Quietly, Professional Bull Riders has begun targeting rodeo fans – yes, rodeo fans – through their phones.
The Pueblo, Colo.-based association several weeks ago launched a comprehensive wireless Web site, allowing fans to access news, standings, and rider profiles and blogs from their handsets. Visitors to the site – mobull.pbrnow.com, naturally – can participate in interactive polls, shop for merchandise and mobile content, and even recommend the site to a friend via a text link.
The site builds on PBR’s earlier efforts in mobile, which have included premium SMS campaigns that place winners in the “shark cage,” a protected pen on the arena floor, as well as less-terrifying promotions such as merchandise giveaways and in-arena contests.
“The test campaigns we ran last year (with SMS) got more response than we remotely had anticipated,” said Sean Gleason, PBR’s COO. “That’s one of the stimuli that led us to develop our own WAP site and undertake other promotions. Overall, we are pleasantly surprised by the interest level our fans have shown.”
Strong demographics
One of the big reasons for that interest likely has to do with PBR’s demographic. While bull riding may evoke images of middle-aged ranch hands with more gun racks than USB ports, its fan base is 20 million strong and is much closer to the sweet spot of U.S. consumers: PBR boasts the highest percentage of 18- to 34-year olds of any major sports league, according to Gleason, and its TV viewership skews roughly 60% male to 40% female.
The new site is powered by iLoop Mobile Inc., a Silicon Valley-based startup that provides content distribution as well as mobile marketing and advertising services. PBR tapped iLoop after growing frustrated with a piecemeal group of players it had cobbled together to handle all of its wireless efforts.
“We learned that is was difficult for us to control all of the elements of promotions and campaigns when we were using one, two or three third parties to collect, compile and report data,” Gleason said. “We had a real hard time being able to provide the level of success we expect for our customers.”
Mixed results
Which is not to say that the PBR has mastered mobile, of course. While a quick test-drive found its wireless Web site compelling on a feature phone from Sprint Nextel Corp., the same site proved unusable on a popular Verizon Wireless handset. (ILoop engineers corrected the problem within 24 hours once they became aware of it.) And the company has just begun rolling out what it hopes to be a vast menu of wireless offerings, leveraging its 7,000 hours of video content as well as its relationships with sponsor partners such as Ford Motor Co. and Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
“I wouldn’t even begin to say we know what works and what doesn’t” in mobile, Gleason added. “That would be very presumptuous.”
Perfect timing
The association is working to drive traffic to the site with in-arena signage as well as promotions on its Internet properties and TV broadcasts. (“Nobody knows how to find you on a mobile device unless they’ve gotten the message from someplace else,” Gleason said.) PBR hopes to increase fan stickiness with the site as well as drumming up ad dollars by selling inventory on the site and through promotional tie-ins, and the outfit eventually plans to lure new fans to the sport through the phone.
Perhaps most importantly, PBR’s content may be especially well-suited for mobile. Riders are celebrities among rodeo fans, who have more direct access to their heroes through mobile phones than through other mediums. And while few would sit through an entire ballgame on a handset, an eight-second ride may prove more consumable video for the third screen.
“The fit is a no-brainer; it’s a no-brainer for any professional sport,” said Michael Ahearn, iLoop’s VP of marketing. “Any entertainment enterprise that isn’t really doing important work and development in the mobile channel and reaching an audience is really missing the bus. There’s so much revenue and so much money on the table right now.”
