Page 180 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

New Media Sportscapes: Branding and the Internet • 169

the uniqueness of the city by drawing on the idiosyncrasies of London architecture
and sporting history: ‘the store has its own “Town Square” . . . streets, town plans and
street signs’ (Nike Brand Design 2002: 23). London NikeTown was designed as a
place ‘to come for inspiration, information, opportunities to play, fi rst-class service
and the very best sports products’ (Nike Brand Design 2002: 22). Hoke (2002: 107)
argued that that the immediacy of NikeTown was the company’s ‘highest form of
expression . . . Our customers experience NikeTown live, not on a screen.’ As a brand-
scape, NikeTown does not just compete with other stores, but with cinemas, theme
parks and other fantasy experiences.
Brandscape physical experiences contrast with the virtual experiences made avail-

able through information technology, but the flexibility and complexity of the brand
enables it to encompass consumers’ interactions with sport in both environments.
The Internet is increasingly important for advertisers, who measure the success of
campaigns during live sport events like the Super Bowl by the number of hits on their

Web sites. Traffic to major advertisers’ Web sites peaked at a combined 782,679 hits
per minute immediately after Super Bowl XL, compared with 50,000 hits per minute
on a typical Sunday (Richard K. Miller and Associates 2006). The Internet enables
a different kind of engagement with the sport experience than that offered by tradi-
tional media. It is necessary, therefore, to identify some of the features that are most
characteristic of this new medium.

Sport and the Internet

Just after the NBA’s All-Star break, the league’s official site launched a project

that lets fans put together their own highlight videos, complete with editing tools,
logos, and music. Don’t laugh, you TV types. This is the momentum of YouTube
and MySpace rolled into one, because the Internet generation has already decided
the printed word is basically good for nothing but lining the cat box.
NBA fans can go to http://MyVideo.NBA.com and turn into digital editors
with a 2-minute registration and a 30-minute practice.
Highlights from recent games (and there are more being added all the time)
are categorized as three-pointers, assists, blocks, buzzer-beaters, and (of course)
dunks. There’s also a team-by-team index for stand-by-my-team types and one
collection of video simply called LeBron James that is worth watching just to see
a viewer’s jaw hit the table.

—King (2007: 37)

In recent years, the Internet and information technologies have profoundly altered
many people’s relationship to work and leisure, transforming both business and pri-
vate life. Mautner (2005) has argued that the Internet now has a privileged status as
the primary information source in the public sphere. The Internet has changed the
way people contact and communicate with each other. It has ‘created new channels