Best Vendor 2006
The provider of quality services or products that are most helpful for game operations. Consider service, products offered, and value.

This category is one that doesn’t get as many nominations as the others, so we encourage you to nominate your favorite vendor to get them in the mix.  And on nomination, please feel free to second a nomination or tell your story about a nomination.

Thanks,

-Cudo

• Best of Award Nominations - Mascot
• Best of Award Nominations - Game Promotion
• Best of Award Nominations - Team
• Best of Award Nominations - Act
• Best of Award Nominations - In-game Contest or Promotion

Best Game Promotion
What single game night promotion was most effective and creative. An example would be “President’s Night” where a team builds an game day promotion around a them like “President’s Night”, perhaps handing out US flags and having namesakes like “George Washington, Richard Nixon, and George Bush” dropping the puck for a game held on President’s Day. Consider creativity, entertainment value, media exposure, drawing power, and execution of the operations.

Nominated so far (via message board or email): (more…)

The N.F.L. is not antinoise, exactly. It just does not appreciate certain types at certain times. The N.F.L. rule book even has a 900-word section devoted to crowd noise; too much when the visiting offense is on the field can draw a penalty for the home team.

Teams also receive detailed, and restrictive, instructions from the league about ways to elicit reactions from their fans. Under the guidelines, some electronic messages — “Let’s go crazy” and “Pump it up” are among those listed — are not acceptable.

Other chants (“De-fense!”) are appropriate, at certain times. Encouraging the wave is not — ever.

The New York Times reported this weekend that the NFL (No Fun League) continues to limit their teams and fans from interacting with the game.  Now they are so concerned that noise is effecting the game that they are putting transmitters in helmets. 

Adjusting the communications with players is a good step, one less ridiculous than shushing the crowd (which is probably next). 

It’s also a bit ridiculous that stadiums now are build specifically to enhance crowd noise (like Quest Field in Seattle).  What a waste that appears to be now.

In college I wrote a paper on the football stadiums of the future, which I predicted would trend towards a 20-30,000 seat TV studio, and away from the 70,000+ seat stadiums of the current era.  My anaylsis was that the cost of land, building costs, managing, infastructure and staffing those stadiums would become so high for what is a very small percentage of the total audience (when you consider the TV audience).  Why spend thousands of dollars per live fan, when you really just need some atmosphere in the stands?  Now the NFL has additional reason:  A smaller crowd is quieter and more easy to manage. 

Time will tell. In the mean time….be quiet out there.

-Cudo

For the sixth straight year Gameops.com will present our “Best of Awards” on our December update.  The Best of Awards has made December one of the most popular updates of the year since the award’s inception in 2001.

We have accepted nominations over the years via email, fax, and the message boards.  This year we will accept nominations from all those methods, but also here on the Editor’s blog.  Nominations are important to the process since each nomination is added to the discussion with our panelists, who consider what they have seen live, followed through their work, recent winnders, and topics that have been nominated.

Gameops.com canvasses a panel of selected industry leaders for our “Best of Awards”. Their names are not used to encouraged them to freely add as much information as possible. Their collective input is considered when building the final award selections.  (more…)

Twenty Six

On July 20, the Brooklyn Cyclones professional baseball team played a 26-inning game, which is the longest game ever played in the history of the New York-Penn League. The team created a promotion based on this unique feat, which was held at their August 26 game. The promotion was called “A Salute to All Things 26.” The “26″-related ideas included:

• $26 gift cards
• a 26-inch TV
• 26 gallons of gasoline
• 26 cans of Spam
• a chance to win $26,000
• free bleacher seats for those born in 1926 or on the 26th day of the month
• 26 cent hot dogs for the first 26 minutes after the gates opened
• 26 people, all of them born in 1926, threw out the first pitch of the game. ( from Team PR)

A good example of a promotion that team rolled with.  Finding a way to touch every aspect of your game presentaion with a promotion can turn a little idea in a more intesting, clever, entertaining and media-friendly event.

-Cudo

I have to admit I think My Space is really weird…..weird especially if you have graduated from High School.  I have friends who ask me if I have a My Space account….and i just tell them I was Class of 87, so no.

That said, there is some successful marketing happening via my space.  I recently heard that Nike Soccer has over 35,000 friends (who they can connect with instantly via my space).  Now some teams are popping up on my space as a way to connect with fans.

So for now I am shifting my my space reaction from “lame” to “mildly interesting”….but I still refuse to put myself up there as a way to surf for “friends”…I have my standards.

Does your team or act have a page on myspace?  Let me know how its working.

-Cudo