Sports and New-Media Innovation - This Takes the Cake!

My friends know how big a quote-freak I am ... and here's one more that I have come to love: 

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Here's a bunch of unreasonable people who, in my opinion, have created the next big thing in the new-media-and-sports industry. No ... not the Indian sports industry ... nnah! We are a long way from growing into a true "sports industry" itself! 

The US Sports Industry. I used to be under the opinion that the US and European sports industries are so saturated and matured, that all opportunities will come knocking within the developing economies of Asia-Pacific, and India, Africa etc. Now when I look at Brand Affinity Technologies, and also because I haven't had breakfast yet, I am eating my own, tasteless words. :(

Ryan Steelberg, and his bunch have come up with one of the most novel concepts of making new-media tick within the sports industry. Till today, the new-media world hasn't been able to think beyond things solutions that bring match-highlights or score-updates to people's mobile phones. Some more adventurous people have tried to (and failed till today) to use create pseudo-FaceBooks and Orkuts within the vertical of sports (we tried that at MeraSport and fell flat ... on our faces). In this stale eco-system, then, I feel fresh to welcome Brand Affinity Technologies.

Brand Affinity have a simple concept! They connect potential advertisers/brands to fresh talent. Their solution (a kind of social network), executed entirely through their website, helps ... rather ... enables local, hidden talent in sports to showcase themselves to the relevant world by helping them to create an online portfolio. The other side of the coin: they also enable advertisers and brands to borrow these portfolios, merge it with their imminent marketing needs, and begin their campaigns almost instantly - wherever they want to. These are the bones that make up the body ... and like any true American would do ... BAT packages these bones in such a juicy meat that you can't help but think that this will work like nothing else ever did.

Want to feel it yourself? Here you go ... 

Here are the reasons why I feel this is worth keeping track of ...

1) They have a simple solution. Very simple. All they are doing is to copy the athlete-brand relationship of the physical world (contract rooms) within the online space while themselves acting as 'agents'. The business has been one of the most profitable ever since McCormack started IMG decades ago. Thus, BAT already have a revenue model in place (the biggest challenge with virtual businesses of any kind ... be it Twitter or Facebook ... is to crack a revenue model)!

2) They enable local talent to connect with local brands and enable local, more targeted marketing. In the world where 'glocal' is fast becoming the new keyword ... experts are putting their bets on local businesses that can prove their revenue models and can, then, exploit opportunities to scale the business globally. BAT already has 2000 local athletes on it's board, and around 50 brands who have been using their portfolios to kick-start their campaigns. Won't be too long before 2000 becomes 20000 ... and more.

3) BAT creates super-duper, media-rich portfolios for athletes ... which makes them look like super-heroes of some order! I am sure they have a talented media team that helps them create that out-of-the-world snippets for each sports person. This is the kind of media work that any brand manager would really like.

4) We net-savvy consumers have evolved into a bunch of humans who ignore anything that appears on the right hand side of the screen. We know that it's always going to be some Google ads, or some useless content. It takes some media-rich, fresh content to attract our attention to an online campaign. That's what BAT does successfully!

5) They have the support of Microsoft Advertising. Isn't that terrific in itself!

This is the kind of stuff that I would love to do within the Indian set-up. Don't know when, though!