Thefanclub.com: Twitter for sports

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on January 15, 2010 at 5:58 PM

The future of Twitter is mobile phone applications, says Jean-Sébastien Cruz, CEO of Netco Sports, France, speaking at the WAN-IFRA conference 'Using sports news to optimise your revenues'.

He points to some important trends in the areas of social networking and mobile applications. Newspapers that create pages on Twitter find themselves on the same level as any user, he says. The iPhone has the fastest penetration we've seen, and is rapidly changing the way we use the web, pressing buttons rather than using URLs. The Apple tablet is coming soon. Apple makes payment easy through the centralised App store, and provides a robust software development kit. And sports apps make up a substantial part of the massive growth in app downloads.

So what is NetCo Sports' strategy? Their objective is to have 2500 apps in 15 sports worldwide by 2012. They have created 200 iPhone apps in the field of sport so far, and their first was launched in 2008. Each one is available in five languages, and recognises the language of the phone automatically. A search for football in the Apple store brings up their Football 10 app. He calls this an encouragement to arrive quickly and be present early. His company has a 25% market share in France, with 30 million pages read through their mobile apps. Canal+ is their advertising partner, and receives traffic and visibility from the arrangement.

The top 15 apps in France include five from NetCo Sports, such as Football News, Football 10 and Rugby News. They also have a strong presence in the UK, Italy and Spain. Around 150 free apps are downloaded for every one that is sold: Belgium, Switzerland and the UK are the big buyers, while France, Spain and Italy buy less in terms of percentage but have high volumes.

What to do with all these apps? Social networks, he answers. The company's apps will be connected to their new website, called The Fan Club, launched this week in France around the world in the coming year.

What's new about this website? All the information is concentrated in a single feed, he says. Users are connected to their favourite sports, and Facebook and Twitter feeds, while everything posted on the site itself is in turn automatically posted on Facebook and Twitter. Feeds are published at the same time for the iPhone and the website.

People connect when they have similar passions, such as for sport, he says, and through this new social network they can find out information and what people are saying about topics of interest. Users choose their sport and receive a feed. There's also a private messaging feed, with familiar features from social networking like friends, followers and subscribers. Users can retweet posts and rate content.

Today newspapers are creating pages on Twitter. Is it a good thing for a publisher to put themselves on a level with everyone else, he asks? In The Fan Club, newspapers are in a specialised sports environment and will get clicks back to their website. The site is only about sports, will create only content related to sports, and will delete unrelated content so sports fans can find what they're looking for, he says.

And advertising? First we create a database of sports fans, then we can offer it to advertisers, he concludes.