The following interview is part of our ongoing Expert Series that asks C-level professionals, team presidents, league executives, athletic directors and other sports influencers about their latest thoughts and insights on new technologies impacting the sports industry.
Name: Dewayne Hankins
Company: Portland Trail Blazers
Position: Chief Marketing Officer
Dewayne Hankins is the Chief Marketing Officer for the Portland Trail Blazers and Moda Center, a role he assumed earlier this Fall. He oversees the overall brand strategy, innovation efforts and corporate communications for the team and venue. The Iowa State University graduate previously held the role of Senior Vice President of Brand Strategy and Digital. Under his leadership, the team’s digitally-focused marketing campaigns helped achieve franchise records in individual game ticket sales, the Trail Blazers and Moda Center sites underwent significant responsive site redesigns, and the team increased its outreach to Oregon and the Pacific Northwest with strategic brand activations.
Before joining the organization from Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), Hankins oversaw the digital efforts of AEG’s sports properties worldwide, including the Los Angeles Kings and LA Galaxy. Prior to joining AEG, he spent time with the Minnesota Wild and Miami Marlins.
1) What utilization of technology in sports has recently blown you away and why?
It’s been fascinating to watch Activision/Blizzard over the last year. This is a company that has driven a ton of profit from games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, and they continue to read where their industry is going and continue to innovate in that industry. Over the last year, they created a video game that was perfectly formulated for eSports in Overwatch, then formed a championship around the game and have now started a league around the game. Some of the engagement metrics are incredible for a game that is not embedded into the eSports culture like, say, a League of Legends and there’s so much room for them to grow it from here. They are truly one of the first game developers to put a plan on paper that said, “we want to make a game that will play well to the eSports crowd” and succeed and, oh by the way, give themselves a platform for unlimited social engagement, marketing and brand affinity for a game they developed and will generate revenue from.
2) If you had to invest in one technology that would change the marketing or social/digital world in sports, what would it be and why?
I think that virtual reality is going to radically change the way fans consume our content in the future. The NBA, as usual, is ahead of the curve as they have broadcast several games in VR this year. You’ve seen the technology just take leaps and bounds forward in the past few years with really big name companies getting in the game like HTC, Facebook and Sony. It’s still at a very high price point for the average consumer, and the experience isn’t quite all the way there yet in terms of screen resolution and true immersion, but soon you will be able to have virtual experiences that are very close to the real thing. This technology lends itself to sports in so many great ways. From being able to watch sporting events from places the average fan couldn’t normally afford, such as courtside seats, all the way to simulating what it feels like to be a player among the action out on the court, field, etc.
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3) As a sports fan, what sports-related service, app, product, etc., could you not live without and why?
Twitter is still the king. Hands down. There is not a better stream of timely, unique content customized to you during a game, during a trade deadline or during a free agency period. It’s given a voice and personality to the people who cover the game, voice and personality to the teams/brands and allows them to own the conversations of the day’s event. Twitter provides the script to some of the most dramatic moments in sports. Many try to imitate it, but they have a great niche there.
4) If you had to project 20 years into the future, how will most fans watch their favorite sports teams?
I think that things will change drastically on a lot of fronts especially on broadcast television — more on that in a minute — but viewing a game in-arena or stadium will still provide the best experience for sports fans. Sports are also inherently social events, and fans want to be there; you need no further evidence than the Chicago Cubs championship parade, which I read somewhere ranks as one of the largest gatherings of human beings in human history. In terms of broadcast, however, there are some major structural forces that are threatening that ecosystem. First, the local RSN (Regional Sports Network) is the last line of defense for bundled cable packages and if and when that falls, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens to the value of sports broadcasting rights. Second, we have eSports to contend with for the share of attention span, and eSports fans have a much more accessible path to viewing content via phone, tablet, computer, gaming system or TV than traditional sports, which still requires authentication to watch your local sports team, if it’s even available. If we want to continue to engage with young sports fans, we need to stop making the content so hard to come by because there is no shortage of competition for their attention spans.
5) How are the Portland Trail Blazers using technology to enhance the fan experience at the Moda Center?
For us, the key is first providing a value proposition for the fan and their in-arena experience. There is no shortage of technology partners who come to us with ideas on how to help us innovate and improve fan experience. However, anything that we introduce into the digital ecosystem here has to solve a few different challenges for us: 1) Is this something our fans are asking for? 2) Is the value proposition high enough that fans are willing to share some level of data with us that we can use to improve their experience? 3) Is this something that could have sponsorship appeal? It doesn’t have to be yes to all of those questions, but it does have to be yes to at least the first question for us to consider the technology. With our fans, it’s all about building trust in that the technology works and that we are using the data they share with us in a way that is improving their individual fan experience.
6) Give us your bold prediction about a form of technology that will be integral to sports marketing over the next 12 months and why?
I think teams are going to start using machine learning and predictive analytics in a much more meaningful way in their sports marketing efforts over the next 12 months. We’ve seen great success with it internally at the Trail Blazers, and it’s become imperative to how we market to our fanbase. And it’s really a numbers game, right? In terms of brand awareness and brand affinity, teams have no shortage of people that they can market to. Even the least successful sports teams have fan bases that most companies would be envious of. However, the most important thing is to understand what kind of relationship your fan — at the individual level — wants to have with your team and ensuring that your marketing message correlates with what that fan wants to hear and see from you. We simply cannot do this without analytics.