we envision building a mobile CRM database and making more intensive use of SMS but it’s a separate slice of the world from the applications we have with the mobile Web.”

Advertising channel
As an advertising vehicle, Score Mobile provides some interesting opportunities for targeting and launching interactive campaigns. It provides mobile display ads – an offering of banners of various dimensions with particular creative parameters — which click through to destinations such as mobile micro sites, click-to-call, watch video and various other impressive outcomes that support a range of calls to action. Its target audience is heavily male, ages 18 to 45 and upwards. The media company provides geographic targeting, principally Canada versus US, but as Fallon explains, while no regional targeting is available, location can largely be inferred from the team a fan is supporting. “We’re working principally with advertisers who have in the past or are currently working with us on television,” he explains.

At the same time, Score Mobile is perceived as being innovators in the mobile space, which has attracted some new business.

“We have some conversations on the go with advertisers where there are symbiotic relationships that drive the product forward but also integrate the message from the sponsor. I think we’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of delivering value for marketers and advertisers. The good news is that, in general , the industry will move toward identifying the true value of the mobile audience. It’s a very different picture from where we were at a year ago.“