The Hidden Playbook: Tricks of the Sports Digital Marketing Trade

Over the past few months I've spoken to colleagues at over 30 different professional sports teams, sports networks and sports agencies about the rise of digital marketing in their field.  The most common question executives get tied up on: How do you stay relevant?  With new tools arising everyday and more and more outlets offering fans a unique avenue to voice their opinions and needs, sometimes the most difficult challenge remains simply staying up on the latest and greatest technologies.  So what are some of the best tricks of the trade for keeping a pulse on where things are headed and how best to market?  Here's a few strategies from my own playbook:

Feed.ly

RSS Feeds Are Your Friends
I start every morning with feed.ly, an RSS feed aggregate that pulls in all the latest and greatest information from ESPN, MLB.com, Sports Illustrated, etc. in one place so I can quickly scroll through articles, staying informed on the latest news while find content that might be of interest to my audience.  I don't just select sports feeds either I have feeds categorized for digital media and tech as well from sources like Mashable and the Social Media Examiner.  By cross populating my news feeds in the morning to subjects relevant to my industry I can not only follow the exciting moments in sports, but also see how they are translating to the latest tools in the digital marketing trade.

Find Your Influencers
LinkedIn is one of the most underutilized tool in social networking, yet one of the most robust platforms available to becoming an informed sports marketer.  The colleagues across the nation who I've spent the last few months communicating with about the growth of the digital field were never introduced to me in person.  Rather I sought them out over LinkedIn by searching for those that do this work everyday, those who influence the decisions that are made in the sports industry on what and when digital and technological moves will take place in marketing, and those most interviewed in the news as most likely to be most open to a conversation.  After learning more about their positions I follow them on other social networks like Twitter to stay connected and informed about changes taking shape at their club that others might look to follow suit on.  The sports industry is smaller than one might think and having a strong network means having a direct line to the inside scoop.

Schedule Your Statuses
Social media can often seem like a daunting task when Klout scores drop quickly without constant meaningful updates and a wealth of direct communication with followers.  However, one doesn't have to be on social media 24/7 to leave a lasting impression.  I utilize Buffer, a scheduling program every morning to lay out my Tweets, Facebook business page statuses, and LinkedIn posts for the day based on the rich and meaningful content I would like to share with my followers specific to each network.  I can set the times based on when I know more of my followers are likely to see the posts as well as the number of posts for each network and go about my day knowing the program will post my statuses at the times I requested.  This is no substitute for active 2-way communication so I still get social media notifications sent to my phone in order to reply timely and in a human fashion to direct questions or responses from others looking to engage.  Buffer instead allows me to have the comfort of knowing that I don't need to be on social media all the time to have my message heard, freeing myself up to work on gaining knowledge, skills, and experience outside of that world that will be useful to those inside of it upon my return.

Melting into Multicultural Marketing with the Miami Marlins

"When I started working here I was the only person in the box office who spoke Spanish, and there was a need for me."  Juan Martinez, Director of Multicultural Marketing at the Miami Marlins, reflected, when describing to me the growth of Miami's pro sports into Hispanic marketing from humble beginnings.  From the implementation of its first Hispanic marketing department in 1997 (with Martinez at the helm of the team store) to a department that is now deeply immersed in one of the most culturally diverse baseball communities across the U.S., the Miami Marlins have come to understand not only the potential in embracing cultural heritage within their fanbase, but also in marketing across the generational divide.

https://www.facebook.com/MarlinsPark

"It's about speaking the language of the customer," Martinez explained when discussing why his role has become so critical and why as many as sixteen other Major League Baseball teams have created similar positions, twelve alone since he began. As a Miami native growing up in Little Havana, with over fifteen years with the team, Martinez has come to embrace what many would consider an incredibly challenging sports market: tourists, retirees, and a wealth of first, second and third generation Hispanic immigrants planting roots in the gateway to the Americas.

"Where other markets west of the Mississippi are pretty homogenous, where 90% plus of the Hispanic community there are Mexican or of Mexican descent, here it's a whole other ball game," Martinez describes. "Here, it's the Caribbean Hispanic, a very small percentage are Mexican. It's dominated by Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Venezuelans, with some Columbians, and it's a very unique challenge."  Yet despite the obstacles, Martinez and his colleagues are finding their strengths in creative marketing, here's what sets them apart in a town known more for its nightlife than its baseball.

Cultural Recognition
With so many ethic communities populating the Miami metro area it might seem advantageous to trim resources and focus on one all-encompassing Hispanic marketing strategy. However the Marlins understand that at the heart of every consumer is the desire to feel special and acknowledged.  So while many MLB teams have implemented one Hispanic heritage day in September to recognize the community at large, the Marlins have added to that day with other monthly Hispanic heritage nights as well, throughout the season. Every large Hispanic community that flows through the doors of Marlins Park gets a night, meaning Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, and Colombians are all recognized with a night filled with rich foods, country specific entertainment, and even a special edition Marlins hat with their home country's flag emblazoned on the side.  The Marlins understand both individual recognition and cultural inclusiveness are critical to their growth in an melting pot of consumers.  Also in the works, a Central American heritage night in conjunction with a new sponsor, and an Asian American night in partnership with the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Chamber of Commerce that has just opened its doors in Miami. The Marlins are ready and willing to roll out the welcome mat so every group feels at home in the ballpark.

Effective Communication Channels
 The Miami Marlins pride themselves on their ability to operate a bilingual organization in a multicultural market where so many dialects and cultures make traditional communication strategies unrealistic.  The ballpark signage reads in Spanish and English, guest services employees are overwhelmingly bilingual, and Martinez himself makes it a point to stay vocal and active in the Spanish community including four hours of Spanish radio appearances a week.  Not only that, but the organization is rich in speaking the language of its community across all digital tools.  The Marlins have a Spanish website and Spanish versions of their Facebook and Twitter pages that attract a strong following.  With smartphone use at an all time use among Hispanic audiences, the Marlins understand that Hispanic families are putting more phones in the hands of their bilingual children as a lifeline of communication so that the children are reachable at all times.  This means having a presence that speaks to the community there as well, with content that is mobile friendly including the implementation of the MLB At the Ballpark App to assist with needs around the stadium.

Bridging the Generational Gap
 To say that marketing to senior citizens is not sexy, might be putting it mildly, and maybe that's why so few in Major League Baseball seek out the market except for the Marlins.  Miami is a city filled with the hottest beaches, nightclubs, and one of the most successful NBA teams in the league, and the Marlins know their biggest consumers aren't likely to be the easily distracted 20-somethings.  Instead they've branded themselves as the affordable family fun alternative, safer than an NFL game, less expensive than an NBA game, and with more opportunity for the entire extended family to come and enjoy a game, which just the kind of thing the Hispanic community covets.  With value options including a kids eat free package on Wednesday nights, and a Thursday night where fans 55 and older get in free, Hispanics can feel comfortable bringing their close, and often large, multi-generational family to an affordable outing.  The Marlins specifically seek out the older Hispanic fans, as they are the most likely to share their passion for the sport with their families, carried from their foreign upbringings, as well as the most likely to be loyalists to the game.  In a culture that values family, where grandparents often assist their children with raising their grandchildren, grandparents can be seen across the stadium with their grandchildren enjoying the kid friendly environment.

For a team that is more likely to be known for trading away it's players than retaining any recognizable faces, Juan Martinez has been a warm, welcoming, staple of the city he grew up in, at the Marlins for almost two decades.  Whether it's a town hall meeting discussing future changes to the ballpark, a community event for senior citizens, or a few hours discussing the latest and greatest in the business of baseball on Spanish radio, it's clear the Miami Marlins have a strong leader paving the way in a challenging marketing environment.  With the right tools, research, and dedication to their audience, others can steal a few successful plays from the Martinez sports marketing playbook.

Twitter and Sports - A Match Made in Heaven

If sports fans are passionate about one thing, it's sharing their excitement, disappointment, and unfiltered opinions when it comes to their favorite teams, and there is nothing quite like social media for providing the perfect outlet for that vocal sentiment.  Nielsen is out with their latest report, a social study detailing how sports fans and Twitter correlate when it comes to the biggest sporting events in September 2013 through February 2014.  The study analyzed Twitter conversations around the top 10 televised sporting events and some results of the study can be found here.  I've combed through the information to bring you some of the most interesting results.

http://bit.ly/1udtcm7

• During 2010, 50% of TV related tweets in the United States (492 million in total) were about sports events.  
• Out of the 20 most-tweeted television airings, 12 were sporting events.
• The average Twitter user sees 9 television series episode tweets, 25 televised special events tweets, and 32 televised sporting event tweets per event/episode.
• The biggest Twitter television audiences:
• The Super Bowl took top honors, bringing in over 25 million tweets with 15.3 million people seeing tweets about the event!
• The NFC Championship had just shy of 5 million related tweets, reaching 11.3 million people
• The AFC Championship had a smaller amount of tweets clocking in at 2.9 million, but saw those tweets reaching 10.8 million Twitter users
•  Not to be overshadowed by the NFL, college football held it's own in the top five with the BCS National Championship bringing in over 4 million related tweets with 10.4 million people viewing them.
• Rounding out the top five was the Olympics coverage with the opening ceremony, a visually exciting experience, generating 1.1 million tweets seen by a global Twitter audience of 9.5 million people.

The high level of engagement around sports and social conversations should highlight social media as a tool for advertisers, companies, and community initiatives to find a host of opportunities. Whether it's developing brand recognition, providing superior customer service and valued content to the consumer, or highlighting messages for amplification across various screens to new audiences, the future is rife with prospects for success.  The question remains, who will take advantage?

 

2013: A LOOK BACK IN SPORTS - FINALE - GLOBAL SPORTS

Continuing last week's coverage, I take a final look this week at Nielsen's data on sports fans in 2013 focusing on the latest findings on global sports.  You can read the full-summarized report here: http://bit.ly/1fT9KVa.  I've read through it and here are some of the most interesting facts from the past year:

 

http://bit.ly/Oj8zE4

 From soccer and tennis to rugby and cycling, globally, sports remain a force to be reckoned with on the broadcasting stage.  In the United States, the NFL and Super Bowl reign supreme in viewers, ratings, and buzz, but around the world a diversity of tastes and passions shine through.  Soccer (known by many global citizens as football) holds the most sway in attracting a wide range of markets and nets the most viewing hours by fans of any sport.  Soccer also remains the most popular sport in countries as diverse as Italy, Russia, South Africa, Indonesia, and Spain.  Here are some other global sport highlights for 2013:

·      In Norway, the World Cup of Cross Country Skiing held most viewership honors among its sports programming, while in Japan it was the Japan vs. Netherlands, World Baseball Classic game that citizens took most interest in.

·      71% of UK homes had their TV sets tuned to the Wimbledon tennis final as Andy Murray became the first British man to win the title in 77 years.

http://bit.ly/1jMtVpC

·      In Denmark, the Handball Men’s Championship had nearly 80% of all television sets in use at the time tuned into the event.

·      Over 21 million German viewers, comprising 61% of all German households, watched the UEFA Champions League Final soccer match in May.

·      Russia and Indonesia led the way with soccer programming among all nations, with 73% and 74% respectively of all sports television programming devoted to the sport in 2013.

·      In the United States, a love for horse racing goes a long way as the Kentucky Derby brought in over 16 million viewers and 300,000 related tweets in 2013.

http://bit.ly/1egdlJy

Scouting the Crowd – How Marketers are Redefining Sports Fans

www.tourterraba.com (Our Costa Rican tour website)

“Backpacker Bob, Professor Penny, Momma Mary, Single Steve.”  My grad school professor read aloud the list of characters as we sat in a Costa Rican restaurant preparing for our trip home to the States last January.  They would be our fictional audiences for a website we would have two weeks to develop and they sounded to me like something out of a children’s book.  

            In the marketing world we were told they are called personas, and the idea is simple.  Create real life characters for each target market of consumers that might be interested in our “tour Costa Rica with an indigenous tribe” website, with clear needs, desires, and interests and figure out how to effectively market to each.  While the gimmicky character names and stories resulted in a few eye rolls initially, they became an effective tool as time went on for why every decision we made mattered.  Would we need a website responsive to mobile?  Yes, Backpacker Bob would only be able to access our content via a smartphone.  Would we want video content on the site?  Yes, Single Steve would want to show his friends the cool waterfalls and rappelling activities available.  Would we need a questions and answers section?  Yes, Momma Mary would want to know things like safety, nearest hospitals, and what to bring before loading her kids in the car.  Each persona encouraged our team to think of the needs of its represented audience and how to improve the overall experience of our site.

instagram.com/brooklyn_hun

  I hadn’t thought much about the use of personas since my role as marketing lead in Costa Rica, that is until this week, when I traveled to Tampa to visit with Emily Miller, in-game entertainment coordinator for the Tampa Bay Rays.  During our discussion about the great work the Rays have done in their small market to get fans in the seats and create an advanced inner stadium experience, Emily brought up personas as clutch to the baseball marketing business.  “Pat Parent, Fred Fanatic, Sally Socialite,” the names brought a smile, reminiscent of my time in Costa Rica, only here they were the basis for every marketing decision at the Rays.   

Source: http://bit.ly/1nUYUUC

  Fred Fanatic fills most of the weekday attendance, his passion for the game frees the clubhouse from providing extra frills.  He’s a stats reading, play watching, score-keeping traditionalist whose love for baseball brings him to the stadium as often as he can.  Access to game recaps, scores for other concurrent games, and materials on the history of the team, as well as the in-stadium Ted Williams Museum and Hitters Hall of Fame, and season ticket packages are provided by the Rays to keep Fred returning weekly if not nightly. 

Source: http://bit.ly/1fVukQV

  Sally Socialite represents the young professional. She appreciates a ballgame for networking, time with friends, or even just an evening out.  She wants and expects to stay connected to her social networks via her smartphone while at the ballpark, and whether it’s a date night or a girls’ night out, she looks for other concession/merchandise specials and outside entertainment to maintain her interest.  For this demographic the Rays have embraced social media with fan-generated content, check-ins, “tweet ups,” free t-shirts, and company sponsored events.  The organization was also the first to extend the Major League Baseball experience to include an after the game concert series culminating in a more lucrative night out package.
 

Source: J. Meric/Getty Images

Finally, Pat Parent seeks something affordable, fun, and engaging for her kids.  She looks for good deals, family-friendly activities, and experiences her kids will enjoy.  The Rays have reached out to this demographic on Sundays, with kid centered activities for a whole day at the park with group deals for parking, autographs, promotional gifts for kids, popular mascot involvement including a team created DJ Kitty character, opportunities for kids to run the bases after the game, and kid-centric in stadium activities.

Personas have become an easy tool for marketers to remind the rest of the organization who the target markets are and why the strategies they’ve implemented will be effective.  They can be transferable to any business or industry and while they may seem a bit rudimentary they allow the organization to think from the prospective of a representative group member about what his or her demographic's needs might be and how to target content, products, and sales calls in a far less overwhelming way than considering every individual customer.  Consider utilizing these tools when presenting to executives, they are easy to recall, visually entertaining, and often an effective brainstorming tool to encourage conversation and strategic thinking about ways to reach more customers in more unique ways.  Do you use personas in your industry?  Are they successful?  Let me know!

2013: A LOOK BACK IN SPORTS - PART 6 - NCAA FOOTBALL

 Continuing last week's coverage, I take a look this week at Nielsen's data on sports fans in 2013 focusing on the latest findings on NCAA football.  You can read the full-summarized report here: http://bit.ly/1fT9KVa.  I've read through it and here are some of the most interesting facts from the past year:

Source: http://bit.ly/1ppC8j4

The changing leaves, the crisp air, the endless pumpkin baked goods, for many these images call to mind autumn and with those thoughts also come dreams of a college football championship season.  A record thirty-one NCAA football games aired nationally in 2013, not even counting the bowl games, compared to only twenty-two games in 2012.  This was in large part due to a dominate SEC division, Florida State’s catapult to fame run in the ACC, and strong showings by Michigan State and Ohio State in the Big 10.  The games drew over 5 million viewers on average, while the 2014 BCS National Championship had over 25 million viewers dialed in to watch the battle between Auburn and Florida State.  Fans took to Twitter as well, with 4.4 million tweets by 1.2 million unique authors flooding the Twitter airwaves during that time, a 400 thousands tweet rise from 2012. 

Source: http://bit.ly/1iRBGdp

• Florida State may have broken the SEC’s seven consecutive BCS championships, but the conference enjoyed another banner year having the most viewed college football games of the 2013 season with 9.7 million on average tuning in for the top 10 nationally televised regular season games involving a team from the SEC.
• The Big-10 brings in the second largest audience with an average of 7 million watching their teams compete.
• Top NCAA football advertiser: AT&T Wireless 
• NCAA football fans are 18% more likely than the average U.S. adult to have life insurance and 24% more like to belong to a health club.
• The average NCAA Bowl Game viewer is most likely to be a white male aged 55+ who makes $20,000 -$40,000 annually.
• The top storylines in the 2013 NCAA football regular season included Alabama holding the top spot in the polls until the final week of the season, Auburn and Missouri’s resurgence, and “Johnny Football” lighting up the scoreboard for the Aggies. 



Source: http://bit.ly/1eC8DsE

• The top two local fan bases with most-devoted fan bases saw the percentages of their population having watched, attended, or listened to the team in the past 12 months clock in at over 60%.  The top two spots were so close in fact, only one percentage point separated first from second place.
•  The Alabama Crimson Tide’s local fan base in Birmingham took second place with 65% of the population faithful and dedicated to the organization. The top honors however, landed with fans in Columbus, where 66% of the population stands behind the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Social Media Shenanigans – Roundtable Discussion with Collegiate Sports Information Directors

The University of Kansas bans football team from Twitter during the season

“It’s funny, if you pitch it to the media, they’ll talk about how horrible it is.  Two or three years ago social media was horrible because student-athletes were putting dumb things on the Internet.  Well now, it’s horrible because people are saying mean things to them.  They’re trying to get student-athletes off of it...even if you try to shut them down, they can’t, we’re all too addicted to social media, we can’t stop using it.”  

 It was the words of Kevin DeShazo, a social media expert on training collegiate athletes on how to use social media platforms effectively, and it was a valid point.  In the past ten years since the internet gave birth to Facebook, social media use has skyrocketed, paving the way for one successful social media company after another to earn a fortune with services offering everything from photo and link sharing to chat messaging and miniaturized video entertainment.  Checking or updating social media has become routine for many, no less ingrained in their daily activity as drinking a cup of coffee each morning.  Within that rise, student-athletes have flocked to these tools, proudly sharing their day-to-day routines and team allegiances to the masses.  DeShazo’s infographic is telling; cultivated from surveys and data from collegiate athletes around the country, it paints a clear picture of just how engrained these tools are in a typical student-athlete’s life.

http://www.fieldhousemedia.net/blog/social-media-use-of-student-athletes-infographic

But whose responsibility is it to oversee these accounts while the media circle like vultures around the online feeding ground looking for any missteps or breaking news?  Who is tasked with supervising student-athletes on building positive representations of themselves and the universities they play for while they're constantly online?  For many schools that job falls in the hands of the athletic department administration.  “The sports information directors, those are the people I feel the worse for,” DeShazo stressed, “being an SID is overwhelming enough and then you add all these new responsibilities to it, it’s a different game.  They were just told to be the social media person because they had a Twitter account and so they’re the ones kind of in charge, and they’re overwhelmed…it was one thing when it was just Facebook, but now it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, Snapchat, and all these other platforms almost overnight.”

I started to wonder what it's like for these sports information directors and associate athlete directors, heralded with new responsibilities in an office already moving constant communications out the door from game recaps and event schedules to press releases and media interviews, now assigned to managing news outlets eager for information while coaching their athletes on appropriate university standards online.  So I started calling around to hear what the job is like these days, what the strategies are for social media education, and how schools are managing this constantly evolving scene both at the institution level and via the actions of its 18-22 year old athletes.  A white paper detailing strategies for higher learning institutions on how to handle student-athlete social media education is in the works.  In the meantime, here’s a little of what I heard.

On Operating in a Digital World…“The number one thing that it’s done is we now operate in a 24-hour news cycle.  As recently as just a few years ago we could hold off stories, we could give them to newspapers to run for tomorrow morning’s paper if we had a breaking story, that’s just not the case anymore.  If I tried to give something of a breaking nature to the newspaper and asked them to hold it they’d laugh at me.”  - Assistant Athletics Director Mike Flynn, Appalachian State University 

On Adjusting the Department’s Role….“I think social media is great for institutions and it certainly has changed the way we work.  Even in 2010 we were doing nothing with social media, except on occasion we might put out on Twitter if a kid set a record or something like that.  To where in 2013, I had six to seven people dedicated to social media at each home football game.  So it certainly has had a drastic change in how we do our job.”  - Sports Information Director, Steve Shutt, Wake Forest University

On Sharing Social Media Responsibilities…“We try to keep an eye on our kids on social media, we don’t have anybody; we’re a two and a half person shop right now.  Basically our view on social media with our athletes is we try to put a lot of the responsibility with our students.  At the start of every season we’ll give the speech about social media responsibility and we’ll try and go in the summer and see what’s out there and review and revisit everything we’re teaching.  Basically our policy is we let the kids regulate themselves, however if we see something that is unacceptable we’ll come in and we’ll take care of it.”  - Sports Information Director Matt Turk, California State University Bakersfield

On Student-Athlete Education vs. Social Media Policies...“We did not feel that it was the right thing to do to create a policy.  It didn’t make any sense to have a subset of the student body be held to a policy when their classmates, that don’t happen to be athletes, are under no such policy.  So not having a policy kind of led us to our next avenue, taking the approach of education and trying to make the student-athletes aware of what’s out there and best practices.  We created a teaching tool, a presentation we give, and we engage with our athletes, we want them to follow the official accounts for their sports, and we can follow them back and offer assistance and guidance if a red flag goes up.”   - Assistant Director of Athletics Art Chase, Duke University

On the Bigger Social Media Picture…“I focus more on teaching the understanding that you’re now part of a bigger brand.  When you signed on to play here, you signed up to be a Colorado Buffalo…it’s about understanding that you’re more than just yourself.  We try not to make it a ‘you can’t do this, and you can’t do that’ because I think they kind of shut off when you do that.  It’s also really rewarding for me that we have some really good cases by the time they’re juniors or seniors of a couple kids really getting it and understanding it and having really good examples for us to show all the new kids coming in.”  - Associate Sports Information Director, Curtis Snyder, University of Colorado Boulder

2013: A LOOK BACK IN SPORTS - PART 5 - NCAA BASKETBALL

Continuing last week's coverage, I take a look this week at Nielsen's data on sports fans in 2013 focusing on the latest findings on NCAA basketball.  You can read the full-summarized report here: http://bit.ly/1fT9KVa.  I've read through it and here are some of the most interesting facts from the past year:

 

http://bit.ly/1isPuxm

There’s nothing quite like the excitement and fan participation that surrounds March Madness.  Perhaps it’s the office pools and bracket-ready eagerness that has the viewing audience changing, but the NCAA Tournament’s viewership definitely evolves from the NCAA regular season.  With a 14% hike in female viewers and a 4% hike in households with an income of $100K or more, the sport invites in a new demographic at the start of the tournament.   It’s not only the audience that changes, but rather social media becomes abuzz with a significant number of ravenous, content generating, March Madness fans.  The significant amount of Twitter activity in the 2013 Championship Game between Michigan and Louisville ranked it as the most tweeted about telecast in the month of April.  Here’s the latest and greatest on NCAA basketball thru a look back on 2013.

http://bit.ly/1i434V4

·      NCAA Basketball regular reason viewership took a small loss for the 2012-2013 season with a .2% decrease, however the championship game saw quite the growth in viewership with a 12.3% year to year gain.

·      Top NCAA Basketball advertiser: AT&T Wireless

·      Adults who visit NCAA.com are 59% more likely than the average U.S. adult to have purchased sporting goods in the last six months.

·      The average NCAA Tournament viewer is a likely to be a white male aged 55+ who makes $40,000-$75,000 annually.  However, the next largest income group, those making 100K or more a year, is very close behind.

http://bit.ly/1ejZkdr

·      With some of the strongholds in college basketball resting comfortably in its conference, including the likes of North Carolina and Duke, the ACC has long been thought of as the most popular conference.  But in the 2012-13 regular season the Big 10 topped the rankings in TV viewership with more fans tuning in to see Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State play.

·      On average, three million viewers tuned in for the top 10 nationally televised regular season games involving a team from the Big 10 conference.

http://bit.ly/OcG2jB

·      The top two local fan bases determined by percentages of their population having watched, attended, or listened to the team in the past 12 month, came in at over 50% of the population devoted.  But while the Louisville Cardinals put up strong numbers with 58% of their population showing their support for the team, they'll have to relish in the number two spot.  

·      The Cardinals' local fan base is no match for the number one Kentucky Wildcats, where a whopping 67% of their population is faithful to the organization.