Live TV has enabled sports leagues to provide for fans via the social web like never before. Major League Baseball has been at the forefront of this social TV innovation. Last summer Stephen Colbert took over its Twitter account. In December MLB added a brand new social media layer to one of its studios, and last month they recorded three million downloads to their app in just eight days. With a 162-game season and playoffs, the MLB decided to do more than just create a social TV strategy. They created an entire Fan Cave, now in its second season.
While the Super Bowl had a social media command center for the big game, the MLB decided to take over an entire store in Manhattan’s Noho to house nine “Cave Dwellers” tasked with “watching every single baseball game each day,” in the 15,000 square foot space. MLB players, celebrities and musicians stop by the Fan Cave to create video content and more that gets distributed via their Twitter and Facebook channels. Each Dweller was chosen based on their passion for the game and ability to leverage the social web. They’re now competing to become the number one fan, which will be decided through online voting after they compete in different activities throughout the season.
Additionally, the Fan Cave is “fully integrated with MLB’s broadcast partners, with FOX, ESPN, TBS and MLB Network regularly featuring content from the Fan Cave and using it as a conduit for reaching fans via social media,” according to the league. We spoke with Tim Brosnan the Executive Vice President of Business for Major League Baseball about how the Fan Cave became a 24/7 social media strategy.
Lost Remote: How did you come up with the idea for the fan cave?
Tim Brosnan: The MLB Fan Cave grew out of our desire to address three specific areas in which we saw opportunity for growth: engaging with fans via social media, both at the league level and through players; reaching younger fans and converting casual baseball fans into more avid followers; and raising the profile of our players by showcasing their off-field personalities. During the offseason before the 2011 season, we had a number of meetings with our new marketing agency, Hill Holliday, and an idea evolved of creating a place that’s both a physical location as well as a virtual world, where baseball can intersect with all things pop culture through viral content, all while celebrating the epic nature of the baseball season and all the daily twist and turns through 2,430 games.
LR: How did it become a big part of the MLB’s social strategy?
Brosnan: At its core, baseball is a social activity. You go to games with friends and watch games on TV in groups, you talk about last night’s game with coworkers and debate everything about the game – your favorite team, your favorite players, who’s better than whom, statistics, history, etc. And we all know how important the second screen has become to people while watching live sports on TV. The MLB Fan Cave allows us to tap into that digital water cooler, giving fans a platform to engage with baseball 24/7. During the day we’re creating compelling video content for fans to share with friends featuring MLB players and celebrity visitors. At night, fans gather online to share in the experience of watching baseball along with the nine “Cave Dwellers” in the Fan Cave. These superfans survived a process that began with 22,000 applicants, and are watching every single game inside the Fan Cave while chronicling their experience via social media and competing with one another to stay in the Fan Cave through the end of the World Series.
We know that the MLB Fan Cave is accomplishing all our goals and then some. We have successfully reached a younger audience, as the average fan of the Fan Cave is 30 years old compared with 45-48 for the typical avid baseball fan. We have reached a highly engaged audience via social media, as more than a third of our Facebook followers have liked or shared a piece of content, up to six times the usual rate for sports pages. And we have created nearly 400 pieces of compelling video content featuring more than 200 players, celebrities, musicians and other entertainers, allowing baseball to cross over beyond the sports page.
LR: What are the different TV elements that the Fan Cave amplifies and complements?
Brosnan: Live baseball games account for more than 15,000 hours of national and local television programming each season, far and away more than any other sports or entertainment property. And that doesn’t even count all the highlight shows and ancillary programming created to preview, recap and talk about the game. So the sheer tonnage alone provides endless opportunities for social conversation and interaction. But the fact that those 15,000 hours include everything we love about both sports and television – drama, suspense, thrilling victories and heartbreaking defeats – it’s no surprise that baseball is such a popular conversation topic on social media. And the MLB Fan Cave taps into all of that while also giving fans an opportunity to learn more about who their favorite players are off the field, which deepens their engagement with the sport.
LR: What partners do you work with?
Brosnan: Our national television partners include FOX, ESPN, TBS and MLB Network, and we also work closely with the regional sports networks that air each clubs’ games locally. We’ve worked closely with each of them to integrate the MLB Fan Cave appropriately, and have encouraged them to think of the Fan Cave as a conduit to reaching fans and viewers through social media. ESPN regularly airs highlights of players visiting the MLB Fan Cave on SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight, MLB Network does the same on MLB Tonight, and FOX and TBS show highlights of the week’s activity as part of their national game of the week on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
In addition, beginning this season FOX is airing a new show on Saturday morning’s created by Major League Baseball Productions titled “MLB Player Poll,” which involves considerable integration with the Fan Cave. Each week, the show seeks to answer a compelling baseball-related question (such as “who is the most intimidating hitter”) by polling the current players themselves and presenting the results in an entertaining countdown format. In addition, each week’s poll question is posted on social media by the MLB Fan Cave accounts and re-tweeted by MLB and FOX accounts reaching a combined four million fans, with the results of the social media fan poll presented on the show along with the player poll results. In addition, two of the Cave Dwellers are interviewed as part of the show each week, providing an update on recent activity at the MLB Fan Cave and previewing that day’s games on FOX and MLB Network.
LR: How do you think the Fan Cave is making TV more social?
Brosnan: We are constantly analyzing updated research telling us who our fans are, what they like, where they’re getting their information, as well as who exactly our potential new fans are. It’s clear to all of us that the use and importance of social media just continues to grow exponentially every year, and the Fan Cave grew in part out of a desire to bridge that gap between fans watching baseball on TV and talking about it with their friends. It’s always difficult to try and draw a direct correlation with something like this, but it’s a fact that in the same year we created the MLB Fan Cave, baseball had one of its best years by any objective measure, with attendance, revenue and TV viewership all up, culminating with the thrilling final day of the 2011 regular season as well as the epic seven-game World Series. In fact, Game 7 of the World Series was the most-watched baseball game since the 2004 Red Sox ended the team’s 86-year World Series drought. Every step of the way, the MLB Fan Cave has been there to spur the conversation among fans and give people fresh content to share with their friends.