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The civic responsibility of professional sports teams: Exploring the role of a team in its community

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The civic responsibility of professional sports teams: Exploring the role of a team in its community

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Content THE CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAMS: EXPLORING THE ROLE OF A TEAM IN ITS COMMUNITY by Adam Joseph Bonefeste _____________________________________________________________ A Thesis Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS (STRATEGIC PUBLIC RELATIONS) May 2011 Copyright 2011 Adam Joseph Bonefeste ii Dedication This thesis is itself the culmination of 19 years of education that would not have been possible without a heavy load of support and encouragement from my family members, especially those who took the field of education seriously enough to make a career of it. The following paper is dedicated to my mother, father and grandfather, who have taken the time to teach me things more important than academics. iii Acknowledgments A great deal of thanks is due to the following people, whose help and guidance made this project possible for me: • Erikk Aldridge • Matthew Bennett • Heather Curry, and the entire San Francisco 49ers organization • Jenn Floto • Dan Moore • Jerry Swerling • Kjerstin Thorson iv Table of Contents Dedication ................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ......................................................................................iii Abstract ....................................................................................................... v Preface ....................................................................................................... vi Chapter 1: Introducing “Civic Responsibility” ............................................. 1 Chapter 2: Background ................................................................................ 4 The Current State of Sports Fans ............................................................ 4 The Role of a Professional Sports Team in Its Community ................... 11 How a Professional Sports Team Communicates Today ....................... 15 Chapter 3: Literature Review ..................................................................... 24 Chapter 4: Case Studies ............................................................................. 28 List of Teams Studied ........................................................................... 28 San Francisco 49ers .............................................................................. 29 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim .......................................................... 36 Green Bay Packers ............................................................................... 41 New Orleans Saints .............................................................................. 45 Indiana Pacers: Roy Hibbert and “Area 55” .......................................... 49 Chapter 5: Conclusions .............................................................................. 52 Summary .............................................................................................. 52 Best Practices ....................................................................................... 55 References ................................................................................................. 62 Appendix A: Interview with Heather Curry ............................................... 66 Appendix B: Interview with Matthew Bennett ........................................... 79 v Abstract The goal of this research was to examine the way professional sports teams communicate with and impact the community in the markets that support them. In the new age of media, professional athletes and teams and undergoing a fundamental shift in the way they interact with the people around them. The research here is meant to study what interactions a team should be undertaking to develop relationships with its community. To do this, the concept of “civic responsibility” will be introduced and then discussed. The beginning portions of this thesis will define what exactly is meant by civic responsibility and how it applies to professional teams and their roles in today’s communities. This paper’s research portion will first discuss the ways teams can communicate with the local community members, taking into consideration the role that a team can play in producing that information. Then, individual teams will be examined in case studies designed to spotlight effective community relations tactics that have been successfully integrated by modern teams. The noteworthy aspects of these campaigns will be accumulated into a series of best practices following the conclusion. These suggestions are intended to be considered by today’s sports teams both as an educational tool and potential tactics for use in professional practice. vi Preface Since an extremely young age, I have been involved in sports in many ways. I participated in them. I bought every type of merchandise associated with the local and professional teams for which I cheered. I watched sports on television and listened on the radio— clapping, yelling and generally overreacting like I imagine the typical fan does. I read newspaper, magazine and internet clips about anything sports-related. I talked sports at the lunch tables of my schools, in the break rooms of my jobs, and on the phone or in person with anyone who would listen. While I am sure this does not sum up the entirety of my sports-related enthusiasm, it is enough to illustrate the point that sports, in general, played a big part in my development. Today, my pursuit is still just as avid, although it takes different forms. As I have matured, I noticed more about how the world around me works and took a deep interest in how sports influenced the whole of a community. It seems that in my youth I was more interested in the glamour and super-stardom that accompanied professional athletes, but my enthusiasm turned into a focus on what was being done with the power that accompanied professional sports franchises. As I began to see what was being done with the unique opportunities that teams and athletes have, in my mind, the teams evolved from just entertainment providers to functioning contributors to a community. During my studies to complete both my bachelor’s degree in journalism and my master’s degree in strategic public relations, I have worked on projects that further investigated the relationship between a sports team and its community and I have continued to be overwhelmed by the number and depth of vii avenues through which a team can not only affect but improve the community that supports it, however that community is defined. In addition to my post-graduate public relations studies, I have taken an active academic interest in the fields of economics and ethics, areas that I feel are also closely related to the impact a professional sports team has on its community. Economics because of the dollars-and-cents benefits to local individuals and business; ethics because sports organizations need to have an understanding of what their proper role is in a community in order support it and to give back appropriately, and be supported in return. The challenge of examining professional sports teams’ involvement in their communities is something I have taken on as an intensely personal endeavor. It is a culmination of both personal interests and academic endeavors that results in a topic in which I am passionate about investing myself. The following paper will provide an overview of the field as I see it today, then make use of both a literature review and several case studies to provide a series of best practices and recommendations concerning the relationships that professional teams have with their communities. 1 Chapter 1: Introducing “Civic Responsibility” The most basic premise of this thesis is that there is a need for a more precise term to describe the impact of a professional sports team in its community. The overall concept of “public relations” is far too broad to accurately label this relationship. Although the core of the study will focus on the general relationshipss that a team has with its publics, the term that best describes the role of a pro team in a community is “civic responsibility.” To examine what “civic responsibility” means, the words must first be examined individually. “Civic” implies that a sports team is a functioning member of a community. A team is surely a local business — in the sense that it is selling a product (the team), expects to make a profit, and that public perception of the organization will affect sales — but it is also a citizen of the community that affects residents in a much different way than any other business. In all major urban markets having professional sports teams, there are businesses of all sizes, some of them employing thousands of people. These businesses are often highly visible in the city and devise ways to give back to the local community to bolster public support and ensure a long-term relationship with that area that will increase the likelihood of the community rising to meet the needs of the team in the future. In that sense, sports teams as businesses, are genuinely interested in giving back to the people that support them. Often both these businesses and even the local government are invested in giving back to the community and use a professional sports team to do so. Sports teams, however, are extremely visible because of their entertainment value. These teams garner a much different type of attention than other 2 businesses, because the arena of professional sports is thoroughly covered in the media and the successes and failures of a team are public information. The unique opportunity that a pro team has when compared to other big businesses is that many average citizens are likely to identify with the team and generate an emotional attachment to the successes or struggles the team encounters. This type of relationship is the grounds for the “responsibility” portion of the concept. A successful sports team unifies the citizenry in a way that is entirely unique. Although other businesses may provide more meaningful and realistic benefits for many people — salaries, health benefits, retirement savings, services and the like — it is hard to imagine a group of employees going to the lengths of painting their faces or bodies to go to work to encourage performance at the office. Similarly, it would be hard to believe that there are any industries that could sell out a stadium of 50,000 seats to community members who would come in shirts, hats or costumes plastered with the company logo. There are very few entities that can unite millions of people across age, class, gender, or other borders, but residents’ support of a local sports team is certainly one. It is not that a pro sports team is in any way better than any other business or industry in a city; but it is undeniable that the average citizen of a large city forms a bond with the sports team that is qualitatively different than any other relationship. Sports fans will sacrifice money, time, attention and in a lot of cases emotional welfare for their team in a much different way than they would for other businesses. In that sense, no organizations other than sports team have such demonstrative “fans.” 3 In light of the unique relationship a community forms with its teams, one of the main roles of a sports team is to be a living, breathing member that gives back to that community. In terms of public relations, a team needs to be more than just a business; it needs to be an entity with which every person in the city has a personal relationship. If these fans are willing to give so much with such great emotion, then the relationship must be two-way if it is to last. This ties into the second portion of the descriptor: “responsibility.” Given the intensity of the team/citizen relationship, it should be the goal of a pro team to improve the community out of respect for, and to enhance, that relationship. Most organizations have a branch of the communications department dedicated to “corporate social responsibility,” “philanthropy,” “community relations” or some similar term. These titles come close, but do not exactly describe what the author intends to examine. It is more than that. It is more than helping other community members and establishing a two-way exchange of ideas with potential customers. It is more than simply writing a check. It is about realizing the power of communication, and the responsibilities, that come with the status of a pro sports team and accepting the responsibility to be an engaged citizen of the community that gives back to those who have invested — financially and emotionally — in the team. Though there is an economic side of “civic responsibility” that will be covered in more depth later in this paper, the emphasis will be on the public relations efforts that are seen as a part of a team’s duties. 4 Chapter 2: Background The Current State of Sports Fans To study the relationship between professional sports teams and their communities, it is appropriate to start by examining the current state of sports fans and the ways they form ideas about the team. Although the theme of this paper revolves around the relationship that a team has with the entire community that surrounds it, some of the members of that community are more receptive to, and supportive of the team than others. These people will be a lot more likely to participate in team-sponsored activities, support the team financially through consumer purchases and receive the messaging that the team relays. The professional sports fan in a community will self-select with little targeting from the team itself and this group will engage with the organization much more willingly. 1 Since the team’s messaging will be most effective with this group of people, a brief overview of the ways they can interact with the team will help in understanding the strategies and channels that the team can use effectively to reach them. From today’s fan’s perspective, the most important events in her/his relationship with a team are most likely to be the games. Seeing elite-level professional athletes certainly carries with it a high entertainment value for some and others may be drawn to the games by the spectacle of the event. 2 Depending on the sport, these games can occur on just one or every day of the week, and can be experienced in several ways. Current 1 Jacobson, Beth. "Athletic Insight - The Social Psychology of the Creation of a Sports Fan Identity: A Theoretical Review of the Literature." June 2003. Web. <http://www.athleticinsight.com/Vol5Iss2/FanDevelopment.htm>. 2 Ibid 5 programming allows most fans supporting teams that are geographically nearby to watch some sports and teams on basic cable. If that is not an option or if a fan supports an out- of-market team, today’s television providers offer packages that will allow a fan to follow any or all of the teams in major professional sports by purchasing certain channels. Other fans may watch the games online or even on a smartphone via a streaming video service. Radio broadcasts of most professional sporting events are available via traditional radios as well as internet and smartphone applications. Of course, if the game is played at home, local fans may purchase tickets and attend in person. Today’s fan certainly has many options to find a convenient way to experience her/his favorite team’s games. Whether casual or die-hard, almost anyone who seeks out a way to follow the action in a game can find a satisfactory means to do so. All of these media are an opportunity for a team to send a message to the fans, but the team’s role will be covered later in this section. Although a pro sports team’s games may be of the most importance to the fans, there are certainly many other ways in which that fan interacts with her/his team. Most sports fans do not simply turn off the television, radio or computer after a game and wait patiently until the next scheduled event. That fan will most likely consume numerous pieces of media about the same game they just experienced, the next game or even just about the team in general. 3 3 Pearlman, Jeff. "Sports Fans Are Passionate, but Many Need a Dose of Perspective - Jeff Pearlman - SI.com." SI.com. 6 Aug. 2010. Web. <http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/jeff_pearlman/08/06/angry.fans/index.html>. 6 According to a lecture given by ESPN’s J.A. Adande on March 28, 2011 at USC, sports fans consuming news today are a unique group of media consumers because they often have all of the materials available to a reporter available to them, with the exception of a few personal connections. Live video of the game and constantly-updated statistics are available online and can even be accessed on the go via laptop computer or smartphone. These media consumers can see literally the same game and statistics as the reporter who writes a story about it. They may consult traditional media like the nightly news or the morning newspaper, or a newer technology, but generally sports fans are hungry for this news any way they can get it. One of the characteristics that makes today’s sports fan unique compared to other news audiences is the way that he/she acquires news about his/her favorite teams. There are so many traditional and non-traditional media that generate news for fans, as well as modern-day ways for serious fans to produce their own media about teams. Since media concerning a team is an important bridge between the communications function of a pro sports team and its fans, every media story concerning a team should be considered an opportunity to reach fans and express the messages that the team feels are important for them. To understand the news habits of today’s sports fans, here is a list of media that they commonly consume. Some of these a team can influence, others it cannot. The goal of this list is not to suggest that every sports fan consumes all of these media, but to explore the avenues that are currently used to communicate with fans. 7 • Sports news television shows — Game highlights as well as stories about teams may appear on the regular nightly news or on sports highlight shows as well as sports news/analysis channels. • Print journalism sports stories — This could be a sports magazine, a regular newspaper (in print or online) or some other printed material about a team. Again, these stories do not need much explanation because they are both common and established. • Sports news websites — These are typically stories that are also printed in a more traditional media outlet, just accessed online. The benefit of reading these stories online is that other articles or information can also be linked to them, allowing a reader to access multiple pieces of news at once. Although as recently as 10 years ago these sites may not have been considered “traditional” media, today they would certainly fall into that category. It is important to note that these stories are written by professional journalists who are usually contacted by a member of a team’s communication department if necessary. *Note- the media listed previously cannot be produced by any professional team. A media relations function of the team can influence this content, but the barriers to entry in these media are high and require specialized journalism training as well as a journalistic platform to publish content. The media types listed after this note are all outlets that a team or individual athletes can use to directly reach today’s fan. • Sports weblogs (blogs) — Blogs have recently taken on a great prominence in the sports media scene. The authors of blogs are generally not professional 8 journalists, but active fans who want to start and lead discussions among their fellow fans. The primary content of blogs are stories or mini-stories (sometimes called blasts) that are written by the staff. Blogs rarely go through the editing and fact-checking processes that traditional media outlets require. Active fans read certain blogs regularly and the most ardent often contribute posts on blogs for other fans to read. The blog audience is likely to be well-informed about the team and often seeks a different kind of information than what is available in traditional media. For example, the baseball blogging industry uses extremely advanced statistical analyses of teams and players called “sabermetrics.” Bloggers love these new numbers and expect that the readers are also aware of all the complexities of the formulas that are used in the calculations. 4 However, stories about a team in the newspapers or online will rarely discuss or even mention these statistics, a decision that is probably made in the interest of being comprehensible to the greatest number of readers. In addition to blogs operated by fans, teams and athletes have been getting involved in the blogosphere. The barrier to entry in this market is extremely low, so athletes — who often have little or no media training — can publish their own content for any person interested enough to read it. Team-sponsored blogs can be a great resource for a team to use as a tactic for a messaging campaign and can be controlled wholly by team representatives. Athlete-run blogs can be a great 4 "Sabermetrics In The Mainstream | FanGraphs Baseball." Baseball Statistics and Analysis | FanGraphs Baseball. 3 Apr. 2009. Web. 2011. <http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/sabermetrics-in-the- mainstream/>. 9 resource for the teams image as well, as long as the content is in line with the team’s messages. • Social Media platforms — Social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter are unique because they allow direct access between a team or athlete and the fan that follows them. Usually they establish a two-way relationship between the parties that allows the fan to read content that a player or team distributes and respond to it directly without the need for a journalist. These sites are growing rapidly today and most serious sports fans have caught on to the trend. 5 Today, every professional team has a Facebook page and/or Twitter account. 6 It was estimated that there were 500 professional football players with operating Twitter accounts in January of 2011. 7 • Podcasts — Podcasts are informal audio broadcasts that are recorded and then sent out to subscribers, who can listen to them at their convenience. They are similar to a radio show, except almost anyone can produce and distribute one without access to a professional studio or the public airwaves. Professional sports 5 O'Keefe, Colin. "Social Media Turns Good Sports Fans into Great Ones. Why Isn't That Enough? : Past The Press Box." Past The Press Box. 27 July 2010. Web. <http://www.pastthepressbox.com/2010/07/articles/sports-marketing/social-media-turns-good-sports-fans- into-great-ones-why-isnt-that-enough/>. 6 Professional Athletes on Twitter - Tweeting-Athletes.com. Web. 2011. <http://www.tweeting- athletes.com/>. 7 Goldman, Tom. "In Age Of Tweets, NFL Learns 140 Characters Hurt." KQED Public Media for Northern CA. 26 Jan. 2011. Web. 2011. <http://www.kqed.org/news/story/2011/01/26/42817/in_age_of_tweets_nfl_learns_140_characters_hurt?so urce=npr&category=technology>. 10 publicists/PR practitioners as well as any fan with an opinion can produce podcasts. 8 • Online forums/ message boards — Similar to a blog, except the there is not an individual generating content for others to comment on. In a message board or forum, users often post under a general heading and the primary purpose is to engage many users in an online discussion about a certain topic. Active forum users often check the site frequently throughout a day to see how others have responded to posts and continue their end of a conversation. 9 Knowledge of the uses of each of these media will be crucial to the overall understanding of what a professional team can do to communicate with its community. The media types mentioned in the previous list will appear in the rest of this paper as needed, along with a description of how they are used effectively or suggestions of ways to integrate that medium properly. In addition to the type of serious fan mentioned above, there are also varying levels of casual fans in a city. These people might attend a few games each season or waffle in an out of regularly following a team’s scores and news. They care about a team, but are probably less likely than the avid fan to seek out news about the team or to create their own media about the team. In short, this type of individual still has a relationship 8 Grabianowski, Ed. "HowStuffWorks "How to Create Your Own Podcast"" Web. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/how-to-podcast.htm>. 9 Lefever, Lee. "What Are the Differences Between Message Boards and Weblogs?" 24 Aug. 2004. Web. <http://www.commoncraft.com/what-are-differences-between-message-boards-and-weblogs-15>. 11 with the local team that is important to them, but to a lesser degree that that of an active fan. This type of audience is also incredibly important to a professional team. While the active fans may be those who are most likely to respond to a team’s messaging campaigns or community initiatives, the casual fans are generally the bigger portion of the population. 10 The good news for pro teams is that these people can be reached in many of the same ways as the die-hard fans. The traditional media listed above are ways of reaching all people, regardless of their connection to a team. A story on the morning or nightly news or an article in the newspaper is available to all people, not just the fans who seek it out. These stories are easy to access and no matter how intensely a fan follows a team those media will reach them. Some of the new/social media may also reach the casual fan, and due to the self-selective nature of these media, that individual can blend their personal selection of style and quantity of these news sources to get an individualized mix of team news. The Role of a Professional Sports Team in Its Community Defining what a team’s “community” is may be more difficult to do in 2011 than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Throughout this paper, when a team’s “community” is mentioned, it could mean many different things, depending on the situation. There are several groups of people that are directly affected by that team in some way — the team’s 10 Scibetti, Russell. "Sports Fan Loyalty Index | The Business of Sports." The Business of Sports - Sports Business News, Opinions and Discussion. 30 Mar. 2010. Web. 2011. <http://www.thebusinessofsports.com/2010/03/30/sports-fan-loyalty-index/>. 12 employees, fans (both casual and die-hard), the businesses that buy or sell goods/services with the team, nearby attractions that benefit from a team’s events, residents who live in the surrounding neighborhoods, media that cover the team, etc. — but the primary meaning of “community” in this paper will include the citizens and businesses of the pro team’s metropolitan area. Primarily, the term “community” will relate to those local stakeholders. Arguments could be made for out-of-market fans or other interested parties that are not in a team’s geographic area, but from a team’s perspective, it does not make sense to try to focus on this segment since today they can be reached via the same media as the locals and they will not benefit from most of the public relations efforts made by the team. In addition, the team will likely not benefit from them, since they will not purchase tickets. Some special efforts should be made to impact the types of media that can be consumed nationally, but in terms of community involvement, the focus should be on impacting the local coverage with an understanding that displaced fans will also consume that news. There are a few cases of professional teams that share a metropolitan area with another team in the same sport, such as the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers in the National basketball Association (NBA), the New York Giants and New York Jets in the National Football League (NFL), and the Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs in Major League Baseball (MLB), but these teams have generally been in operation so long that the understanding of which parts of a city support each team have been established. In these cases, these markets are large enough to be shared by the two teams. There are also instances of a team’s strong supporters growing beyond its metro area limits. For 13 example, the Green Bay Packers are supported not just by the city of Green Bay, but by the entire state of Wisconsin. This happens in parts of the country where the largest cities are more spread out and where there are few, if any, competing professional teams. A professional sports team’s role in a community is very complicated and often varies on a case-by-case basis. Some members of the community have a business relationship with the team, some members have an emotional relationship, others may have an entertainment-related interest and there are surely many members of the community who have blended relationships with the team. Although many different members of the community may derive different benefits from their relationship with a pro team, the primary focus of this research will be on team’s proactive efforts to improve the wellbeing of the community The team’s primary responsibility to the community is to field and train a group of players to successfully participate in the league-sanctioned games. Economically, these games can be a major financial contributor to a city. In terms of dollars and cents, a professional sports team starts making an impact in the community before it even plays a game. For example, as recently as February, 2011 the construction of Farmers Field in Los Angeles, which is intended to one day house an NFL team, is estimated to cost nearly $1.5 billion, which will almost all go to local construction and contracting firms. Unlike most stadiums, this one will be privately-funded, so the money will not come at the 14 expense of the city’s taxpayers, but the amount of money involved in building this stadium is certainly indicative of modern-day stadium investments. 11 At the onset of installing a professional franchise in a city, community officials usually work with developers to decide on a location for the stadium, which is then constructed by thousands of local contractors and construction workers, injecting millions of dollars into the city’s economy. 12 Once the stadium is built, it will support a custodial and maintenance staff whose workers will be locally hired. 13 Once the season starts in a stadium, teams will need to hire thousands of workers to perform the ticket sales, security, seating, merchandise, concession and other miscellaneous responsibilities for each game. These hires will also be local community members. 14 In addition to the jobs that pro teams give to local people, local businesses benefit from providing goods that are sold at the stadium or using the atmosphere and attendance of a major sporting event as an advertising platform. Restaurants, retailers and other attractions located near the stadium often benefit from the rush of people to and from the venue before and after the game. Hotels, airports and the rest of a city’s tourism industry are also in line to receive more customers because of a sports team. 15 11 Smith, Dakota. "Farmers Field Numbers Crunching: Stadium Costs, Cap Sales - NFL Stadium - Curbed LA." Curbed LA : The Los Angeles Neighborhoods and Real Estate Blog. 3 Feb. 2011. Web. 2011. <http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/02/farmers_field_number_crunching_stadium_costs_cap_sales.php>. 12 Danielson, Michael N. Home Team: Professional Sports and the American Metropolis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997. Print. 13 Zimbalist, Andrew, and Roger G. Noll. "Sports, Jobs, & Taxes: Are New Stadiums Worth the Cost? - Brookings Institution." Brookings - Quality. Independence. Impact. June 1997. Web. <http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1997/summer_taxes_noll.aspx>. 14 Ibid 15 The economic contributions of a pro team are many and varied, but the focus of the research will be on the type of active campaigns that a team undertakes to participate in the bettering of its community rather than the business benefits of a metropolitan area supporting a pro sports team. These programs often benefit local charities or public services such as schools, hospitals or parks and usually involve a team-sponsored drive or getting the athletes “out in the community” for appearances and volunteer work. Work like this helps foster a bond between the members of the community and the team’s representatives, including the athletes. Since these types of relationship-building activities provide a strong foundation for a professional sports team’s civic engagement, a majority of the later sections of this paper will be focused on community-involvement programs. How a Professional Sports Team Communicates Today With many new technology-based communication tools having been developed in recent years, the landscape is changing drastically in the team-to-community communications sector. This type of communication is vitally important to a team’s civic responsibility since a team can only be a responsible citizen if the community supporting it is receptive to the team’s efforts. To better understand what is possible for teams to do as communicators, each media type that a team can use will be analyzed in terms of who it reaches and the team’s role in producing the content. Traditional Media 15 Ibid 16 Newspapers and television news are still vitally important to today’s sports teams. Sports fans who have grown accustomed to using traditional media will continue to look there first for their sporting news. 16 In addition, casual fans or community members who do not follow sports may not see any news about the team other than what they see at the end of a news program or featured on the front page of the newspaper. Television stations and newspapers are also businesses with which a community forms a relationship, so these media are often vital in developing the community’s opinion of a sports team. At this point, it is also clear that sports news websites like ESPN.com should be considered traditional media. ESPN.com’s in-depth articles and opinion pieces feature the same quality of reporting and writing as a traditional newspaper and the game stories are often the same Associated Press content that sports sections at traditional media outlets across America use. Although a short time ago internet news sites were not nearly as prominent, today they are a main source of news for many consumers. From the team’s standpoint, the strengths of traditional media are the readership and credibility. The established editorial process of professional journalism will surely be attractive to some members of the news market, who view these traditional media as the primary way of receiving credible news. When some local audiences read something in a newspaper or see it on a television news program, they may recognize prominence of the news outlet and trust that it is newsworthy and true. 17 16 Falls, Jason. "Traditional Media Still Beats Blogs And Social Networks Online." Social Media Explorer. 22 Feb. 2010. Web. <http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/media-journalism/think-traditional-media-is-on- the-online-ropes-think-again/>. 17 Mehrabi, Davood. "Research Attention to the Credibility of Information Sources - Analyses/ Commentary." Media Ethics Magazine.Web. 17 The disadvantage of traditional media for a professional team is that they have little control over the content of a story. Although a media relations or public relations professional may act as a liaison between the team members and the media, that person does not actually write, edit or approve any stories written about the team. The relationship between a traditional news source and a team may factor in the way the team is presented in a piece, but the team is at the mercy of the reporter/media outlet in most cases. New media and social media Now is a crucial time for teams to develop an understanding of and a presence in “new” and social media. If the next five years produce as much of a change in the media landscape as the previous five, then it will be important for all organizations that must stay in touch their audiences, including sports teams, to remain current on developing media trends. The new focus on user-generated (and team-generated) content is something that a team needs to be involved in to continue advancing the relationship with its community. The first step is to understand who is creating content about that team and develop a way of interacting with those people. If there is a prominent blogger or even a YouTube channel that features a video-blogger (vlogger) who is generating a lot of material or getting a high number of readers, the team’s communications department needs to work with that person to create a friendly relationship and take advantage of that user’s influence rather than compete for share of the overall media conversation about the team. <http://media.www.mediaethicsmagazine.com/media/storage/paper655/news/2010/07/01/AnalysesComme ntary/Research.Attention.To.The.Credibility.Of.Information.Sources-3919639.shtml> 18 It could be as simple as allowing new media influencers some of the same media credentials as traditional journalists, which would make a difference in the tone and overall message that user expresses. The strengths of these new media are the credibility of the grassroots, personal effects they convey. Since this content is often distributed in a user-to-user fashion, it is read like a word of advice from a friend. Another benefit to a team might be that each team enjoys several blogs that cover it, usually with very small staffs. If blogger outreach is a tactic a team decides to employ, it should be easy for those teams to identify the handful of individual bloggers who are important and construct a program to suit them. The biggest disadvantage of these media is the same as traditional media: the team is not the party in control of the content. In addition to this, blog credibility may suffer among some audiences because of the less refined editorial process, 18 so efforts to reach out to blogs, vloggers and other online media members may have little effect on the perception of the team. There are several categories of new/social media content that affect a professional team’s public image. The importance of maintaining that image is crucial when discussing civic responsibility because a team that has earned public trust through an established positive community presence can rely on that trust to be an agent of civic responsibility. For the purpose of understanding the team’s own active role in building and maintaining a brand, the most important category is the content that is generated by 18 Baker, Steven. "Editorial Processes: the Magazine vs. the Blogs - BusinessWeek." Businessweek - Business News, Stock Market & Financial Advice. 19 July 2005. Web. 2011. <http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2005/07/editorial_stand.html>. 19 the team’s communication staff. By now, every pro team has an account on both Facebook and Twitter. A look at most teams’ sites will show that typically, the content posted on Facebook is event-related and may draw attention to games or special events by highlighting details, photos or brief news stories. Often, the goal of these accounts is to drive traffic to other resources, such as the team website or a local news organization’s coverage of the team. Professional sports teams’ Facebook accounts are often places for conversation among interested fans that communications professionals working for the team can monitor and even participate in. While Facebook accounts can be a place for fans around the world to join together to share information and discuss team-related topics, most of the material produced is generally team-to-user or user-to-user communications. One of the strengths of this new platform is that it allows user-to-team connection that was previously unavailable. This is an important distinction of the social media landscape today. Professional teams’ Twitter accounts are evolving rapidly. Although the content posted by the team may be the same event-driven information that can be found on the Facebook account, the nature of Twitter also allows teams to re-post content generated by other sources — individual athletes, sports columnists or other identifiable news personalities, bloggers or even individual fans who made an interesting comment about the team — so the team’s account can promote its own material while at the same time being a kind of one-stop-shop for all types of news. In this sense, the Twitter accounts are far less formal and much more capable of taking advantage of the content generated by 20 other users. In many cases, following a team on Twitter also gives users a front-row seat to several other related accounts in which they are interested. The benefit of Twitter is that it allows several new types of direct communication due to the networking features of the technology. While Twitter still offers the team-to- user, user-to-user and user-to-team messages that Facebook offers, it also allows athlete- to-user, celebrity-to-user, blogger-to-user, expert-to-user and several other types of communication all directly to the user. Perhaps the best part of this is that the team gets to hand-pick which of these messages from other parties it re-posts, allowing it to shape a particular message with ease. Although Facebook and Twitter are by no means the only social media that teams can use, they are by far the two most popular and an understanding of how to use each effectively will generally cover the basics of most social media. Combined, the two have more than 700 million users worldwide. 19 The top athletes have around 3 million followers on Twitter 20 and can reach many more than that via Facebook since there is no need to officially subscribe to a Facebook account to access it. These athletes are the faces and personalities of any pro sports team, so the content published on their social media accounts greatly influences fan perception of a team. Another important role of a sports team’s social media function is influencing the athletes on that team to post content that coincides with the team’s messaging. While the 19 Ingram, Mathew. "Facebook vs. Twitter: An Infographic: Tech News and Analysis «." GigaOM – Technology News, Analysis and Trends. 20 Dec. 2010. Web. 2011. <http://gigaom.com/2010/12/20/facebook-vs-twitter-an-infographic/>. 20 Chase, Chris. "The 10 Most Popular Athletes on Twitter." Yahoo! Sports - The Y! Sports Blogs. 2 Mar. 2011. Web. 2011. <http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/post/The-top-10-most-popular-athletes-on- Twitter?urn=top-328593>. 21 professionals on a team’s communications staff are surely better at crafting messages, reality shows that more fans follow their favorite athletes on social media than the teams for which they play. 2122 This is not going to change; athletes are real people and teams are collections of people, so the true interpersonal features of social media will favor the athletes. What teams can do is have the public relations specialists who work with the athletes focus on those athletes promoting team-endorsed messages, or at the very least staying away from negative content about the team. Using these athletes as influencers will probably reach a much broader audience than the team’s own social media accounts could reach on their own. Establishing a protocol for the relationship between a team and its athletes in social media will only be a positive thing as new means of communication take shape. Special media produced by a team In addition to the traditional and new media efforts of a sports team, there are also several other types of media that are produced by those organizations. There is the in- arena experience at a home game including promotional videos shown on a scoreboard, a program or guide for each individual game and free giveaways such as posters or calendars. These messaging opportunities are unique in that they focus squarely on the fans who are already committed to the team, as evidenced by their willingness to purchase a ticket, and are probably more likely to have a sense of loyalty to the team 21 Fitzsimmons, Michael. "Top 10 Most Followed Sports Teams on Twitter." Sports and Social Media Marketing Tips. 27 May 2010. Web. 2011. <http://www.sportsnetworker.com/2010/05/27/top-10-most- followed-sports-teams-on-twitter/>. 22 Chase, Chris. "The 10 Most Popular Athletes on Twitter." Yahoo! Sports - The Y! Sports Blogs. 2 Mar. 2011. Web. 2011. <http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/post/The-top-10-most-popular-athletes-on- Twitter?urn=top-328593>. 22 when compared to other members of the community. These media generally include sponsorship opportunities that enable the team to form relationships with local businesses. The reach of these media is small compared to the media previously discussed in this section, so they do not merit much extensive analysis but they are unique because they are a platform for involving other local businesses and the most active of fans. Audiences Within a community, there may be several different groups of people who do not have very much in common with each other. In terms of defining parts of a team’s overall “community,” there are three main groups that need to be discussed and reached through specific types of media: Local residents, local fans, and long-distance fans. The local residents are simply those who live in the metropolitan area where the team is located. They read newspapers that would report on the team and watch television news coverage that would include news about the team. They may live or work within walking distance of a stadium. Regardless of whether they actually follow the team for entertainment or business, these people are defined by their geographical proximity to the team. They are the most likely to gain from the economic or philanthropic benefits of the team. This group can be reached through traditional media, but special messaging efforts to reach them may be ineffective. The range of what can be considered “local” varies from team to team, but interviews with a couple of professional team suggest an area within a 50-mile of the stadium in larger markets or a 100-mile radius of the stadium in smaller markets. 23 The local fans are a group of their own in terms of a team’s effort to craft messages, but are also a subset of the group of local residents. These are the people who are most likely to attend home games or participate in other team-related activities like rallies or charity events. In addition to this, these people are likely to support the team financially in terms of ticket and merchandise sales. They can also support the team by watching games on the local television channels or consuming the local media’s coverage of the team. These fans can be reached through the same traditional media as the local residents, but may also seek out news in social media, blogs or vlogs. In addition to this, these local fans are also likely to generate their own content about the team. Local media as well as national media covering the team can reach this group, depending on the individual desire to seek out news about the team. The final important audience for a team is the long-distance fans. The definition of this group changes depending on the market for each team’s city, but for the purpose of setting one consistent standard, the long-distance fan is anyone who supports a team but lives outside the market where traditional media would cover that team regularly. For example, many Americans are fans of the Dallas Cowboys, even though they live outside of the Dallas area and even outside the state of Texas. These people would be considered long-distance fans. This group may consume media about the team at the same rate as the local fans, but have to seek it out on their own. They may support the team in buying merchandise, but probably are not going to buy tickets to home games. New types of media and online traditional media are the primary sources for this group’s messages. 24 Chapter 3: Literature Review To define the role of a professional sports team in its community, the author studied books and several different websites about teams’ involvement in communities. All of that information was useful in understanding the relationship between a team and its community, but it is far too much to present in its entirety, so this literature review will summarize the major points. It is intended to complement the case studies in the following section, so the main purpose of this information is to provide details that are not going to be directly covered those case studies. This section will begin with a brief overview on how a team impacts an economy and then review findings of researching teams’ official community relations websites. Since the case studies will focus on proactive team efforts to benefit communities, literature was the primary method of gaining information on a team’s economic impact. The role of a professional sports team is unlike that of any other business in a local economy. Not only is it much more visible than other businesses, but the team’s primary economic role is not necessarily derived directly from the business it does with the community (i.e., ticket and merchandise sales). Often the greatest impact a team has is in the benefit it provides indirectly to other businesses in the area such as radio/television broadcasting, advertising, journalism and tourism 23 These “external” benefits are often the reason cities will publicly subsidize the construction of a sports stadium as a means of attracting a privately-owned team. 24 Since stadiums are often 23 Noll, Roger G., and Andrew S. Zimbalist. Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: the Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1997. Google E-book. 25 publicly-funded, the teams that play in those stadiums have an obligation to improve the local economy. Because the construction of a stadium is often the first step in establishing a professional team in a market, it is probably the most appropriate place to start an examination of a team’s economic impact. Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist devote a healthy portion of their book Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: the Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums to this process. Building a stadium is a job that can take more than a billion dollars and hundreds of workers, engineers, designers and other construction- related roles. Surprisingly, all the money spent to pay them has little influence on the local economy, since most stadiums are publicly funded. 25 In that sense, the building of the stadiums is just taking money from one local group, the taxpayers, to give to another local group, the builders. While the turnover on those dollars may be increased, no new dollars are being created or brought to the city. In that case, the building of a stadium is an economic investment for a market that is willing to take a risk to see a boost in external benefits. Once a stadium is built, the same concept applies to the direct benefits that a team derives from operation. Since the jobs available at the stadium (ticketing, concessions, merchandise, parking, etc.) are given to local residents, the citizens of the community benefit. However, like the construction costs, a lot of the money that is spent on these types of stadium experiences also comes from local residents. 26 So again, although the 24 Ibid 25 Ibid 26 team is speeding up the rate at which dollars change hands in the local economy, it isn’t actually generating new revenue for the city. The real economic benefit from a team comes when related local businesses recognize increases. For example, the news sources (both print and online) and broadcast stations that cover the team benefit from the attention a team attracts. In addition to this, the city’s tourism industry will likely grow from a team’s presence, because the team’s events will give non-residents a reason to visit the city. 27 Those visitors will also patronize venues such as restaurants and hotels. In this way, professional teams can be considered partners with other local businesses in making the city attractive nationally or even internationally. It gets more complicated than that when actually attempting to determine where the dollars come and go, but in general, a team that is successful will also bring success to other businesses in the community. 28 Professional teams also contribute to local charities, nonprofits and other community-building programs. The front page of every professional team’s website contains a link to access the team’s record of community work and donations. A review of these websites for nearly every team in professional football, baseball and basketball revealed a wealth of examples of civic responsibility. Using these websites to look for a consistent theme in community programs was definitely educational, however the finding was that was not any broad similarity worth noting. There are organizations like the Make-A-Wish Foundation and causes like 26 Ibid 27 Ibid 28 Ibid 27 children’s health or breast cancer awareness that all teams represent in some way, but no community involvement program that was universal across all markets and sports. What really stood out was that every team tailored its community programs to the specific needs of the communities represented. The fact that no two teams had the same approach was, in fact, the unifying factor that was sought the whole time. Teams across the nation were examining the personalities of their communities and adapting programs based on those results. To that end, there are definitely areas for all teams to improve. Just because a team is in a unique city and is tailoring its community interaction to meet the needs of that environment does not mean it cannot be held responsible for finding new and better ways to encourage relationships with the people of that city. The following chapter will examine teams that provide positive examples of that type of involvement. 28 Chapter 4: Case Studies The previous sections of this paper have discussed theory about ways in which professional sports teams interact with their communities. This portion will focus more on practical examples of teams that have successfully designed and executed effective community programs and practices. A brief overview of the selected teams will introduce which franchises will be covered, followed by a more in-depth discussion of the lessons taken from each. List of Teams Studied San Francisco 49ers (NFL) — The 49ers have been one of the most storied franchises in the NFL since the team was formed in 1946. 29 It has been one of the most successful teams in league history in terms of on-field victories, and has a very firm fan base in the San Francisco community. That market is also one that is renowned for its charitable efforts, 30 so the 49ers have plenty of opportunities to join community efforts to improve the region. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (MLB) — The Angels face some very unique challenges as a professional sports team. First, California is very saturated with Major League Baseball teams. In addition, the Angels are in a demographic area that is heavily 29 "San Francisco 49ers (1946-Present)." The Sports E-Cyclopedia (Est. 2001)-The Ultimate Sports Resource. Web. 2011. <http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/nfl/sf49/49ers.html>. 30 "Charity Navigator - 2010 Metro Market Study." Charity Navigator - America's Largest Charity Evaluator | Home. 1 June 2010. Web. 2011. <http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/studies.metro.main.htm>. 29 Hispanic and may provide unique communication challenges due to language and lifestyle differences that set it apart from other franchises. Green Bay Packers (NFL) — The Packers are the only publicly-owned franchise in professional sports and stand as an example of the support a team can generate when the residents of the area feel like their ideas are being incorporated by the team’s management. New Orleans Saints (NFL) — The Saints were put in an extremely unique situation after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The team responded extremely well, with what will become the textbook case of community involvement for years to come. For months, the team set aside football to literally rebuild the city of New Orleans and the community response has been unparalleled support. Indiana Pacers (NBA) — This is a great case of an effort made by an individual player to reward fans for supporting a team. Last summer, Roy Hibbert held a contest to find the most enthusiastic Pacers fans, then gave them free tickets for the season. Hibbert ran the contest via posts on social media platforms and videos at the team’s website. The case is one of players and teams finding new ways to communicate with fans and using new platforms to participate in discussion with the local community. San Francisco 49ers *Most of the content for this section comes from a telephone interview conducted on Monday, February 14, 2011 with Heather Curry, a community relations specialist with 30 the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers. A complete transcription of this interview can be found in the appendices that follow the body of this paper. The 49ers owners and communications staff have made it a priority in the community to seek out local individuals who would benefit from the type of guidance and support that the team has the resources to provide. In this sense, it seems the 49ers consider their role in the community to be one of mentoring and promoting personal responsibility and success among San Francisco residents. The team’s owners famously say, “Every Sunday in the Fall we do everything we can to win. All year long, we do everything we can to support our community." 31 To start this study, it is appropriate to examine the specific area that the 49ers consider their community. Curry noted that the team has a geographic area that it considers its official community, including 31 counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, central California and Northern California. Interestingly, the team also considers both Alaska and Hawaii to be in their community, since those states do not have in-state teams. The team uses this formal definition of community to determine where to donate money, time and services. The 49ers also field requests from those counties for team memorabilia — including autographed items and limited edition equipment — to be used in fundraising auctions or raffles. According to Curry, the team’s community efforts revolve around a respect campaign that focuses primarily on young people and stresses three areas: respect for families, respect for schools and respect for communities. This campaign was established 31 "49ers.com | 49ers Foundation." 49ers.com | The Official Site of the San Francisco 49ers. Web. 2011. <http://www.49ers.com/community/foundation.html>. 31 by owners Denise and John York and is embodied by both the team’s community relations function and the 49ers Foundation. While the foundation is not officially recognized as a part of the community relations function, the two share the same director and several responsibilities are intertwined. Since the 49ers Foundation leads team’s efforts in the San Francisco area, a deeper inspection of the foundation is necessary to understand how the team is impacting its community. Formally, the Foundation’s mission statement is “Keeping Kids safe, on track and in school,” 32 and its primary responsibility is to support local community improvement efforts through grants. The Foundation’s website states: “Through the leadership of 49ers team owners Denise and John York, the 49ers Foundation has donated more than $10 million over the last eight years to non-profits throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.” 33 The 49ers Foundation currently has around 60 sponsors and supports nearly 20 organizations with grants. 34 To describe the type of organizations supported, Curry provided a list of some of the Foundation’s grant recipients: • Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY) — The mission statement about FLY on its website reads, “Fresh Lifelines for Youth helps teens in trouble learn to make healthy decisions. The organization provides at-risk and disadvantaged youth with vital information regarding the decisions they make in their lives.” 35 The program 32 Ibid 33 Ibid 34 Ibid 35 "About FLY." Official Website of FLY, Fresh Lifelines for Youth. Web. 2011. <http://www.flyprogram.org/about_fly.php>. 32 provides at-risk youth information and encouragement about positive changes they can make in their lives and offers mentors who will guide them in those undertakings. Curry said that the team and the players love working with FLY because it encourages children with a checkered past to “get on the right path and move forward in a positive direction.” • The 49ers Academy — The Academy is a public middle school in the most at-risk neighborhood of East Palo Alto, Calif. It was founded in 1996 and has since seen its graduates admitted to prestigious high schools and colleges. 36 Curry said that the 49ers’ role in the Academy allows the team to easily promote programs like the NFL’s Play 60 campaign among the students. The 49ers Academy is a very clear representation of the type of work the team set out to accomplish with the mission statement of “keeping kids safe, on track and in school.” • Bayview Hunters Point YMCA — This YMCA is near the 49ers stadium, Candlestick Park. Like other YMCAs, this one specializes in activities and programs directed at young people, and encourages a healthy lifestyle and good exercise habits. • Hedge Funds Care — The goal of this international charity is preventing and treating child abuse. 37 In 2010, the program helped 37,560 38 individuals with grants aimed at eradicating child abuse. 36 "About Us." 49ers Academy. Web. 2011. <http://www.49ers-academy.org/about.html>. 37 "Mission." Hedge Funds Care. Web. 2011. <http://www.hedgefundscare.org/content.asp?pageID=1>. 38 Ibid 33 • Make-A-Wish and Dream Foundations — These programs offer a chance for people struggling with life-threatening medical problems to have a unique personal experience with the their favorite teams. Curry estimated that the team hosted 10 individuals last year. She said: Basically what we do is we provide an opportunity for them to not only come out and see our facility and take a headquarters tour and see the super bowl trophies, and the super bowl rings, but they also get to watch practice… After practice they are able to stand there and we’ll introduce them to players and they get to take pictures and get autographs, and it is something that is truly a unique, one-of-a-kind experience. Then we are able to take them onto the field before a game and be on the sidelines. To be able to provide them not only with tickets but the on-the-field experience and opportunity to meet the players is an extremely unique time. So that is definitely a program that is near and dear to our heart as a whole. It is clear that the 49ers Foundation has a determined purpose of enhancing the lives of children in the San Francisco community. The Foundation takes the mission of “keeping kids safe, on track and in school” very seriously. When asked about the about the focus on children of all demographic groups, Curry said: I think that the belief is that if you can change a kids life when he’s younger and when you can be that positive role model and you can have positive things for these kids to look up to and you can encourage them to do right at a young age, they’re more likely to continue on that path and to continue to make those positive changes before they feel like it’s too late to do so. As much as charitable functions like the 49ers Foundation help the community, the individuals of that community, especially the fans, are most likely to draw a direct link to a team when a player is present. Because the individual athletes are the recognizable faces of the franchise, the work that they do in a community is often some 34 of the most important in terms of establishing a relationship between the team and the local fans and organizations. Curry seemed very excited about the willingness of the individual 49ers players to get active in the San Francisco area. She said that although the players get only one day a week with no activities during the football season, the 49ers “are very blessed to have a lot of really good guys … that have huge hearts that want to get involved on their days off.” These off-day appearances are entirely optional, yet in 2010, 87% of the roster participated in at least one community function, collectively logging 436 hours of volunteer work. Some of the community programs that feature the players are: • Shop with a Player — This program takes place during the holiday season and is sponsored by Visa. The players take a small group of children selected by a charity or nonprofit organization to Target and shop with a $250 gift card. With the card, the children are supposed to buy things that they need for their households before they buy anything for themselves. The players spend time conversing with the children while helping them shop. • Role Model program — During the season, the 49ers rookies visit schools in the San Francisco area and talk to the students about their own plans for life after their football careers. The program is intended to show the students how valuable an education is, since these professional athletes realize that their education will be an important part of their future. • 49ers Care — Each season, the players have an option to purchase season tickets and donate them to a charity. The charity then selects individuals to receive those 35 tickets and enjoy the game at no charge. According to the 49ers website, 16 players participated last season, giving away tickets worth more than $100,000. 39 • Individual player foundations — According to the 49ers website, seven players currently have foundations set up to raise money for nonprofit or charity organizations. These are optional for the players and the recipients of the funds are hand-picked by the athletes. For those seven players, the organizations represent organizations that improve the lives of disadvantaged young people. Curry mentioned one athlete who individually donated 50 seats to the 49ers Care program and another who volunteered 60 hours of his time for the off-day volunteer appearances. She applauded the athletes’ willingness to give back, saying: I think that it is just that they do it because they know that they can make a positive difference and they are role models to a lot of people in our community and I think that is something that inspires them to want to continue to do right and to do good things. Analysis of the 49ers role in the San Francisco community A few things about community engagement are apparent. First, the 49ers take their role as an agent of positive change in youth very seriously. Second, the efforts of the team are successful largely due to the organized efforts of team employees and representatives at every level of community interaction. Third, the team measures community involvement by what they are giving to the members of the community rather than by the response to those efforts. 39 Beckinghausen, Lindsay. "49ers Celebrate 2010 CARE Program." 49ers.com | The Official Site of the San Francisco 49ers. 29 Dec. 2010. Web. 2011. <http://www.49ers.com/news-and-events/article-1/49ers- Celebrate-2010-CARE-Program/c25ec904-a486-4466-bfba-f00851aaa863>. 36 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim *Most of the content for this section comes from a personal interview conducted on Thursday, February 17, 2011 with Matthew Bennett, a community relations employee who worked for Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim from 2000 to 2009. He has also worked with the Oakland A’s and Los Angeles Dodgers. A complete transcription of this interview can be found in the appendices that follow the body of this paper. Interview with Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim What made 15-year MLB community relations veteran Matthew Bennett stand out was the way he viewed the tools his teams had available to fulfill its responsibilities to the community. He emphasized the importance of charitable giving and community improvement efforts but focused on what the team could do through a fantastic resource that is unique to a professional sports team, its athletes. Several times during the interview, Bennett referenced the unique challenge that a sports team faces compared to other businesses: I really think for a sports team especially, it is such a visible organization, it is probably a lot more visible than your average company would be. It was not a situation where the team could hide behind whatever they wanted to hide behind and not get active. If the team was not active, it was very evident and really it is just not a good situation if a team’s not taking that responsibility and making the most of it. So I think a team is really charged with getting involved as much as they can, using that influence; all the players are role models for what they do in the community. Bennett considers a professional sports team to be a business, but one with the challenge and opportunity of a high degree of what he calls “visibility.” The players, as the faces of the team, hold a degree of celebrity that can be utilized to promote the team’s 37 goals. Bennett considered it a primary role of the team to get the players out into the community to support causes that the organization valued. By using the athletes as communicators, the team delivered a stronger message and encouraged the athletes to establish relationships with local residents and charities. Since the players are the most public personalities of the organization, anything they can do for the community will benefit the overall relationship with the team. Bennett said: Our role is to really encourage players, encourage members of the team to become active and become involved with the community as much as possible… Children look up to them; adults look up to them… This is one of the things we always told them at the beginning of the season when we encouraged them to get involved was the power they had to make a difference. Bennett emphasized the importance of establishing the relationship between a team’s athletes and its community function. He communicated with players daily, establishing what he calls “give and take” between the parties. He said that sometimes the team needed to ask the players to donate their time and sometimes the players approached the community relations staff to utilize resources and do some of the “legwork” for their individual community efforts. Bennett also talked about how the players could help advance the causes of some of the team’s biggest sponsors. The players are useful to these businesses, and their volunteer efforts can be used to create valuable team-sponsor partnerships that benefit both parties as well as the local community. In describing some of the team’s community programs, Bennett focused on those that featured the players. He listed the following programs as examples of the community work the Angels favored: 38 • Urban Youth Academy — This program takes place in Compton, an area within greater Los Angeles where young athletes have less exposure to the game of baseball than to other sports like basketball and football. The Academy features professional athletes as instructors to teach children how to play baseball. • Adopt-A-School — According to the Angels website, this program features “Angels players, broadcasters, Alumni and the Angels Strike Force visiting elementary schools and speaking to the students about the importance of working hard, reading and staying in school.” 40 • Mother’s Day/Father’s Day cancer awareness campaigns — Near these two holidays, the Angels players sport pink or blue accessories — hats, gloves, bats, wristbands, shoes, and the like — to help raise awareness for breast and prostate cancers. In addition to the awareness drive, the players and team concentrate on encouraging donations to medical programs searching for a cure to the diseases. • Hall of Fame Golf Classic —one of the longest-running community relations programs that the Angels have sponsored. The tournament features current and former Angels as well as other Angels personalities like manager Mike Scioscia. Funds generated from the outing benefit the Angels Baseball Foundation, which donates to several local charities. 41 40 "Community Programs | Angels.com: Community." The Official Site of The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim | Angels.com: Homepage. Web. 2011. <http://losangeles.angels.mlb.com/ana/community/ana_community_programs.jsp#educational>. 41 "Angels Baseball Foundation Hall of Fame Golf Classic | Angels.com: Community." The Official Site of Major League Baseball | MLB.com: Homepage. Web. 2011. <http://mlb.mlb.com/ana/community/golf_classic.jsp>. 39 One of the things that makes the Angels a unique team is the geographic area in which it is located. There are two other baseball teams within 100 miles of the Angels and a total of five MLB franchises in the state of California. Despite the proximity, Bennett said that the teams unite when it comes to community efforts. He said: As many people as there are in this area, each team has been able to draw almost 3 million each year, so there are plenty of fans to go around. I think there’s a little bit of a competition between the teams; it might be a little more friendly at times, but I do not think if something bad happened to a player on the field where they were seen in a negative light, it’s not a good thing for either team, because that reflects on the game and athletes as opposed to one team or another. There is a responsibility for each team to promote the sport as well as promoting the individual team that they have an interest in. Bennett said that the team is based in Anaheim, but considers the entire Southern California region its official community. When deciding which areas of the region to target for community events and donations, he said it gets complicated. “Our goal [originally] was to serve the population surrounding the stadium and it started out with a 10-mile circle around the stadium and then worked its way out,” he said. “Definitely you would look at some areas where you can grow your fan base as well.” In addition to the high number of professional baseball teams in Southern California, the area has a unique demographic representation that features a large Hispanic population. This is a topic that was intriguing when studying the Angels, but Bennett downplayed the importance of programs designed to target that particular population, saying that the team preferred to focus on benefiting the community in general, rather than specific segments. He said: Well, to be honest with you, a lot of it was geared toward the population in general. If we did a baseball clinic out in our local community, 40 surrounding the stadium, obviously there was a large Hispanic population. It was not really geared toward the Hispanic population, it was just geared toward our constituency, and I think that if we have a few activities where we have players out that speak Spanish and can use their language skills to speak to Hispanic groups, and speak in Spanish and those things we certainly did those. But as far as the community efforts, it was really geared toward the population as opposed to going toward an Asian community or a Hispanic community. He made it clear that although the Angels did have Spanish-language ticket promotions and team websites, the goal was always to help reach more people in general and never to target any particular demographic of that audience. He said some groups that had a larger representation in the population may benefit more because of their size, but the goal was never to reach out to any part of the community more than others. In his 15 years of community relations experience, Matthew Bennett has been involved in different programs for several different teams and communities. After all of that experience, his key piece of advice was to appreciate the flexibility of what a team can do for its community and find ways to help out those people that would benefit the most from the team’s involvement. He said: The tough thing is, or the opportunity, depending on which way you look at it, there’s a million different ways you can go in terms of what you can do in the community, and you’ll never be able to touch them all or look at the end of the season and say ‘that was a perfect job, there’s nothing we could have done different, there’s no different ways we could have gone…’ Probably the biggest thing is when somebody calls a team or is asking assistance from a team or whatever the case, is that you have to put yourself in their shoes. Analysis of the Angels’ role in the Los Angeles/Anaheim community The one area where the Angels could be taking better advantage of the players’ high standing in the community would have been to create programs designed to reach 41 out to members of the Hispanic population. The city of Anaheim alone is more than half Hispanic 42 and the state of California is about one-third Hispanic. 43 Several of the Angels players can speak Spanish, a great tool for reaching out to that community. Finally, Bennett said that a team has many different ways to get involved in its community and that the combination of causes and programs to undertake must always be focused on achieving specific team goals while also staying flexible enough to respond to feedback from stakeholders. An important part of the Angels' community efforts relies on letting the individuals in the community decide in which direction the team will go. This sort of reactive ability is a very effective piece of the Angels’ community effort that allows the team to meet new needs of local residents and establish a working relationship that will endure for a long time. Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a case of a unique relationship between a professional team and its community. Unlike other professional sports teams that are owned by wealthy individuals or small groups, the Packers are literally owned by the people of the Green Bay, Wisconsin community. The Packers are the only publicly-owned professional team. 42 "Anaheim at a Glance - Demographics." City of Anaheim. Web. 2011. <http://www.anaheim.net/article.asp?id=236>. 43 "California Demographic Statistics." Infoplease: Encyclopedia, Almanac, Atlas, Biographies, Dictionary, Thesaurus. Free Online Reference, Research & Homework Help. — Infoplease.com. Web. 2011. <http://www.infoplease.com/us/census/data/california/demographic.html>. 42 Since 1923, when the Packers filed paperwork for a professional football team, the team raised money by selling individual shares of stock residents of the Green Bay area. Since the team is both publicly owned and a nonprofit organization, selling these shares is the only method of fundraising, rather than raising prices on things like tickets, concessions or stadium parking. In the 88-year history of the team, fundraising needs have pushed the team to sell additional stock three times, most recently in 1997. 44 Unlike shares of other publicly-owned companies, the Packers shares cannot appreciate in value or pay dividends to stockholders. However, the owner of each share elects individuals onto a board of directors, who in turn select a seven-member Executive Committee that will make all of the decisions for the team. 45 To prevent any person from overtaking control of the team by purchasing all of the stock, no individual is allowed to own more than 200,000 shares. As of 2010, there were 4,750,937 shares of Packers stock owned by 112,158 different individuals. 46 What makes this case worth noting is that the fans have a different feeling about how they personally interact with their favorite team. No individual stockholder is going to think that her/his small percentage of ownership puts her/him in the same class as other NFL owners or gives them complete control over the team’s decisions, but the important thing is that the fans all know that the team is run by the people. When they spend money 44 "Packers.com | Shareholders." Packers.com, the Official Website of the Green Bay Packers. Web. 2011. <http://www.packers.com/community/shareholders.html>. 45 Keithley, Steven. "Unique Ownership Model Works for Green Bay Packers." The Hoya. 23 June 2010. Web. <http://www.thehoya.com/sports/unique-ownership-model-works-for-green-bay-packers- 1.1922876>. 46 "Packers.com | Shareholders." Packers.com, the Official Website of the Green Bay Packers. Web. 2011. <http://www.packers.com/community/shareholders.html>. 43 to buy a Packers ticket or merchandise, they are not just padding the pockets of a billionaire that they have never met; they are supporting the community in which they live. To illustrate how the community feels about the team, consider the 1997 sale of Packers stock. In a meeting of the board of directors, it was determined that the team would need to raise funds for a redevelopment of Lambeau Field, where the team plays home games. The board determined that the best way to raise this money was through new stock issuance for a total of 17 weeks. In response, the Packers community purchased 120,010 shares of stock for $200 each. The sale netted 105,989 new shareholders and totaled over $24 million for the project. 47 This number is especially impressive considering the size of the city of Green Bay, which had a population of 102,313 in the 2000 census. 48 There was more than one new owner of stock for each resident of the city of Green Bay. It would be inaccurate to suggest that every person in Green Bay owns stock in the team, but the support of the local community is the financial lifeblood of the organization. The community stockholders are aware that their funding is the sole source of revenue for the Packers and are willing to invest their own money in the team to see it succeed. More importantly, the team has a relationship with the city such that it will trust the members of the elected Executive Committee to keep making decisions for the team. 47 Novy-Williams, Eben. "Packers $200 Share That Cannot Rise or Trade Is Banker's Favorite Security - Bloomberg." Bloomberg. 2 Feb. 2011. Web. <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-03/packers-200- share-that-can-t-rise-or-trade-is-banker-s-favorite-security.html>. 48 "Green Bay (city) QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau." State and County QuickFacts. Web. <http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/55/5531000.html>. 44 The community support for the Packers is best shown in season ticket purchases. Despite being the smallest metropolitan area to support an NFL team, the Packers have sold out every game since 1960 and currently have a waiting list for season tickets of more than 83,000 people, among the longest in professional sports. 49 Current NFL rules disallow other teams from public ownership like the Packers, but a lesson can still be taken from the Green Bay community and the way it supports the team: a community of individuals who feel like their input is heard by a team will be extremely loyal to that team. Other teams owned privately can still incorporate ideas from season ticket holders and community members, even though they are not financially entitled to make those decisions. Owners of professional teams would not legally be allowed to give their executive rights to community members, but that does not mean that they cannot communicate with the public about business decisions. The case of the Green Bay Packers is definitely an outlier in terms of public involvement, but the devotion to that team is a perfect example of how much pride fans can take in their local team if they feel like their individual voice is being heard. The Packers stockholders know that their share may be only be one in nearly 5 million, but these dedicated fans relish the importance of their stock-ownership responsibilities, and have established a deep bond with the team through that ownership. In short, Packers owners are aware of the miniscule impact that their vote has on the team, but the pride that comes from the culmination of those small impacts is enormous. If nothing else, the public ownership of the Green Bay Packers is a testament to the 49 "Green Bay Packers Season Tickets Waiting List Update." The Season Tickets Waiting List Directory. Web. <http://www.seasonticketwaitinglist.com/2010/07/green-bay-packers-season-tickets.html>. 45 power that comes with the community feeling that its voice is taken seriously by the team. The overwhelming support for the team in ticket sales and fans in the waiting list is something from which all teams, regardless of ownership, can take a lesson. In regards to “civic responsibility” the lesson that the Packets illustrate is that sometimes the biggest return a community can gather from investing in a team is a pride in the relationships between the team and its supporters. Though other teams cannot take on the ownership structure that the Packers have, they can certainly listen to the public and take their concerns into consideration when making team decisions. Since local taxpayers often have given some support to the pro teams, a little bit of recognition of their ideas and needs can go a long way. New Orleans Saints In the history of professional sports teams and community involvement, one of the landmark cases is the New Orleans Saints’ response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. It is a story of a team’s dedication to its city and how a community’s support for a pro team can unite a group of people who have little else to celebrate. In August 2005, Katrina, a category four hurricane that was the third-strongest ever recorded to hit the United States, 50 ravaged the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving more than 1,800 dead and an estimated 80% of New Orleans under water. 51 The 50 "11 Facts about Hurricane Katrina | Do Something." Do Something. Web. 2011. <http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-hurricane-katrina>. 51 Ibid 46 winds and water destroyed nearly every part of the city, including the landmark Louisiana Superdome, where the Saints played their home games. The hurricane hit only weeks before the 2005 NFL season started, leaving the Saints, and the people of New Orleans, displaced. Like many residents of the city, the team took up temporary residence elsewhere while waiting to see what would come of New Orleans in the post-Katrina era. What remained of the Superdome operated as a temporary shelter for those who were forced to remain in New Orleans, and the team left the city to try to play a season without a home stadium. The Saints split home games that year between San Antonio and Baton Rouge. 52 The 2005 season was tough for the Saints in several ways. The constant traveling generated rumors about permanently relocating the team to another city. The daily schedule changes for practices and games exhausted the players and coaches. The team’s 3-13 record that season was the second-worst in the NFL. 53 In the spring of 2006, the Saints hired a new head coach, Sean Payton, and acquired a new quarterback, Drew Brees, via free agency. The two new Saints joined with owner Tom Benson to assure the citizens of New Orleans that the team would return 52 Associated Press. "Saints' Home Games: 4 at LSU, 3 in Alamodome - NFL - ESPN." ESPN: The Worldwide Leader In Sports. 12 Sept. 2005. Web. 2011. <http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=2159595>. 53 "2005 NFL Standings, Team & Offensive Statistics - Pro-Football-Reference.com." Pro-Football- Reference.com - Pro Football Statistics and History. Web. 2011. <http://www.pro-football- reference.com/years/2005/>. 47 to the city and would make a special effort to bear some of the burden of rebuilding the city. 54 During the summer of 2006, the team spent time in the community, literally rebuilding New Orleans. On some occasions, the coaches would cancel practices so the team could spend time working with charities in the city that focused on restoration projects. The local and national media often covered these projects, and the Saints’ efforts to restore New Orleans became a rallying point for the citizens of the community as a symbol of the team’s dedication to the community. In addition to the time and effort given to rebuilding projects, the 2006 Saints also gave numerous monetary donations to restoration efforts. Author Alan Donnes, who thoroughly researched the Saints’ role in post-Katrina New Orleans noted that “over 5,000 charities, schools, churches, foundations and festivals received in-kind donations from the Saints in 2006.” 55 Donnes also recorded more than 50 official player appearances in community events during the 2006 football season as well as unofficial appearances that were too great to count. 56 In the five seasons since the Saints returned to New Orleans, the team has generated an enormous amount of support from the local community. Although there is not way to quantitatively prove it, several sources have noted that since 2006, the Saints fans are likely the best in professional sports. 57 The New Orleans Times-Picayune has 54 Donnes, Alan. Patron Saints: How the Saints Gave New Orleans a Reason to Believe. New York: Center Street, 2007. Print. 55 Ibid 56 Ibid 48 measured the noise level of the Saints home crowd to come within 20 decibels of a range that could cause permanent hearing damage. 58 New Orleans police estimate that due to the high number of people watching the games in person or on television, violent crime stops in the city during Saints games as well as a few hours before and after. 59 While the depth of the tragedy that afflicted Louisiana in 2005 was certainly a key factor to the strength with which the city and the Saints fans rebounded, there is still a significant lesson to be learned about community involvement. Ideally, no city or pro team ever has to go through what Hurricane Katrina brought to New Orleans and the Saints went through, but that does not mean that a team cannot involve itself with charitable endeavors in the community. The team that grew out of the disaster that was Katrina came to stand for the resiliency and compassion that characterized New Orleans. Though the Saints have had a rough history with the fans in the city of New Orleans — mostly due to a history of on-field futility — the team’s response solidified the franchise as one of the most connected to its community in all of professional sports. The team’s decision to dedicate so much of its time and money to the city when it needed help intertwined the team with the community in several ways that promoted a mutually 57 Hatoum, Amer. "Are Saints Fans The Best Fans In The NFL? | Bleacher Report." Bleacher Report | Entertaining Sports News, Photos and Slideshows. 28 Jan. 2010. Web. 2011. <http://bleacherreport.com/articles/334642-are-saints-fans-the-best-fans-in-the-nfl>. 58 Swenson, Dan. "How Loud Was the Superdome? Graphic." NOLA.com. 1 Dec. 2009. Web. 2011. <http://media.nola.com/saints_impact/other/saintsdecibel120109.pdf>. 59 Carr, Martha. "NOPD Says No Violence Before, during or after NFC Championship Game | NOLA.com." NOLA.com. 25 Jan. 2010. Web. 2011. <http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2010/01/nopd_says_no_major_incidents_b.html>. 49 beneficial relationship. This commitment to the community is something that all teams can decide to make, regardless of prior circumstances. Indiana Pacers: Roy Hibbert and “Area 55” In fall 2010, Indiana Pacers center Roy Hibbert devised a creative idea to give back to individual Pacers fans in the community while also improving the atmosphere for the fans who attended Pacers games. Hibbert, who wears number 55, purchased that number of Pacers season tickets and held a contest to find dedicated fans to receive those tickets. The contest would award the fans who cheered the most creatively and passionately with free tickets for the year. The team also benefited from the positive and more passionate home-court crowd that made the game environment more exciting for the audience. Hibbert announced his search for passionate fans in early September via a video on the Pacers website as a way of fielding “the loudest, craziest section at Conseco Fieldhouse.” 60 He also drew traffic to the contest with a special Area 55 Facebook page and Twitter account. Hibbert released several videos instructing the audience about appropriate and respectful ways to cheer for the team and announced an open competition for all Pacers fans. Entrants were to submit a 30-second video showing their support for the team and the best were selected to make an appearance in a live audition held at the stadium and judged by Hibbert and a panel of other Pacers players. When the auditions 60 Pacers - Area 55. Web. <http://pacersarea55.com/index.php>. 50 were completed, Hibbert posted a list of the 55 season ticket winners online in a special video. After each home game of the 2010-11 season, the Area 55 section of the Pacers website posted a video highlighting fans from the section cheering for the team. 61 There are several positive impacts of a contest like this that are worth addressing when discussing the relationship between a professional sports team and its community. The first is that interaction with the players, who are the team’s in-house celebrities, can encourage the fans in a special way. The prize of season tickets was enough to encourage fans to participate, but what really got the online conversations started was that the winners had a special level of contact with one of the Pacers players. Not only did Hibbert start the contest online, but he actively participates with the fans on the Area 55 website and makes posts on the section’s social media accounts. The fans who participated in the contest, as well as those who monitored its progression online, are a testament to the excitement that athletes can generate by interacting with individual members of the community. Similarly, the contest and the conversation around it exemplify the power of athletes using social media to reach fans. The heavy use of Twitter and Facebook in Hibbert’s contest allowed him to directly reach out to fans in a two-way conversation that seems more genuine than traditional media. As a member of a professional sports team, Hibbert had a celebrity status that made fans eager to engage in conversation with him. He used social media platforms to drive traffic to his personally-produced videos that outlined contest specifics. Hibbert’s individual effort was little more than producing a 61 Ibid 51 few blog posts and short videos, but because of enthusiastic fans’ likeliness to self-select as followers of Hibbert, the messages that he produced quickly reached a large part of the most enthusiastic fans. Another important lesson from the Area 55 contest is the power of videos compared to text-based messages. While this may just be another platform in the player- produced content area, the videos that Hibbert shot were the primary means of dispensing contest news. Though they were very brief, the videos showed Hibbert’s personality and allowed the fans to see that he truly was passionate about fielding a seating section full of enthusiastic fans. Allowing players to show their personalities in brief videos could certainly be a tactic that teams consider in the very near future as a means of developing player personalities and creating new ways for fans to interact with players. 52 Chapter 5: Conclusions Summary Professional sports teams have a nearly infinite number of avenues to affect a community and the relationships formed by individuals in it. With all of the possible programs for a team to pursue, team leaders must first take into consideration all of the possible roles the team can play before determining the proper positioning for that organization and that community. The reason that people come to the stadium or watch the games on television is to be entertained. If the team did not entertain people, they would not watch the games or read sports news or buy team-related merchandise. Fans want to cheer for a team and they want to develop relationships with the players because it is rewarding and gives them a sense of happiness in return for their dedication. In the case of the Green Bay Packers, for instance, the joy that comes from watching the team succeed can also be a source of pride that an individual played a part in the on-field victories. For the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, that entertainment might come from providing fans with an up-close and personal experience with a player or players that are viewed as celebrities in the area. For some people, sports teams and athletes provide a unique emotional experience that they cannot get through any other form of entertainment. A second important part of a team’s role in community is philanthropy. Every professional sports organization has a function to make sure the team is involved with charitable causes, but how seriously the team takes that responsibility varies on a franchise-to-franchise basis. Teams like the 49ers make it part of the team’s mission 53 statement to benefit the supporting community. In particular, many of these efforts are aimed at children and people who are disadvantaged by difficult financial, legal or health circumstances. Personal interaction with a professional athletes might make a difference that could vastly change the lives of these individuals. How much a team involves itself in local charities and nonprofits is a decision that has to be made by the organization, but that aspect of a team is crucial to determining its appropriate role in the community. The Saints showed that a team can be a rallying point for people of a broken city. The team’s dedication to the people of New Orleans was a unifying force that joined individuals who had little else in which to take comfort. In this case, a team can be an organization that brings people together to join in a common cause. From studying what the Indiana Pacers’ Roy Hibbert did with his “Area 55” contest, we can see how pro sports teams can also be a way to start new conversation among people in a common community. Hibbert’s efforts showed us the strength of efforts made in new media and both the team and the entirety of the Pacers fan base benefited from his work. Another aspect of a team’s responsibility is in supporting the local economy. The team can be a great engine of employment on its own and in a number of related industries. The industry of pro sports involves a lot of money invested and collected and there are numerous ways that this can benefit the local economy if the team wishes to do so. In short, the effect a team has on its community relies solely on the way it builds personal relationships for the members of its own community. As far as the team’s role in 54 advancing those personal relationships of the members of its community, it is the organization’s job to determine which ones arethe most important and act on those. In these case studies, the 49ers decided that the team should benefit children and their relationships with their futures. The Angels focused on promoting charitable causes by developing the relationship between the players and the fans. The Packers ownership structure changed the way individual fans feel about their role in making team decisions, allowing them to have a stronger relationship with the team on the field. The Saints strengthened the relationship between individuals and the city they called home. The Pacers used a player program to strengthen the relationship between individual players and fans who wanted to make an effort to support the team. For each pro team, there are a number of factors that should affect the decision about which relationships to focus on improving. The resources of that franchise, the strengths of management and the staff, the personality of the players and maybe most importantly the personality of the city all dictate what that team’s role needs to be. It would be unwise for me to advocate any one particular approach to developing the relationship between a team and its community, but in the changing landscape of the way individuals interact with a team, the way those teams interact in return needs to be re- examined, with an overall effort to meet the needs most important to the individual people of that community. 55 Best Practices What follows is a list of individual tactics resulting from the research that a team could undertake to strengthen the relationship with its community. • Let the players show their personalities — Matthew Bennett’s opinions on athletes as the difference-makers in a team’s community shows the importance of letting the players show their personal style in their community interactions. Today, athletes do not need to go through a public relations employee and the press to reach an audience, they can communicate directly to any audience via a number of new media. Although there is a risk of the players making mistakes, the emergence of professional athletes on social media is just another way of advancing the relationship between individuals and the teams they support. For better or worse, the athletes are by far the most important faces of the team, and allowing them to show some personality on platforms like Facebook and Twitter will only help individual fans connect with that athlete. Unfortunately for a team, this aspect of communication is largely uncontrollable. The most a team can do here is to remind players that their content reflects on the organization as a whole and to update them with any team messaging strategies. Players opening up on these platforms should be encouraged by a team, and perhaps the best way to show support for this new communication is for a team to set up a special team accounts on social media that either re-post athletes’ content or link to it when it is posted. By following that account, fans would be able to get information from all players in one spot and the team can keep a frequent watch on the information athletes are posting. 56 • Listen to what the players want to get involved in — One of the biggest takeaways from Matthew Bennett is that the communication between a team and its players regarding community involvement must be two-way. If a player is passionate about a certain cause or community effort, teams should take steps to allow that player to actively pursue those programs. For example, if a Spanish-speaking player wants to reach out to fans who speak that language, the team’s communications functions should take advantage of its resources to allow that player to do so. Desire to form relationships with certain fans is something that is difficult to manufacture, so if a player is naturally passionate about a certain cause and the people it will affect, take advantage of that. • Know what the community wants — This is crucial for a team in developing a long- term relationship with its community. Some communities might want more giving to charities and nonprofits, others might want more interaction with the players, others may favor feeling that the owners are listening to them. Every community is unique and the personality of the city should be reflected in the team’s tactics for community engagement. Studying individual teams’ community websites will show that each team must vary its approach to community involvement base primarily off what that community wants and needs the team to do. Listening to the citizens of the area and measuring the success of current programs to see what gets the best and worst responses from stakeholders is necessary for a team to grow closer to its community. • Look for ways to involve other businesses or industries that are important to the community —A team is vital to its city’s economy only to the extent that it helps 57 other businesses. To embrace the city and become a true citizen of that community, it is important that a team embrace partnerships and common goals with other local business leaders. It is important to stay in business and equally important because it is a great way to develop a mutually-beneficial relationship with other companies that impact the lives of local residents. • Produce videos — With current technology, a short video can be shot and uploaded to the internet in a matter of minutes. From there, the video can be re-posted or at least linked in all media types that a team employs. In the case of Roy Hibbert, a few short videos that collectively took less than an hour to film, upload and distribute created a huge following. Video can be posted on YouTube, Facebook, and the team website in a matter of seconds and are much better than any press release or news article in allowing athletes to show their personal side. The adage says a picture is worth a thousand words, but a moving picture, even a short one, says much more about a team than any traditional media story could. • Track team-related online content — The use of Radian6, Social Mention or other social media tracking technologies allow a team’s public relations staff to see exactly what is being about the team in the public forum. Using this new technology properly is significantly cheaper and much more effective than polling, focus groups or any other traditional form of measuring public opinion, since the content is completely genuine. In addition to reading content about a team, these tools often track other posts made by users, allowing a team to better judge what else is important to it 58 online community, a great resource to have in terms of measuring what the community wants. • Engage online users directly — This may be an extension of the previous point, but it seems necessary today to use new media to communicate directly from the team to individuals. This could be achieved by re-posting their content, by replying to comments that individuals make or by offering special incentives to online users. In general, users who have the strongest relationships will likely be the ones to post their own content about a team, self-selecting as important supporters of the team. Teams must engage bloggers. Not all bloggers have the same needs, so communications experts should do research or communicate with a blog to find out what type of assistance can be provided. • Start online conversations — While the other tactics mentioned in this section are designed to improve the relationship between the team and the individuals in its community, it is also important for a team to support the individual-to-individual relationships among it is community. Team-sponsored sites can be a great place for a team to get people talking. • Enable community members to make suggestions to management — Looking at the Packers organization, it is easy to see how a community that sees its team being affected by fan ideas is much more supportive of that team. While the community members often do not have a grasp of the entire host of ideas that go into a team’s decision-making process, surely the community voices can propose some suggestions of value. When those suggestions are taken seriously by team management, the team 59 should advertise that the decision was based on the community’s proposal. The case of the Packers shows the value of a public sense of importance in decision-making regarding the team. Letting the public impact team decisions can generate a long- standing and deep loyalty among the community. • Know which team blogs get the most traffic and treat those bloggers well — It seems like now is past the time to start treating bloggers like traditional journalists. The hard part is determining which ones to extend certain privileges. Because of the unique platform, blogs are often a mix of news and opinion, with a lot of gray area. It seems more likely to the author that the bloggers will write favorable content about a team if the team representative is respectful to them or gives them special privileges, for example an email interview with a player they chose or access to a private practice session. It will be up to a team to determine how many blogs to treat like this, but a look at the daily traffic to those sites should indicate which are important to determining the attitude of the team’s community. Influencing the most important blogs will extend the team’s outreach to a unique portion of the team’s online community that often is intensely passionate about their relationship with that team. • Take part in league-sponsored community-outreach programs — When a professional sports league decides to dedicate time and effort toward a cause, they make it very easy for the teams in that league to join in. Programs like NFL’s Play 60, MLB’s Breaking Barriers and NBA CARES unite every team together for a common cause and the leagues make them simple for the teams to be a part of. Matthew Bennett said that these programs are often “cookie-cutter” in style and a team has 60 little to do to achieve an effective community program. In some leagues, involvement is mandatory, but when it is not these programs should still be a priority for teams. • Provide a platform for players to communicate with each other about community involvement —Allowing the players who are most involved in community work to encourage other players to participate seems like an effective way to reach those players who are not as self-motivated to get involved. Perhaps players with firsthand experience of community work can be more effective in explaining the personal benefits that result from it and this type of communication could also improve the athlete-to-athlete relationships. Heather Curry explained to me how the 49ers use play-to-player conversations to drive involvement in community programs. She said that communication often encouraged the players to participate in new community events and often strengthened the personal bond between those players. The rapport that professional athletes have with each other is certainly different from that of a player with a team employee, and that should be used to the community’s advantage. • Leave room in the community approach for flexibility — It is extremely important for a team to have a determined direction for community initiatives, but it is a vital part of that plan to leave time and resources available to deal with unexpected community issues that may arise such as a natural disaster or local tragedy. These issues are important to a community will be an extremely visible example of a team’s involvement in it. Efforts by a team to deal with current issues will certainly be noticed and appreciated. 61 • Learn to think about the team from the community’s perspective — This is one of the strongest lessons from my interview with Matthew Bennett. The relationship between a team and its community needs to be one where both parties understand the other. It is part of a team’s responsibility to its community to try to see things from their metaphorical shoes. 62 References "11 Facts about Hurricane Katrina | Do Something." Do Something. Web. 2011. <http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-hurricane-katrina>. "2005 NFL Standings, Team & Offensive Statistics - Pro-Football-Reference.com." Pro- Football-Reference.com - Pro Football Statistics and History. Web. 2011. <http://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2005/>. "49ers Foundation." 49ers.com | The Official Site of the San Francisco 49ers. Web. 2011. <http://www.49ers.com/community/foundation.html>. "About FLY." Official Website of FLY, Fresh Lifelines for Youth. Web. 2011. <http://www.flyprogram.org/about_fly.php>. "About Us." 49ers Academy. Web. 2011. <http://www.49ers-academy.org/about.html>. "Anaheim at a Glance - Demographics." City of Anaheim. Web. 2011. <http://www.anaheim.net/article.asp?id=236>. 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Web. <http://www.brookings.edu/articles/1997/summer_taxes_noll.aspx>. 66 Appendix A Interview with Heather Curry The following is the complete transcription of the interview with Heather Curry of the San Francisco 49ers that is referenced in the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim case study. The interview was conducted over the telephone on February 14, 2011. - What do you see as the role of the 49ers in the community and what do you consider to be your community? “Our community relations department, especially for our foundation, all the work that they do with the community, is actually pretty huge and the area that we serve is actually pretty large. Basically as large as donation fulfillments go, we serve — I’m looking here to get the exact number of counties we serve — we just went from having 13 counties to, we actually have 31 counties now, surrounding the greater San Francisco bay area, the greater Sacramento area, the states of Alaska and Hawaii. Basically, it’s based off geographic region; we used to just be strictly the bay area, but based on our ability to expand a little bit and based on the need and the requests that we receive every year we expanded it to the 31 counties, so that involves basically anywhere from central California up throughout north of the San Francisco bay area. And we included the states of Hawaii and Alaska because they both don’t have professional sports football teams, so we feel like they shouldn’t be left out just because they don’t have those teams, so we decided to support them as well. In that regard, it’s basically for donation fulfillment, so that is if anyone’s having an auction or raffle, any kid of event where they need an item whether it be an autographed item or we have limited-edition footballs that we send out, 67 and that’s basically we have them go onto an online donation form that they fill out and then we can send them an item in the mail so that they can actually use that to raise money for their organization. Basically, Our community relations program is about a respect campaign and that’s respect for your families, your communities, and your schools, so a lot of what we target are youth in the area. We do youth football, we do youth training camps, we do USA football, we meet with at-risk youth, we meet with kids with disabilities, kind of all over the map in and throughout our area. And basically the whole respect campaign is surrounded by the respecting your families, respecting your communities and respecting your schools. So that’s where our basis of teaching and involvement is surrounded by that.” -Who was it at the 49ers that decided to base the campaign around respect? Was it somebody higher up in the business organization of the 49ers or was it the public relations department or the community relations department? “I’m pretty sure it was a couple of years back, but I’m almost positive it was the owner (Denise and John York) in addition to the community relations department. In addition to the community relations side of things, we have the 49ers Foundation, which their mission is keeping kids safe, on track and in school. And our owner has been quoted as saying ‘Every Sunday in the fall we do everything we can to win and all year long we do everything we can to support our community.” So that’s kind of where that came from. Our team owners are Denise and John York and throughout the last couple of years, the foundation has donated more than $10 million, in the last 8 years to be exact, to 68 nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay area, so they do a whole separate, the foundation is actually separate from the community relations department, but their target is to keep kids, basically on the right track to success.” -How much do you or anybody else in the community relations department work with the 49ers foundation? “I actually work directly for the director of community relations, who is also the director of the Foundation, so what we do is actually pretty intertwined on a daily basis, just because we do have, during the season, we have a lot more community relations events and then in the off-season is when we do the majority of our 49ers Foundation events, and that’s because those events are on a larger scale, there’s a lot more time and effort that has to go into planning those events because they’re major fundraisers for the foundation, and so those are on a larger scale.” -I did a little bit of research on the website to find some of the major programs that you do, but could you tell me some of them that you and the rest of the community relations function are the most involved with or the most proud of or feel are the most successful? Can you tell me a little bit about why the 49ers do them and what the 49ers get out of them? “Basically the foundation in itself they support they have key grant recipients that are the 49ers academy which is in east Palo Alto, the Bay View Hunter’s point YMCA, which is where our stadium is near, we have the hedge funds Care, which is eradicating child 69 abuse, Fresh Lifelines for Youth, which is called the FLY program. School to College is another program that the foundation supports and then east side college prep, which is also in East Palo Alto. Those are the main grant recipients to the foundation and we also do events with some of those groups including the 49ers academy throughout the year. So essentially every Tuesday is the day that the players have off during the season so every other day of the week they have meetings and film and walkthroughs and practice and all of that stuff and so they really don’t have much spare time on their hands, but Tuesdays are the one day a week that they actually have off so what we do as a community relations department is plan community events throughout the area that they can choose to get involved in if they want to. We are very blessed to have a lot of really good guys on our team that have huge hearts that want to get involved on their days off. For instance we have one gentleman that volunteered over 60 hours just in 2010, with different events just because he wanted to and it was important to him. Some of the groups that we work with this last year, we did an event at the 49ers academy, we did an event at Seet Cathedral, St Joseph’s Basilica in San Jose, we did an event at the build a bear, which then we delivered the bears to Lucille Packard’s children’s hospital, we do work with the career closet, which is in San Jose, we work with the Dream foundation and also the Make A Wish foundation. Shop with a player is an event we do in December, which is at Target, but every year we work with a different group of kids, this last year I believe they were from the Samaritan House, was how we chose the kids to go shopping with the players. Visa donates $250 gift cards for each of the children at the Samaritan House and the players get paired up with 3 or 4 kids and they go shopping and have a time limit and 70 the kids are supposed to make a list of items that they need throughout their household for their family members. They’re supposed to get those as gifts before they buy anything for themselves. So a lot of the times these kids are coming from really financially- stressed households and they get to go in and spend $250 at Target on making it a positive and happy holiday season. Last year we worked with the Pacific Autism Center of Education in Santa Clara, we worked with a couple different schools. We do the Role Model program, which is where the rookies go to a school and map out what they are going to do after football. It’s kind of a way to show the kids that education is important and just because they’ve…. Football isn’t going to be their career for life, to say. A lot of them are going to be doing a lot of career-like jobs after they’re done with football, so it’s important to get your education and have that to fall back on once your body stops letting you play football. So we really do try to reach out to different programs throughout the bay, one of the ones we work with a lot is the FLY program, these are kids who have been in jail or are on house arrest or are doing different things or have a checkered past but the whole idea of the program is just because you have had that past doesn’t mean you have to keep going down that path and that there is opportunities for you to get on the right path and move forward in a positive direction. We do youth football camps with them and we’ve done different programs to get them out there and get some of our players who have maybe had a difficult upbringing as well or maybe got into trouble before to say you don’t have to continue down that path just because your family members didn’t graduate from high school doesn’t mean you don’t get to or just because 71 your parents are in jail doesn’t mean you have to go to jail, its breaking that negative stereotype that what you have been in the past is what you have to be in the future.” -If you could pick out two or three specifically that you think are the most representative of what you do as a whole or are unique to the 49ers, and describe what goes on in the program and then why you started it? “One of them is the Fly program, and that’s so much of what the foundation wants to do in keeping kids safe, on track and in school, to work with the FLY program. A lot of the time teenage kids who maybe dropped out of school or maybe they’ve been in and out of jail and have been working out issues with the law. It’s nice to be able to show them that there are positive things that they can get into. We’ve encouraged so much of a close relationship with them because it is so close to what the foundation’s mission is and they are a great partner to work with. Another one of our great partners to work with that we as a community relations department are really proud of is our work with the make a wish foundation and the dream foundation. We started that last year and have since hosted roughly 10 individuals who are struggling with different life-threatening diseases whether it be cancer, lupus, Cerebral Palsy, different things, and their wish is to come out and meet some 49ers players or their wish is to come out and stand on the field and basically what we do is we provide an opportunity for them to not only come out and see our facility and take a headquarters tour and see the super bowl trophies, and the super bowl rings, but they also get to watch practice, which is something that is normally closed off to the public, and after practice they are able to stand there and we’ll introduce them to 72 players and they get to take pictures and get autographs, and its something that is truly a unique, one-of-a-kind experience and then we are able to take them onto the field before a game and be on the sidelines while the guys are warming up for the games and then watch the games from the stands and a lot of the times there are people who have been lifelong 49ers fans but have been in and out of the hospital so they haven’t been able to make many games or financially they haven’t been able to go games, so to be able to provide them not only with tickets but the on-the-field experience and opportunity to meet the players is an extremely unique time. So that is definitely a program that is near and dear to our heart as a whole. Our relationship with the 49ers academy is extremely strong as well. We did a youth football camp essentially this last year which is in line with the NFL’s Play 60 movement, which is to keep kids active and playing 60 minutes a day. And if you’re not athletic is doesn’t mean you can’t be out there and get exercise. Take your dog for a walk or take out the garbage for your mom or mow the lawn, just get out there and be active for 60 minutes. We actually had Matthew McConaughey partner with us for that event this last year and encourage the kids to just keep living which is actually a foundation that McConaughey has started which is very similar to our Play 60 messaging. So I would say those are defnite partnerships that are really important to us, but all of our partnerships are really important to us, so it’s hard to pick any one.” -Of the programs that you do and of the work that you do, how much of it is the 49ers independently and how much of it is sort of like Play 60, where it’s an NFL- wide program that you are participating in? 73 “I would say it’s about 25%, I mean, the NFL provides grants for us to do specific things whether that be the play 60 or it be Back-to-Football Fridays, which is another thing we did this last year, some of our support comes from the NFL itself, but a lot of what we do on a day to day basis is basically our team and our owners who are very philanthropic- oriented which is amazing, kind of pushing that and encouraging that. In addition to the different programs that we run, we had players this last year who were generous enough to buy season tickets for the entire season and some of them bought about 20 tickets each and some bought more. I think Patrick Willis bought 50 tickets game and then picked a non-profit organization and then donated those tickets through the entire season to different nonprofits so that those nonprofits could come out to the games so the kids from the Boys and Girls club of Police Activities League programs or a battered- women’s shelter or the Make-a-Wish Foundation or the Ronald McDonald House, different organizations that can then turn around and provide the opportunities for families to come to the game. We have those kind of programs that are basically driven by the players’ desire to help out nonprofits and like I said before we are really lucky to have players that want to do that kind of stuff. Some of it is just because we have those guys that are just really generous on our team.” - You said that Tuesdays are the days when the players go out and do things in the community, right? Is there any sort of a nudge from the community relations department or the owners or any body or is there a requirement of hours that they have to spend or is this something that is entirely optional to them? 74 “(The players making community appearance on Tuesdays during the season) is entirely optional to them. I believe the NBA and the NHL require certain hours of non-profit work or volunteering fro their athletes, but the NFL is a different case, there is actually nothing to say that they have a certain requirement or a certain number of hours to fulfill or anything like that. Everything that they do is entirely base don what they want to give. And we had 87% participation from our players this year, which means 87% of our players got out there and did an event and that’s a pretty high percentage and was a big accomplishment. And something we’re very proud of. And they donated, or volunteered I guess you could say, 436 hours in 2010, so that’s something that’s also pretty strong, I think, in comparison to most community relations departments, to have 436 hours in a year. And that’s strictly going out there and helping others and making a positive difference and being positive role models out there. So that’s something that’s pretty good.” **Total ticket sales for the 49ers Care program in 2010 was more than $100,000, from 16 players (from website- http://www.49ers.com/news-and-events/article-1/49ers- Celebrate-2010-CARE-Program/c25ec904-a486-4466-bfba-f00851aaa863) -What do you think the team and the individual players get out of all of the community work that they do? -“In talking to different players on the way to different events or in speaking with them after events, I think that they just like to see that they can make a difference. And I think that they don’t always necessarily, because they’re humble guys, they don’t always 75 necessarily think about how much them just being at a school can make a difference or them talking to a child with a disability could change perspective or make people feel good or put a smile on someone’s face. But when they go out there and they do it and then can see that they put this huge smile on a kid’s face who’s been battling cancer or they can give a child help on guidance on how to accomplish his goals after college or any of that kind of stuff, I think that it’s just that they do it because they know that they can make a positive difference and they are role models to a lot of people in our community and I think that is something that inspires them to want to continue to do right and to do good things.” -Most of your programs target kids. Is there any reason that you target kids specifically as opposed to any other demographic group? “I think with kids, because there’s so many requests, we get so many requests per day, to focus on different groups, and there’s so many people out there that are in need of help, but I think, based on what our owner’s have decided to focus on is the youth aspect of it. I think that the belief is that if you can change a kids life when he’s younger and when you can be that positive role model and you can have positive things for these kids to look up to and you can encourage them to do right at a young age, they’re more likely to continue on that path and to continue to make those positive changes before they feel like it’s too late to do so. It’s like the saying ‘you can’t teach an old dog new trick” you’ve got to hopefully get these kids on the right path before it’s too late and they’re in jail or before it’s too late they’re too into drugs to want to get better or whatever the case may 76 be, so many cases across the board, but if you can be a positive influence in a young person’s life that maybe doesn’t have another role model, you can make a great world of difference out there.” -Do you have any community programs that are not focused on kids, that are, maybe not adult-oriented, but more general for all people? “We have the Dream foundation, which is basically the Make-A-Wish foundation, but for adults, so it’s granting the wishes of terminally-ill individuals over the age of 18, so that’s something that we do also. When we have our thanksgiving event, most of the time it’s for people aged out of the foster care system or it’s homeless adult individuals or it’s people that… this last year, we had a group of people from a bettered women’s shelter, we worked with the House of Grace, which is kind of the same concept, women who are struggling to find housing. Normally they’ll put they in like a homeless shelter, but they’re not allowed to keep their kids, but the House of Grace is an opportunity for women to stay with their children, and their children can come with them so that they’re not separated. So we do a lot of events that are actually catered toward adults as well. Last Year we went to a retirement community and we did a card-game tournament with senior citizens. We had an event last year that was at the silicone valley animal control authority and we basically brought out different individuals with a love for dogs, so we had the Canine Companion for independence. They have created a calendar where all of the proceeds would go to CCI, and so we gave those calendars and had our players pose with their personal dogs and then Canine Companion dogs and then all of the proceeds 77 from that calendar went to Canine Companions for Independence. You know we worked with one of the groups that was a recipient of the season tickets that the players purchase was Special Olympics, that’s all age groups. It’s all over the board; it’s really different. And Career Closet is an event we do every year, and that’s where women can come in that have either started a new job or are looking for a new job that don’t necessarily have enough money to go out and buy new clothing. They can go in and they go into the Career Closet and get to pick out an entire week’s worth of clothes, business clothes, and a suit. They get training tips as far as for interviews and proper business etiquette and it’s kind of an amazing event for them to get into. It’s really versatile, we just have a lot of things that on a yearly basis we get into. -Good. I want to ask you about one more area, I want to talk to you about player and team emergence on new media, like a Facebook or a Twitter. Do you or anyone else from the team have an impact on what the players say there or is that something where they say whatever they want? “We have public relations people that if there’s any questions, the player can go and ask them questions about different things within the media, but as far as what they put out there on Twitter or Facebook of anything, you know their public opinion is their opinion, so that might be more of an agent question. They might go to their agents and ask or they might have their own personal PR people that might monitor that. But as far as us, we don’t monitor that, that isn’t really anything that we have control over, nor do we want control over, because that’s their own personal opinion. 78 -Do the 49ers athletes participate in the community that way? “I would say that’s a case by case basis, so I don’t really feel comfortable in making a guess on what the numbers would be, what percentages of guys have that, but some of them have websites, individual websites for their foundations, or they have different websites, so they can also communicate through there, but I would say that’s like I said, on a case by case basis. We don’t have control over that. -Anything else that you want to say that’s important to how the 49ers deal with this? “I think we’ve been able to cover the majority of what we do and what we’re about and if you think of any other questions, you can always call me back. 79 Appendix B Interview with Matthew Bennett The following is the complete transcription of my interview with Matthew Bennett that is referenced in the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim case study. The interview was conducted in person on February 17, 2011. Brief notes: -Work experience: Angels 2000-20009, has also worked with Dodgers and A’s. - To start, can you give me a general overview of what you did in your ten years with the Angels? “Well I was in charge of community relations, which was all the off-the-field activities for the team in the community, from a charity standpoint. We ran a foundation which gave money back to different charities in the community. We ran all of our associations with our former players, I did a lot of work with our current players, getting them out, getting them involved with activities that bolster their image for one but also helped out whatever cause they chose to get involved with. And that was a lot of things, our role is to really encourage players, encourage members of the team to become active and become involved with the community as much as possible. -From your standpoint, what do you see as the primary role that the Angels play in Anaheim or Los Angeles, or whatever you deem their community? 80 “Well really, it’s all of Southern California, the charities we reached. Some of them served the local community surrounding the stadium, an elementary school, for example that just served the population around the stadium. Others were a little more reaching in Southern California, whether it be the American Cancer Society, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, those would serve a lot broader populations, so it was really, the area we served was encompassing all of it. Some of the things we did were national, on the national level, but our focus was really getting involved with that community and I really think for a sports team especially, it’s such a visible organization, it’s probably a lot more visible than your average company would be. It wasn’t a situation where the team could hide behind whatever they wanted to hide behind and not get active. If the team was not active, it was very evident and really it’s just not a good situation if a team’s not taking that responsibility and making the most of it. So I think a team is really charged with getting involved as much as they can, using that influence, all the players are role models for what they do in the community. Children look up to them, adults look up to them. And they have a lot of – this is one of the things we always told them at the beginning of the season when we encouraged them to get involved was the power they had to make a difference.” -How much contact did you or someone from the CR function have with the players? “Oh, every day. Every day.” 81 -What were your interactions like with them? “You know it really ranges. It’s a little bit of give and take, sometimes we’re asking them to do things on our behalf for the team. If the team gets involved in an initiative that the management felt was really important, whether it be visiting schools, teaching baseball, we really ask players to get involved with that and at the same time the give and take was that we would help them as much as can with things they wanted to get involved with. We were there to sort of do the legwork for them and make it easier for them to take on those activities. They have a really demanding schedule, so for us to be able to help them with that and take some of the legwork out of it. It’s tough for them to make calls and they don’t have the connections in the local community. -So you do a little bit of maybe not demanding, but maybe suggesting that they do things for you and they also do the same back to you, where they’d say ‘I want to do X for this foundation’ and you say “We’ll lay the groundwork for this to make it easier’? “Every player is a little different as far as what they wanted to get involved with, how much they wanted to get involved. Players that are a little more established have identified the charities that they wanted to get involved with and they probably take it to another level as opposed to somebody who their main concern is making the team or trying to find their spot on the field. But those guys also have a role, we get them involved with more one-off activities like going to speak to a school for the day as opposed to a player who may have been in the league for 10 years and has their own 82 foundation, has their own charity that they’re closely identified with and then we really help them bring that to the next level with getting the team involved and publicizing it and letting the press know about it and those type of activities.” -In terms of programs that the Angels run in the community, and I did a little bit of research online and found some of the areas that they are into, but when you were there, what do you think were the handful of maybe not most important, but that they spend the most money and time on? The programs that they let sort of lead the way for the community relations. “Our primary focus was kids, activities. We worked a lot with the schools, we had a scholarship program for local high schools. A lot of time our expertise was not being in the school every day, knowing what was needed, how to screen the kids, that type of thing, so we worked pretty close with the education department too. We started a scholarship program for the high schools I the area and the department of education actually did the interviewing, whittled down the finalists and it was our job to step in and fund the program. So we relied on a lot of those bodies, the department of education, that do the work on a more specialty, everyday basis, and we relied on them to identify who needed help and who we could make the most impact on. So we did that at the high school level, at the middle school level. At the elementary school level we did more of visits, more school-wide assemblies, we called it our adopt-a-school program. We picked a different school in every city in the surrounding community and we adopted them for a year and it was a one-year thing and for that year we brought a player out into the 83 schoolyard assembly, we gave every kid school supplies, we gave the teachers tickets to use as incentives for academic achievement. And then the next year we picked five different schools, five more schools. So it was really just a matter of trying to get out and reach out and influence as many schools as we could. -Was that every year you were there? “No, it wasn’t. It was the last four years, I believe. -So it would have started in ’06? “Programs evolved and changed as we got more creative and a lot of what we did too also involved what our sponsors wanted to get involved in. Like Bank of America, for example, would have their initiatives in the community and a lot of times, we’d intertwine with what they felt was important.” -Was that just with a big handful of sponsors that you have? Something like Bank of America is very obviously a big entity. “What we were able to do as a baseball team is to take some of the programs that Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Southern California Edison did and we’d help them put a face on it. If they go out and do a program, they might not necessarily get the media attention, but if they do it in conjunction with us, all of a sudden there’s a draw to the event. For public relations, it really helps bring some attention and make it more of a photo op and something that more people would notice than if the bank just did it by themselves. 84 -Are there programs that the Angels did outside of kids or children? Where there other things that you guys did there? “We worked a lot with the cystic fibrosis foundation, I think there’s a 35-year relationship with them, back from almost the start of the franchise where we held an annual golf tournament to raise money for children with cystic fibrosis and over the years all of our management, our manager Mike Scioscia was actually really involved with the cause and helped generate sponsors and golfers to raise money for that cause. There were a number of different charities, a lot of it either came from like I said, what we wanted to do, who we had a long-standing relationship with, and then there’s just a lot of stakeholders when you’re working with a team whether it’s a child, like a Make-A-Wish foundation where there’s a situation where there’s a child in need in the community and wants to meet a player and that’s their wish to meet a player and spend a day at the park. There were a lot of different, almost every day there was something different that we were asked to do or that was presented to us and it as our job to take all those requests and kind of meld the direction of all of the requests that we were getting, the direction we wanted to take, and kind of put it all together and take the resources that we had in our hands, whether it be money, media attention, players’ time, and put it all together and take those resources and steer them in the right direction. Really our job was to take those things and make it work. 85 -In terms of things that you do, programs, or player appearances or donations or whatever, how much of that is the Angels individually and how much of that is a Major League Baseball drive, or an MLB thing that all the teams do?” “I’d say Major League Baseball has really done a good job over the years. I started in 1995 with the Dodgers and they had a few programs that they initiated and the teams put on, but over the years, their marketing department and public relations department really did a good job of making these awareness campaigns kind of cookie-cutter almost where each team could institute them and get the attention on the local level and nationally you put it all together and it’s a nice program. For example, on Mother’s Day the players wore the pink wristbands and use the pink bats, the announcers would use stuff like that to help promote a cause and drive people to a website, encourage people to donate and for the teams it’s really just a matter of putting a few things in place and when you put it together collectively it really makes a nice effort around the country that people notice. People can really grasp onto that and contribute if they like. We do that for Mother’s Day, we do that for Father’s Day, other awareness campaigns like the Jackie Robinson Breaking Barriers.” -What do you do for Fathers Day? Is it just blue stuff instead of pink stuff? “It’s for prostate cancer awareness, very similar campaign. The prostate cancer foundation was actually the first one that got the ball rolling on that with blue wristbands.” 86 -I know in terms of your community, the Southern California community there’s a much larger than percentage of Latino population than other teams might have. Do you have programs in place to reach out to that specific demographic of the community? And if you do, what are they, and what were the plans and the thinking behind reaching out to that group? “Well, to be honest with you, a lot of it was geared toward the population in general, like if we did a baseball clinic out in our local community, surrounding the stadium, obviously there was a large Hispanic population. It wasn’t really geared toward the Hispanic population, it was really just geared toward our constituency, and I think that if we have a few activities where we have players out that speak Spanish and can use their language skills to speak to Hispanic groups, and speak in Spanish and those things we certainly did those. But as far as the community efforts, it was really geared toward the population as opposed to going toward an Asian community or a Hispanic community at least on the community side. On the marketing side, yeah, some of the ticket activities and ticket promotions were written in Spanish or we’d have a website in Spanish, but it wasn’t necessarily just to help out one demographic or whatever, our goal was to serve the population surrounding the stadium and it started out with a 10-mile circle around the stadium and then worked its way out. The closer the charities were, the more likely we were to get involved on a grassroots level. As we expanded out, we looked for those groups to serve more of a broader range and a broader region than just the neighborhood that we’re in.” 87 -So let me clarify this: In terms of dealing with the Hispanic community around here, the outreach to them is sort of just an extension of the community reach, they’re more importantly just members of the Anaheim community more than their Hispanic groups. Primarily they’re members of the local community and secondarily as any demographic in specific? “On the community side, absolutely. I look at the different charities that we helped, at the Boys and Girls Clubs were one of the primary groups we got involved with and their Hispanic population was probably in the 65% range.” -But you reach out to them because they’re the community Boys and Girls Club not because the represent any group? “Yes, because of what they did for the kids in need. It wasn’t necessarily Hispanic kids in need and it wasn’t excluding Hispanics. We obviously knew that there was a good number of Hispanic children involved in those programs.” -You wouldn’t make any extra effort to reach out to them differently than any other group? “We really felt that if we needed to, for example, if there was a population that we weren’t serving around the community and we really needed to make a special effort, then we would do that. But the groups that we worked with overlapped so much, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, there we so many overlaps that it wasn’t necessary to sit down strategically and say ‘We’re not hitting enough of this particular demographic.’” 88 -So the goal was always just to help the community at large and whoever falls into that falls into that? “I’ll give you another example. Major League Baseball initiated an Urban Youth Academy, is what it’s called, which is located in Compton. And the primary focus of it was to get youth from the inner city involved in baseball. And it was predominantly a black neighborhood and it got a lot of attention for getting a lot of kids that would be playing basketball or football and giving them the opportunity to play baseball, because it wasn’t necessarily there for them. But also a lot of Hispanic kids played in the league as well, and there were a lot of different races and ethnicities that were involved in our league. But it was an effort to reach out to an area that was sort of more an African- American area because we saw there was a need. A lot of people saw that African- Americans in the inner city were not having the opportunity to play baseball. We got very involved in that program, in terms of sending our players there to help teach the kids, donating money to help the program, get the coaches there, get the instructors there. One of our alumni actually, his name is Darryl Miller, runs the Academy. -Also, the Angels are in another extremely unique position where less than 30 minutes away is another team, the Dodgers, and an hour and a half or two hours to the south is another team, the Padres. Do you deal with anything to sort of, maybe not compete with those teams, but to draw attention to the Angels as opposed to 89 drawing attention to baseball in general or the league in general to differentiate yourself from those teams? “Well I mean, definitely every team is on its own unique. Whether or not we competed with the teams to draw fans away from them, not necessarily. I think the goal of our team, and this is probably more into the marketing side of it, is to provide a good team on the field and an affordable place for the fans to enjoy the game with their family. From that point, fans could really take their pick of which team. There’s enough people in this community surrounding LA, that some people are going to come to maybe 5 Angels games a year but they’re a lot closer to Dodger Stadium, or they’ll go to 15 Dodger games a year. But as many people as there are in this area, each team has been able to draw almost 3 million each year, so there’s plenty of fans to go around. I think there’s a little bit of a competition between the teams. It might be a little more friendly at times, but I don’t think if something bad happened to a player of the field where they were seen in a negative light, it’s not a good thing for either team, because that reflects on the game and athletes as opposed to one team or another. There is a responsibility for each team to promote the sport as well as promoting the individual team that they have an interest in. -As far as marketing the teams goes, maybe the Angels do this and maybe all three of the Southern California teams do this, but do you consider individual neighborhoods, or cities or counties to be kind of Angels territory as opposed to Dodgers or Padres or even the A’s or Giants? 90 “Sure. It’s tough. Like we’re in Hermosa Beach here and there’s probably a mix of fans. I would think that each team would do that, for example in Anaheim we’d assume that a good majority of those fans are Angel fans, but there’s going to be Dodger fans and Padre fans. Same thing in Los Angeles, I’m sure the Dodgers would think that if you’re in downtown LA or in Glendale that you’re a Dodger fan. But there’s going to be a mixture. It depends, it’s a lot of factors. It’s not just where you live, it may change on the season for some fans. Whether or not they like the team on the field or the attitude or they like the manager or whatever the case. And the good thing or bad whichever way you look at it, is that they’re in two different leagues, so the head to head competition –they play a little bit more now with inter-league- but when it comes to standings, they’re not competing with each other for a spot in the standings. But yeah, if you’re LA and San Diego, the Dodgers and Padres are in the same division, so if you’re in San Diego, the Padres are definitely going to assume that those fans are Padres fans, or want them to be and kind of view that as their territory, so to speak.” -I don’t know how to say this without sounding terrible, but when you do things for the community, the Angels are not saying, ‘Let’s do more things in the area where the fans are most likely to be ours,’ you’re sort of just doing things for the community regardless of where they’re spending their money or buying tickets or anything like that? “Definitely you would look at some areas where you can grow your fan base as well, so some of the activities were definitely targeted towards areas where we felt maybe we 91 could increase our presence or we could use a little bit of a boost. And for us, most of the time it was doing a little more of the things in the LA area. The tough thing is, or the opportunity, depending on which way you look at it, there’s a million different ways you can go in terms of what you can do in the community, and you’ll never be able to touch them all or look at the end of the season and say ‘that was a perfect job, there’s nothing we could have done different, there’s no different ways we could have gone.’ There’s a million different ways you can go every year, so yeah, there’s a lot of times where we looked at who we could partner with to help us gain visibility and obviously being a business, you want to drive fans to come to the ballpark and support you in turn, you want to turn around and support those fans on a community level that are giving money to you. It’s the right thing to do as far as corporate responsibility.” -When you were doing those things, was there a communication with the marketing department or the front office or whoever was making those decisions? “Definitely. Definitely. We had meetings to discuss what each of us was doing from the ticket standpoint, community standpoint, and tried to find areas where our practices overlapped and where we could have more of a community presence that helped bolster our marketing, and vice versa. You know, it wasn’t always every single activity we did, based on that, but certainly, you’re not going to be able to support the community if you don’t have the revenue and the fans to be able to do it.” 92 -Another area that I’m studying in this, because you have to when you study the field now, is how individual athletes publishing their own content now in any number of online or social media affects the image of a team. As much as, and maybe this is good or bad for the team, but as much as the PR efforts of CR efforts are out there to brand a team, there’s nothing really as strong as how the individual athletes look because they’re the personalities of the team. When you were there, was there anything that the organization did to try to regulate that or try to steer them in any sort of direction? “You know, we did at the time I was there, I mean this who Twitter thing is a lot more recent where it’s almost that players can release statements to the press on their own, not that they couldn’t talk to the press ad say whatever they wanted to say face to face. Our job at the beginning of every season was to let them know the role of the press when we talked to them in spring training; what the press was there for. What guys are going to be following the team on a daily basis. Let them know that those guys can be used as allies as opposed to some general attitudes that some players have of their being enemies. If something bad is written about them and the player takes exception to it, they can compound it and make it that much worse by continuing to have an adversarial relationship as opposed to maybe pulling the writer aside and saying ‘hey can you explain what you were writing this about? It wasn’t really where I was coming from.’ And then you can help heal that relationship and then moving forward make it a better relationship. So, yeah, we absolutely told them the media’s role but as far as Facebook and things like that, it was just getting started and teams recognize that. Players have a freedom to put 93 out what they want to put out, but at the same time, all the teams can do is let them know what they hope they would do, if they have a certain request they could make it, but the demands are a different story. You can’t necessarily tell them the way they have to do it, you can only let them know what your expectations are, that they are a representative of your team, and hope that they take that stature that they have in the community and realize it as opposed to just firing something out on Twitter that’s off-the-cuff and hot- headed or whatever the case. Its tough, but you can only make them aware of the consequences and how things are going to stick with you for a long time if you put it out there. -That’s all that I want to talk about, is there anything else that you want to say in particular about the team and its role I the community or about anything the Angels did that would differentiate them or in general what you have learned in your history of work about a team being in the community, whether it’s suggestions for every team or things to stay away from or anything else that you want to add. “I think the one thing that I kind of touched on a little bit, is that you have to realize from a team standpoint that there’s o perfect way to do things and as much as you want to please everybody, you’re going to get way too many requests that will take you in a million different directions that you’ll never be able to do. So I think that the thing that is most important to do for a team and for players is to come up with a direction that you want to go at the beginning of the year and try to stick to that as much as you can, but at the same time, allow a little bit of leeway to respond to sort of current events or hot 94 topics, things where you can really reach out and make an immediate impact and things where its almost a shame if you don’t respond to that and get your team involved somehow, so to be able to create that balance. Probably the biggest thing is when somebody calls a team or is asking assistance from a team or whatever the case, is that you have to put yourself in their shoes and as many different impressions as there are coming across your desk, and that’s the only time that the public is reaching out to you, so you have to realize that and act responsibly and kind of put yourself, if you’re not able to do something, at least to let somebody know why you can’t do it, as opposed to being unresponsive, because that’s when you come up with the impressions ‘that they don’t care about us, they just do their own thing.’ We’ve heard that despite the efforts. But you really have to do a do-unto-others thing there so you can reach them the best.”

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Asset Metadata

Creator Bonefeste, Adam Joseph (author)

Core Title The civic responsibility of professional sports teams: Exploring the role of a team in its community

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Strategic Public Relations

Publication Date 05/03/2011

Defense Date 05/09/2011

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag civic responsibility,community relations,OAI-PMH Harvest,professional sports teams

Place Name Anaheim (city or populated place), California (states), Green Bay (city or populated place), Indiana (states), Louisiana (states), New Orleans (city or populated place), San Francisco (city or populated place), USA (countries), Wisconsin (states)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Floto, Jennifer D. (committee chair), Swerling, Jerry (committee member), Thorson, Kjerstin (committee member)

Creator Email adambonefeste@gmail.com,bonefest@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m3859

Unique identifier UC1406840

Identifier etd-Bonefeste-4492 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-458041 (legacy record id),usctheses-m3859 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Bonefeste-4492.pdf

Dmrecord 458041

Document Type Thesis

Rights Bonefeste, Adam Joseph

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu