SportsMates Mentioned in IEG Sponsorship Report

SportsMates' deal with the National Lacross League's Chicago Shamrox was noted in the December 11, 2006 edition of the IEG Sponsorship Report, a top sponsorship industry publication.

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The National Lacrosse League's new Chicago Shamrox franchise has come up with a happy medium between simply posting a page on MySpace and investing in its own social networking venture. The team has hired SportsMates, Inc., to operate an online community on its behalf. The Novato, Calif.-based firm runs the five-month-old SportsMates.com, which bills itself as "the global sports social network," or a MySpace for sports fans. In addition to having message boards, chat rooms, photo galleries and other features managed by SportsMates, the Shamrox hope to attract interest from fans of other teams and sports who will be exposed to the team through SportsMates.com. The Shamrox also will be able to offer sponsorship rights to their community and will have access to user information, according to Blair Cummins, SportsMates' CEO. In addition to working with properties, the company is pitching itself as a sponsorship activator to corporate marketers. For example, a company that sponsors the MLB Atlanta Braves could use SportsMates.com to run promotions targeted at Braves fans across the U.S. The company next month will announce its first deal with a corporate client: Gillette will use the site to activate an endorsement deal. SportsMates plans to launch other social networking sites in '07 in the health and technology spaces, Cummins said. "This is a business model that can be applied to a wide range of verticals."