Last weekend in Philadelphia the Whitecaps played a not so great game, but thankfully, they remain the only team in the MLS to not allow a goal after 4 weeks of play. Also, with an injury list for Saturday that would have surely spelled defeat last season, it was a nice surprise to see that our roster really <i>did</i> have the depth needed to keep us going.
It wasn’t pretty, but they got it done. And, as my basketball coach told us in high school after a particularly grisly victory, "Sometimes you take home the ugly ones, but that doesn’t mean they don’t count." Mind you, he was giving this advice to a room full of teenage girls so there are other questions that arise, but the end result is that the Whitecaps got another point and, join Sporting Kansas City as one of two undefeated teams in the MLS.
Thinking back on last season, other than "Goals Against" and "Hot French Guys", I don't think the Whitecaps were near the top of any list, so at this stage in the game, I’ll take it.
Now, this is all well and good, but the point I was trying to make (and I promise you there’s a point!) is that I was kept up-to-date on every aspect of the game last weekend, but I didn’t actually get to watch it. I know, sacrilegious, but that's what I mean when I say, "It's not your father's football" (See how I did that?!).
I was out of town last weekend visiting family, and while I was already distraught about not being at my local with my friends, I had no access whatsoever to a television to watch the game.
Enter the interwebs.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
Not only was I able to follow the game, thanks to the likes of dedicated fans and newscasters, I was able to follow my friends’ displeasure at the referee’s calls, stay abreast of the party situation unfolding in the bar and feel as though I was there, in the thick of it, all thanks to my mobile phone and a few handy apps.
The funny thing is that it didn’t even occur to me to find a radio. And I’m not the only one. In a recent <a href="http://blog.gmrmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Sports-Social-Media-Infographic-GMR-Marketing.jpg" target="_blank">survey of sports fans</a>, only 4% of respondents said they’d head to a radio to follow breaking sports news, whereas 81% chose the internet as their source du jour (41% for Twitter & Facebook, 40% for other sports news sites). The truth is, sports fans are ten times more likely to turn to Facebook or Twitter for sports-related content than they are to head to their radios. Hands up, who still <i>owns</i> a radio?
Now, don’t confuse this for me getting a hate-on for radio (only 13% of respondents in the survey said they’d turn to their TVs) I’m simply stating the fact that we are changing the way we consume information, and at the forefront of that change are sports fans. Since most of my friends are sports fans, and most of them are just as glued to their mobile devices as I am, this doesn't come as much of a surprise, but for someone who recently taught their father to text, this is a definite change from the way things used to be.
Before I get too far down my nerdy path, perhaps I should warn you that if there’s one thing I like more than sports, it’s nerding out over technology, so apologies to those of you who don’t find this stuff interesting, I’ll be back next month with something completely different!
For my fellow geeks who wish to learn more, it may be called "Away From the Numbers", but from time to time it's fun to throw some numbers out there.
When looking over the <a href="http://yearinreview.twitter.com/index_en.html" target="_blank">Twitter Year in Review</a> for 2011 it’s clear that whether you call it soccer, football, footy or futbol, you’re using twitter to do it. Not only has “tweets per second” become a valid metric, but of the Top 10 'Tweets per Second' events, 3 of them were soccer related.
On May 28th 2011, as Barcelona defeated Manchester United 3-1 in the UEFA Champions League Final, Twitter saw an impressive 6,303 tweets per second related to the match. Then on July 17th 2011, footy fans around the world nearly broke Twitter as an impressive 7,166 and 7,196 tweets per second erupted as Brazil was eliminated from the Copa America and Japan beat the United States in the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup respectively.
The Women’s World Cup in Germany set a world record that day for tweets per second, and it was only surpassed by 2 events for the rest of the calendar year. I haven’t even touched on the numerous Facebook records that were set for mentions, tags, status updates and incredible brand-related content that surfaced on Facebook during the Copa America and the World Cups of 2010 and 2011, but this column, and your attention span, are only so long. And now, as Brazil gears up for the World Cup in 2014, companies are working hard to implement 4G networks across the host cities to ensure that their systems can handle the traffic that will no doubt be there for kickoff.
But it isn’t just the fans watching at home and in local bars who are connecting, engaging and devouring content. In that same sports fan survey I mentioned above, 63% said they also check sports-related social media in the stadium, during the game.
This fact is something that hasn’t gone unnoticed by some tech-savvy stadiums, and it’s certainly on the radar of the companies providing high density wifi. For example, in 2011, LiveStrong Sporting Park, home of our fellow undefeated Sporting KC, released a Cisco-powered solution that has the capability of handling 18,000 simultaneous wifi connections, enough to allow almost everyone in the stadium to connect <i>at the same time</i> (If you’ve tried to connect in BC Place, you know that this is cool).
Not only can fans connect, but they’ve deployed this service in conjunction with team-focused apps to sign up members to the fan club, allow you to check-in at the game, order food from your seat, play trivia that rewards points redeemable at the concession and team store, and have even gone so far as to provide iPads in each luxury box to control lighting, volume and other aspects of the VIP experience.
Now, I’m not moving to Kansas City anytime soon, but I can understand why Michael Boxall found it so impressive and named it his favorite stadium to play at on the road, when we sat down for an <a href="http://www.canadiansoccernews.com/content.php?2772-Nightcap-With-A-Whitecap-Michael-Boxall" target="_blank">interview in February</a>.
What I can't understand is why a search of "Whitecaps" in the app store reveals nothing more than a few unofficial apps that want me to pay to realize they're full of bugs and rarely updated. It's even more surprising when you consider that the Whitecaps reside in Vancouver, BC, a city where you can hardly swing your Starbucks latte without knocking over a couple of app developers.
Again, don’t think I’m getting my hate-on for the front office, I’m actually very impressed with the emphasis and effort they put into their social media. Before the team had even officially kicked a ball in the MLS, <a href="http://www.twitter.com/whitecapsfc" target="_blank">@WhitecapsFC</a> had fans running all over town to find scarves, tweet photos and become a part of the excitement.
Each home game programme features tweets and photos from fans, including my own (April 23rd 2011 for those collectors out there) but there are certainly opportunities that have not been touched on yet, and desperately need to be to enhance the game experience for us "Millennials" and especially for Generation "Text", who are an entirely new breed of iDependents, valuing an internet connection second only to oxygen (and it's a close second).
So what was the point of all this? The point is simply to imagine your current football-loving life without the internet. There are no forums, there's no twitter, there's not even this blog (the horror!). You can't send a message to your favorite player and congratulate them on a good game, you can't quickly search for last-minute tickets, you can't even easily check the scores of other games from within the stadium.
It’s a little bit scary to realize how much we rely on the internet, but it's also amazing to think of the ways we're using it to make our sporting experience better.
From personal experience, I've used the internet to convince Eric Hassli to give me his jersey, and to arrange dinner with <a href="http://www.canadiansoccernews.com/content.php?2907-Nightcap-With-A-Whitecap-Knighton-Watson-Le-Toux" target="_blank">Sebastien Le Toux, Matt Watson and Brad Knighton</a> – not bad, not bad at all.
The internet is allowing us to take our favourite game with us wherever we go, and to interact with it in ways our parents, let alone our grandparents, never would have thought possible.
But, with great power, comes great responsibility, so I'll leave you with this:
Nearly 60% of respondents to that aforementioned sports fan survey, admitted to checking scores, news, and highlights from the toilet. So, it might be wise to think twice before asking to use your friend's phone. Just sayin’.
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