This past week at article appeared in The Record Newspaper talking about the challenges and opportunities three Division I basketball programs in the state…Fairleigh Dickinson, Rutgers and Seton Hall…face in selling tickets and building brand. However with so many other programs competing across all divisions in New Jersey, we found one that is using technology as well or better than most to speak to their key audiences. It’s not Monmouth or Rider, NJIT or Rowan. It’s Caldwell College. The Division II Cougars, who began men’s play in 1986, may not be the state’s brightest athletic program, but they may be one of the most efficient in terms of telling their story to the right audience.
Led by Mark Corino, who doubles as athletic director and head men’s basketball coach, Caldwell has used a combination of well-thought out digital infrastructure and forward thinking to build a live digital sports broadcast program for its marquee sports…men’s and women’s basketball, that is cost efficient and merchandises the school’s athletes, its academic programs and its brand, to several thousand people every time the teams take the court for a home game at the George R. Newman Recreation and Athletic Center. They provide what many other schools on any level are still struggling to do; a clean and cost effective and information filled live streaming broadcast of both audio and video. It’s not like Caldwell is a powerhouse; both teams are 9-6 and are certainly in contention for the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference titles (and they will host the men’s and women’s tournaments this year) but what they have is the ability to effectively tell their story, through the use of video, to a core audience of not millions, but several thousand people across the country each time they take the court.
The idea of streaming games came to Corino following a contest a few years ago when the rarest of rare came about; a game broadcast live on television for the Cougars against Bloomfield College on CBS College Sports TV. The game became a great source of communication for the school to alumni, students and most importantly recruits, and Corino realized that there has to be a way to effectively and cleanly continue that dialogue through the use of media. It’s not like suddenly the conference or Caldwell was going to develop its own broadcast television or even radio package, but the use of the digital space could provide an answer that was both effective and cost efficient. So enter into the picture a series of low cost streaming partners, all looking to capture the space just below broadcast for colleges. The one that Caldwell eventually, and still does, work with is NMTV Sports, which provides much of the broadcast infrastructure to bring live video to the digital space for Caldwell and many other schools across the country. Suddenly, the Cougars had a platform for which to not just tell their games but merchandise their story, and Corino found students and an enterprising local resident, Jerry Milani, to help amplify and professionalize the broadcast.
The result was a live broadcast channel that speaks directly to an interested audience; the exact goal of what social and digital media is supposed to achieve. It’s not looking to reach millions or hundreds of thousands; rather the Caldwell broadcasts are designed to professionally reach a core group of intersected parties from alumni and recruits to players families and others; live and with a quality and consistent broadcast signal. It’s not CBS or NBC, but it is clean, fun and a great vehicle at a solid price investment by the school. The result is destination viewing for those interested and a growing cult following for Caldwell hoops that would have never existed even ten years ago.
Is it perfect? Of course not, but it is still light-years ahead of many “broadcasts” that were occurring only a few years ago. Caldwell has invested in state of the art high speed broadcast lines in the gym which have multiple sues when games are not being broadcast; they have a production team that uses several angles to make the broadcast look professional, and they have a voice in Milani and others who take the time to deliver a quality how to all who watch. The viewer is entertained and informed and feels like he or she is part of the experience of Caldwell hoops. The result, according to Corino, is that the program now has a national presence and there is a sense of community for athletics that didn’t exist before.
Now is what Caldwell is doing different from other high schools, let alone colleges across the country who have looked to the digital space as a form of outreach. In some ways no, as NMTV and other sites like it provide a great platform to broadcast and most Division I schools have created very cost effective platforms for their non-broadcast events like men’s basketball and football. However at the Division II and III level, especially in our state, what Caldwell has done is remarkable for brand building.
The school has put the time and the effort in to make the broadcasts seem first rate. They treat each production professionally and use it as a marketing platform for the school and as a test area for students looking to excel in the field. The difference is in the quality of the deliverable. While some schools slap up a camera in a distant corner and have anyone chime in on audio, Caldwell acts and sounds professional. Where some schools feed fades in and out, Caldwell’s remains consistent. Whereas some schools promote as an afterthought, Caldwell makes it an expandable priority, all of which are smart and consistent brand building business practices that any sports property can work from. Most importantly, the broadcast is cost efficient and timely and considered an investment in building the equity of the college and the programs, something which many of the Division I programs across the state don’t even appreciate.
Now is the live broadcast of home games going to change the course of Caldwell? No, not right now. What is does is create a differentiator for the staffs from their competitors (this year only one other conference school, Georgian Court, is streaming its games and they are only doing a select few) and it builds equity in the Caldwell brand. Those to elements, according to Corino, were worth the investment alone. They don’t have to reach millions, they have to take the time to reach the right few hundred consistently, and that connection gets amplified by social media and word of mouth. The next step will be finding other sports, especially those contained by time and space…like volleyball…to accept the platform, and then growing the sponsor base incrementally to offset the cost. College, after all, should be about the investment as much as the return, and Caldwell’s investment is one to watch, literally and figuratively.
So in the end, maybe the small Division II school doesn’t win a national title, but it educates and informs its core and helps expose the school to a wider and targeted audience. That makes for not just smart athletics and marketing, it makes for a smarter education system, and one that should be emulated by schools big and small. The outlay can justify the return, and for Caldwell that means winning not just on the court, but in the entrepreneurial space as well.
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