Every day we comb the digital world looking for new, more efficient and unique ways not just to engage, but to engage more effectively. If you are a league, a team or a brand in sports and entertainment, you spend hours trying to use the most effective tools to quickly and cleanly reach not just the masses, but the most effective core you can. Content may be king, but ROI is queen, at least. So in the not too distant future may come another way where teams, leagues, brands, even talent, can better align and engage. It is not a new technology per se, it is really a play on a basic platform, albeit much more customized, and perhaps easier to organize and identify with those core followers everyone in business needs to reach.
The organization who regulates the internet, (ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has licensed 1,300 NEW web extensions to be released over the next few years. From (dot)guru to (dot)marketing to (dot) photography, these extensions will provide better signposting for marketing messages. The new web extensions or gTLD’s (Generic Top Level Domains) are the letters that are RIGHT OF THE DOT…they provide messaging that is specific to clients wants and needs…
Google and Amazon have invested tens of millions of dollars in the new gTLDs. They and other leading web companies see new gTLDs as a core element of the future of the internet, making it easier for users to find the content they want, and easier for brands and companies to monetize online relationships. With consumers attention being spread thinner than ever, across multiple online destinations, the new web extensions will allow companies to create websites with short punchy domain addresses that speak directly to what the end-user is looking for at that site.
One TLD that is launching in early 2015 and is targeted towards teams, leagues, brands, music artists or anyone who has fans to engage is (dot)FANS, and it is positioned as the NEW web address for fan engagement. It will provide the opportunity to create a complimentary website to an existing .com or act as a messaging tool that points at existing content at their .com address. And be a destination that they own and control.
As an example, a broadcast network might build a marketing campaign around their content and drive fan engagement by utilizing football.fans, soccer.fans, baseball.fans, golf.fans etc.; so a network like Fox can take existing programming “FOX SPORTS the home of true FANS” and use the TLDs to point to that content which is highly organized and highly relevant to that core fan who might not want to search through a host of tabs or Geico could target their marketing message in on some of their sponsorships and utilize geicogolf.fans for promotions behind their activation in that sport.
Teams and leagues and athletes may have unlimited new real estate to market against and gain new eyeballs, which will help them utilize their existing .com website better. A team such as the Red Sox can effectively and inexpensively build a specific site redsox.fans to house all their fan engagement and social media elements on one home landing page, which could make for more involvement by fans visiting and looking just for key content that appeals to a set group of die-hards without having to search through pages that are not appealing to them.
The .fans platform will have its issues, as huge amounts of digital rights have been poured into existing agreements, and countless millions have been spent creating effective portals as could exist before the new gTLD’s were released. Sports and entertainment are also tribal, so getting people to break old habits and patterns to engage in a new place will take some time. How would the pricing work and what would be the benefits other than ease of navigation? Will core fans be enough to sustain whatever the ancillary costs will be? All to be determined in a world where sometimes cool and hip can burn through millions fast without ROI. However as a novel engagement opportunity that is on the come, .Fans may be one to watch as it grows in the coming years and the consumer gets maybe more used to a different way to cull content, and content providers give the new platform a test drive.
