Episode #2 of The Elusive Fan podcast launched this week on theelusivefan.podshow.com. Here's a sample of our list:

10. Southlake Carroll High School football team, outside of Dallas, Texas - This football program is not your ordinary high school team with rickety stands and bake sale fundraisers. Its branding strategy has been to benchmark professional and college teams and apply a similar formula to the high school level. In doing so, the school has built a $15 million facility that even pro teams in Dallas have used, developed a sophisticated sponsorship package that includes stadium naming rights for 10 years and $1 million, and branded the Southlake Carroll logo on virtually any product imaginable. High school sports are exploding across the country, and Southlake Carroll is the avatar.
8. National Professional Paintball League (NPPL) - Paintball? Why paintball? The NPPL is on the list for its ability to industrialize a sport formerly thought to be played only by adolescent males with emerging testosterone on remote fields somewhere in the forest. Today, 10 million particpants spend $400 million on paintball sporting goods, and the sport is also beginning to grow as a spectator entertainment on ESPN and on the Internet. Paintball brings to life video games and has capitalized on innovations in new technologies to drive fan interest.
5. NASCAR - This racing circuit is the best practice example of merging sports and entertainment. It has transformed from a rural, regional sport with moonshine-drinking drivers to an urban, national entertainment with polished, articulate stars. Marrying sports with soap opera, NASCAR embraces controversies on the track, promotes the access its fans have to their drivers, and benefits from the inherent danger element of the sport. If you watch a NASCAR race on television with the sound off, you will understand how important branding is to the sport...

...To find out the other 7 rankings, listen to The Elusive Fan podcast on theelusivefan.podshow.com.

This entry was posted by Ben Shields on Sunday, September 24. 2006 at 08:11. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog.