Content creation through sports media is taking a major turn and you should get onboard before it takes off and it is too late.
The near future of sports journalism and/or broadcasting is shifting into this industry and you can join for almost nothing. Furthermore, all you have to change is the presentation of your content. This isn’t a shift in what people want in sports media, it’s simply where they want it. You can keep your personality or way of presenting information to your audience the same.
The area of business I am talking about is podcasting.
There is a large demographic of sports fans who are young and have very busy lives. A major problem is finding the time. The college student and young adult are splitting time between hours of classwork, a part-time job or starting a career, and a social life he or she is trying to retain. Between all of these things, it is hard for your consumer to sit and listen to a scheduled radio station or television broadcast.
As I said before, you need to cater to your audience because if you can’t bring the content to them at their convenience, you will most likely be passed up. Obviously, if you put all this together, fewer followers means less income. This makes the problem more significant because they will move onto the ones innovating and adjusting to their problem.
My solution to you, however, is simply creating a podcast. Podcast listeners in America as a whole have gone up to 40% in the past two years. But in regard to people who listen to podcasts regularly is only 24%. While the industry is still growing marginally, there is a major gap between the creators and keeping the audience. This is simply because there is nothing for the users to listen to since podcasting is a fairly new source of media. It’s not that people are tuning out, it’s that they have nothing worth tuning into.
Oddly put, the solution to the problem in my previous solution (confusing, I know) is there is not good enough content and out of the 350,000 podcasts, your audience can’t sift through the boring ones. Podcasting is just the beginning. You need to brand yourself and spread the word that you are tapping into this field through social media, word-of-mouth, and almost anything that will get your name out there.
Also, think about what this demographic is doing. Long commutes to work, countless hours in the library for students, and even morning routines when they wake up with sports media in the background. Podcasting is perfect because your user can download any podcast episode at any time and listen whenever they want. They can also fast-forward, rewind, and pause the episode if they want to listen to it later or go back to something important.
What do you think you can do to be recognized among the rest?
What is your stance on the “new era” of the sports media industry?