Marketing 307

Chapter 7:

1. What did ESPN experience with its Fantasy Football Today podcast?

Fantasy football experts Matthew Berry and Nate Ravirez knew the public hungered for more and approached the ABC/ESPN brass. They were not granted airtime or support, they were given the green light to produce their own podcast fantasy football today became one of the top 20 most downloaded podcasts within the apple itunes store. But still not enough revenue to grab ESPN’s attention for support. This is when they embarked on two very innovative facets and engaging in socialnomic activity. These two facets were actually making the sponsors part of the show’s content and also allowing the listeners to help produce some of the content as well.

2. How was eagle eye, the sponsor of the fantasy football today podcast, promoted? How was it different from traditional advertising?

Their rapid ascent in the itunes download ranking drew attention of sponsors. Their first sponsor included the feature film eagle eye. Shia LaBeouf and produced by Steven Spielberg. Aside from covering fantasy football they touched on pop culture too commenting on the TV shows Beverly Hills 90210 and 90210. Podcast varies in length from 15min to 30 depending on how much news they have to cover. The varying lengths of the podcasts important item to note and reflection of how our world is changing. If a podcast has 16 minutes of newsworthy to cover then why waste commentator’ and viewer’s time? (unlike radio and tv)

They played a commercial at the beginning, middle and end of the podcast. Disruptive to listening audience because loyal listeners to download and watch podcast after podcast. These guys were able to seamlessly work the sponsors in as part of the show often with tongue in cheek references about how the products are used. This helps showcase “the talent” of these shows getting actively involved with every facet of the production of the show which makes it better for the listening audience....