MLB Shows Why You Should Consider Crowdsourcing

It’s probably because I’m a sports fan, but I’ve always been fascinated with the way pro sports leagues here in America package their content to fans. I love watching to see how the leagues adapt (or fail to adapt) to web and social media trends to make it easier for fans to follow their favorite players and teams. League websites have evolved over the years from team, roster, and schedule listings to, in some cases, a better alternative to watching the game on your TV.

What’s really interesting to me is that in today’s world where content is king, the leagues have the opposite problem of most brands. They actually have too much content. Instead of wracking their brain for new ideas of content to create, they have to instead figure out how to take the content being created with every game and package it in a way that fans want and want repeatedly.  They have to do it for a wide variety of fans. Diehards, casual fans, fantasy players, and people new to the sport. And, the leagues have to do it across all mediums – the web, TV, games, and mobile.

Of the four major sports leagues, MLB (via MLB.com) has always been the best at the content game. I’m not going to list every reason why because that’s a topic for another day, but I wanted to point out something I noticed on their site recently. In my opinion it’s a great example of an established brand (MLB is over 120 years old) effectively integrating social media.

A quick background on why I went to the site. I was looking for a recap of Stephen Strasburg’s debut. For those of you unaware, this kid is basically expected to be the next big thing in baseball. He made his debut a couple of nights ago. Although I had seen some of the game on TV, I wanted to read a recap of the game and see his final stats.

When I went to MLB’s site, I was given everything I wanted. There was the box score with the stats. There was a recap I could read and video highlights (awesome). But there was also something called “Pulse” (pictured). Here’s the example for the game I looked up.

Pulse is basically a visual representation of the game on a line graph. There’s one produced for every game. You’ll notice there are several rows in the table they created for this game. One has video highlights of cool plays placed at the exact moment in the game when they happened. The other has a symbol of home plate for every time there’s a play that scores a run.

Big deal you say. Well, I haven’t got to the really cool part yet. The lines (there’s one for each team) is basically a crowdsourcing of Tweets that happened during the game. One line for each team’s fans.

To the right is an example of a 7th-inning Tweet by a fan blown away by Strasburg’s performance (pretty common feeling by fans on that night).

What’s really cool about this is without seeing the game, I can instantly tell by looking at the Pulse the most exciting parts of the games. That’s because I can easily see the Tweet volume has peaked and that means there’s probably a highlight I can watch. What’s even more cool is I can get a feel for what people thought of that moment – almost like being at the game and hearing the crowd or being someplace where the game is being shown on TV. Think about that for a second. That’s insight that I can’t get from a highlight or a text recap written by the local beat writer.

Just for fun, here’s another example. This is the Pulse of the infamous June 3 game where a bad call cost Tiger’s pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game – arguably one of the most controversial moments in baseball in the last 25 years. Look at the spike at the end when the call happened in the 9th inning! That orange line is the Tweet volume of Tiger fans.

Bottom line: I’m a huge believer in the real-time feel that crowdsourcing produces. I think it’s where the social web is headed. What MLB is doing is great and should give other brands and websites cause to think about similar ways of using data that’s out there to create unique, valuable, and engaging experiences for users.