What I learned from the Miami Dolphins

Sponsorships and customer experiences were among the things I brought home from my first American football game in October 2010. I watched the Miami Dolphins play the Pittsburgh Steelers, invited by my wife’s contact at the local sheriff’s office.

Sponsorships and customer experiences around the game

I didn’t yet understand all the rules, but the experience was much more than the game itself. Beforehand, people enjoyed barbecues in the car park, doing what Americans called tailgating.

Inside and outside the stadium were activities, merchandise and entertainment. That made breaks interesting to me too, even though I wasn’t particularly interested in sport.

The sponsor’s role needed to make sense

I noticed how sponsors were attached to different parts of the visit. A supermarket, for example, could be relevant to the food before the game.

I also described a service I didn’t find worked as expected. It reminded me a good sponsorship idea also needs to work in practice.

I got ideas for my own business

I wondered whether Amino could be a little more fun and whether a sponsor might be relevant to particular features. Those were ideas I considered as a co-owner, not initiatives whose results I’d measured. I share my own experiences of developing a business in Iværksætter til jeg dør.

I also liked the atmosphere between different teams’ supporters as I saw it that day. That’s my experience of the game in 2010, not a study of every sporting event.

Also read about service and experiences in a retail shop.

My wife’s voluntary work brought me an invitation

Yesterday, I was incredibly lucky. My wife volunteers at a local sheriff’s office, and her boss, if you can call him that, asked whether I’d like to see American football. His name is Carl, he’s a captain at the office and has worked there for many years. A really nice guy.

I’m not hugely interested in sport, but of course I wanted to go. I watched the Miami Dolphins, our local South Florida team, play the Pittsburgh Steelers. I still don’t understand every rule, although I’m trying to learn and got lots of tips along the way. But what fascinated me most was how good Americans are at making a show of everything.

A three-hour party in the car park

It starts with tailgating. You park, open the boot, set up a little tent and barbecue and turn the car park into a party.

Here, people from the police and sheriff’s office had divided up the work and made an area to barbecue and socialise. I particularly noticed around a quarter wearing Pittsburgh Steelers shirts while the rest supported the Miami Dolphins.

It all went completely smoothly while I was there. No fights or cheeky remarks. People slapped each other on the shoulder, ate spare ribs and scallops, drank beer and had a fantastic time. Around three hours passed like that before the game itself.

There was something to do everywhere

Outside were cheerleaders you could talk to and have your photo taken with. I also noticed women in football shirts and commented on their large breasts in the video. There was face painting if you wanted to look as though you had a Dolphins cap on, merchandise, a tombola and all sorts of other activities.

The whole area was full of traders creating value around the stadium. I noticed the stadium changed names with its main sponsor. I couldn’t remember the precise name in the video and guessed something about European travel or life insurance. What interested me was the connection between sponsor and stadium.

Publix sold food for the party

The supermarket chain Publix was one of the sponsors. Its message fitted what people were doing: Buy your tailgating food, spare ribs and everything else from us.

They were visible on rubbish bins and other relevant things around the area, among other places. It wasn’t simply a random logo. The sponsorship had a function and a connection to the experience people were having. They were involved inside the stadium too.

A good idea isn’t enough if the technology doesn’t work

AT&T was a sponsor too. One idea was sending a text if someone got too drunk, for example, so help could arrive.

But I found their network didn’t work inside. You could laugh a little, but it was poor sponsorship in that situation. The idea was good enough. When hardware or software fails, the rest of the sponsorship dies too. That’s worth considering.

Budweiser was very dominant inside the stadium. I described the crowd as more than 80,000 in the video, and that many people means lots of beer sales. If each person buys just two during the game, it’s a big market. And when almost nothing except Budweiser is sold and the brand is visible everywhere, Budweiser is probably what people buy. That was my illustrative calculation, not a tally of beer sales.

Flames, fighter jets and paratroopers

When the Dolphins came out, people went wild. Huge flames shot into the air. At precisely the right second, four fighter jets flew over the arena to finish the introduction. Pretty decent!

I also described a gigantic American flag on the field, soldiers and patriotic entertainment. A big plane flew over, and around ten or twelve paratroopers jumped out and landed inside the stadium. There were cheerleaders and mascots, and people went out to buy food and beer. The whole event was a party.

An American football game can take three or four hours. I described it as an hour of play and lots of breaks, with short sequences followed by substitutions and new formations. For someone like me who isn’t very keen on sport, it could easily drag. But so much else was happening I wasn’t bored.

How do you make your business a little more fun?

So what’s that got to do with entrepreneurship? I was actually very inspired. My first thought was how to liven up your business if it becomes a little boring. Perhaps you can mix in something not directly related, simply to make the experience more enjoyable.

At the time, I was considering a small investment in the Danish website Connery. I described it as a site for younger men who like large breasts and fast cars, and as good at bringing in Paradise girls and photographing them.

Then I wondered whether we could do something fun with Amino logos. I mentioned a line of Amino girls wearing Amino bras as a slightly silly example. I knew some would immediately call it unserious. I wasn’t thinking porn, just something for fun. Nor had I worked out how to combine it. It was a loose idea arising at the game, not a finished concept.

Sponsors for login, logout and links

The other inspiration was how sponsors were attached to particular functions. Why couldn’t Amino have a relevant sponsor when you log in? You enter your username and password and receive a welcome in partnership with someone who could benefit from that context.

When logging out, perhaps someone could wish you a pleasant time off in partnership with a travel sponsor. There could also be sponsorship around links. When a user clicks a link and leaves Amino, we also lose the opportunity to generate revenue.

I imagined a brief intermediate step with a link sponsor. It shouldn’t take many seconds or be annoying. It was an idea, not something I’d already implemented.

What interested me was seeing how stadium functions could be connected with sponsors that made sense in that particular context. How can you optimise sponsorships around the different functions of your own business? I found that incredibly interesting.

Why can’t a game simply be peaceful?

The last thing wasn’t about business. It was the pleasure of seeing a civilised sporting event where people could have fun together despite supporting different teams.

I thought about hooligans around FCK and Brøndby and compared them with what I saw here. Dolphins and Steelers supporters sat together, slapped each other on the shoulder and drank beer. I didn’t see police intervene over violence once while I was there.

So it’s also an appeal to football fans: Why the hell can’t it simply be a little more peaceful?