This is a good article. Thank you.
Although I do think it misses a part of the point or two we all need to consider.
The Washington Capitals – I can say with certainty – offer more access; transparency; respect; donuts; information; and communications touch points than any pro sports team to its community and to the blogosphere. I believe I communicate a lot – some would say too much – to our community. The day after a loss in the playoffs, I started to read and respond to all of my fan email and I penned an immediate after the loss blog post for all to read. I have now read more than 1,000 emails in the last three weeks or so and read comments on my blog and on Facebook and on Twitter. If that isn’t enough, I apologize. If that is too much, I apologize. It is hard to know what is right to do here.
I will next see an article that says “Leonsis apologizes….” 
We thought it was a good idea to do an Owners Corner via questions from our fan base moderated by long term hockey expert and our long term employee Mike Vogel. We conducted a 70 minute live and then to archive video conference. One of the reasons we thought this was a good idea is that most fans start at Washington Capitals website to get their info. It is one of the main places that fans come to in terms of traffic proof points to get pages and streams of info. I could do one session and then get back to work.
I also didn’t do a Washington Post interview at season’s end because as is my style, if I did, then I would have to do every interview from every news source and every blogger and every podcaster and every radio station and on and on. As I noted, this is a time of research and introspection. So I did a blog post instead. I try not to cater to one. I like to communicate to the many. Maybe this is a bad idea. I don’t know but it is what I thought was the best course of action. I was criticized for it.
Some mainstream reporters tried or did “trick” me into commenting on the Capitals’ season at the Wizards new uniform unveiling. It is their job. I don’t mind. I get it. I know who to trust and who to not trust.
As an aside, I then did a 70 minute or so live phone conference too with Wizards season ticket holders. There were 600 plus people on the line. Same day – same place. I know for certain I was the only owner in sports to do that outreach to two audiences for two teams in the same day. Why did we do that? To save time and leverage infrastructure in the same building and to make sure that both teams’ fan bases felt loved and communicated with after the season ended.
Seventy minutes is a lot of time. One of the reasons to memorialize something like this is to have a record of what was asked and what was said. We also can have a record of what was watched; who watched on an anonymous basis; and for how long. It allows people to time shift and watch when they want and it also allows us to say “I didn’t say that – go to this minute and second in the transcript.”
The good news is that the record is there. The bad news is that most people didn’t watch it. Or only watched a few minutes of the stream.
Immediately after the interview, I saw a Twitter feed with a quote that was taken out of context. That quote then made its way into a blog post and then there were blogs that commented on the blog post. And on and on.
I marvel at real time communications. I can say none of this bothers me. I understand how the monster can act and these pixels are now out there forever for good and bad reference. They are stuck on pages. They may actually get more traffic than the actual interview because 70 minutes is a much bigger time commitment than reading 140 characters. Or a blog entry.
But the entire interview is online for all to see and hear. You may agree or disagree with what I said. I wasn’t scripted. I tried to answer in a straightforward manner. I did my best. These aren’t fun or easy sessions to do.
Our research said that our fans fall into a few categories: Fans that are avid. Fans that are committed. Fans that are casual. And fans that follow based on relevance and newsworthiness. Each category of fan has grown dramatically over the last 5 years. It is why we have such a sold out building; great ratings; and a growing backlog of fans that want to come to games. I am grateful.
We asked each category of fan how do they get their news and info and if we were to promote or try to communicate what was best source and most frequented source. As I noted, the ranking was as follows: our web site; Comcast SportsNet; The Washington Post and its network of online sites and blogs; and my personal blog. And then franchise generated mailings; ads; emails and related outreach at events and in arena.
That would all make sense wouldn’t it?
Our site is filled with data by professionals and they have access to all of our information and content. Stats and more and it gets promoted from the NHL site. And we promote it everywhere. And it has video and player access and on and on. Plus ticketing apps. Comcast SportsNet is our partner. They have our video. They drive traffic to us and we drive traffic to them. The Washington Post has many people writing about us. They professionally market via SEO and SEM. I point to them a lot with my blog and they generate a lot of traffic. They advertise to drive circulation and the newspaper is read by 650,000 of our neighbors. And my blog which gets a lot of traffic because I get linked to by many and my posts go to Twitter and to Facebook. And it gets linked to a lot by the Post, by our website and Comcast SportsNet.
And at games we reach almost 20,000 people and our database is now huge and growing for email and newsletters and our events such as Caps Convention and charity events and on and on. And we own Verizon Center – 2 .5 million plus people enter our building per year. We communicate a lot in our own arena to people. This is why I have said we are becoming a media company.
Of course our own sites and our own platforms would be ranked very high. Of course, our rights holder would receive a lot of interest and traffic. Of course the #1 media company locally would be ranked high. It owns the newspaper in town as well.
But most people regarding any subject go only 5 to 10 max points of reference. On Google search pages 90 plus percent of all clicks are off the first page. If your listing is on page 35 for instance, no one will click for the most part.
This shouldn’t be news to any one who is a blogger.
It isn’t news that people aren’t listening to a game on the radio at home as much anymore when they can watch on HD TV or watch on their iPads. Times change. We text. We tweet. We have our heads down at games buried in our iPhones.
As more and more people blog and tweet on our team, the listing of sources ever increases but the number of overall clicks doesn’t grow to match it. Some blogs get very little readership and/ or zero comments. Or tens of thousands clicks. You get the point.The long tail is being born here.
It is because of this fact, “the 80/20 rule” that many organizations say that catering to and activating a blogosphere or communicating to everyone may be a misguided strategy.
Some teams only cater to their own website, the big local media and their own outlets BECAUSE of this kind of research.
Forget that some of the bloggers may be tough or have very strong opinions. Or not follow some basic rules of the road. As an aside, I believe that journalists from some big media outlets can and have done similar actions and I know I have made many errors of judgement as well. No one is perfect. I don’t think people do evil things. I think people do things sometimes out of emotion; or in real time; or to get advantage or to be noticed; or that is what they actually believe and they use their blog for personal expressions and nothing will get in the way of their pixelization. They tweet out of steams of thoughts. Good.
Some fans have emailed me and recommended we not allow some of our players to Tweet. They don’t like what they read. They lose respect for the players. Some have asked me to shut down my blog. I understand but interactivity is like oxygen now. We might as well get used to it. And lots of people rely on my blog as noted above. I will try to do better but I don’t think anyone can ever do anything that everyone will agree upon.
As one exec said to me once at a league meeting, “Why do you do this? No one reads this stuff. It takes a lot of work and a lot of investment. It has no upside only downside.” Good question.
So why do we do it and what will we do going forward?
We do it because I think it is the right thing to do. I believe in everyone and I believe in the goodness of interactivity and communications. A big tent is good. More pixels is better than less pixels.
What will we do on going forward? We will do what we have always done. Open access and I will try to treat all sources of info the same despite size and readership and opinions. This is just what I believe in.
I will also try to innovate to allow our fans to have discovery of new blogs; new voices; understand the long tail and make sure that more and all of our outlets have the opportunity to excel and have their voices be heard. And sampled.
And we will invest in our own media properties even more .
Thank you for caring. Thank you if you had the patience to read this far as this blog post was like 1,000 tweets. Go Caps!
