What do the future of American Orchestras and the America’s Cup have in common?
photo by Gilles Martin-Raget
When Team New Zealand won the Cup in 1995 traditional sporting media in the United States essentially abandoned coverage. This could have been a small tragedy for people like me had it not been for a San Francisco based internet company called Quokka Sports. It offered free coverage of sports and adventure events like the Whitbread and Mt. Everest expeditions. All that was needed was a broadband connection. Quokka allowed me to watch real-time coverage of the yacht races from Auckland, New Zealand. It was a primitive sight, but it was coverage – better coverage than ESPN had ever offered. The site featured daily reports, editorials, audio and video clips of press conferences and interviews. Best of all, it hosted a series of discussion boards where people from around the world could post comments and share their local media resources of the events. It was fringe-sports heaven. Quokka was giving the world a taste of what the Internet could offer: 24 hour, real-time coverage of sports from anywhere in the world.
While Quokka sank during the dotcom crash of 2000, it had left a strong expectation for the future of sports coverage. It had also left behind an international group of Cup followers that was determined to continue sharing news and assorted dock-talk rumors with one another. Race data, potential teams and their assets were being catalogued by the group and shared through personal websites and a dedicated discussion forum. It was, in essence, a social collective of amateur yachting reporters who were independent from rating shares and sponsors. They had, in a way, claimed a part of the Cup for themselves and used the worldwide web to make it possible. The internet had given them a voice and people were listening, albeit reluctantly. Change had arrived and America’s Cup campaigns were going to have to respond.
photo by Gilles Martin-Raget
Predictably, there were those that embraced the changes and those that rejected it outright. It was fascinating to watch teams emerge in a new age of openness and transparency – a drastic change from the old traditions of secrecy and “skirts.” As one press officer confided, times had changed and the best way to control the press was to offer them an open door. For those who resisted or reacted in fear, they remained behind closed doors and acted as if the internet invasion was just a passing fancy that would simply go away. But it didn’t go away. The PR damage began to accumulate as the internet communities were free to create their own version of what was going on behind those closed doors. When they finally understood that the internet wasn’t going to go away they thought they could control it. Things went from bad to worse. It was no longer business as usual.
It should be noted that the team that displayed one of the most impressive web presence in the 2003 America’s Cup also won the trophy. I don’t mean to suggest that the quality of web presence had any impact on the performance of the team itself – it was a powerhouse team. However, the web presence reflected a belief, a determination and a strong dedication to seeing this event into the future. It reflected adaptation and evolution, not fear of extinction.
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