03/06/2009 - A blog post by Bryan Bennett from FanSection: Moving beyond advertising - Sports Apparel Sales

Last Friday I wrote a blog post about how FanSection is moving into ticket sales to expand our revenue model beyond online advertising. At the time, I alluded to the fact that we were talking with a leading sports apparel company to continue building out our revenue generation activities. Today, I’m happy to announce that deal is signed, sealed, and delivered, and the FanSection FanShop is live.

To launch our online store, we have signed a deal with Team Fan Shop, a Jacksonville, FL based company that is one of the top online providers of sports apparel - and I believe the #1 online retailer of NCAA gear. They work with a variety of different partners as well as sell under their own brand of FootballFanatics.

We’re excited about the opportunity to work with Team Fan Shop and our ability to drive merchandise sales. FanSection is known for creating communities of real sports fans that have expressed an affinity for specific teams. This highly segmented approach is perfect for retail sales as we can customize offers and promotions specifically for each community. To get to this point, we tested an offer for the Pittsburgh Steelers immediately after the Super Bowl and were astounded by how quickly users of our applications took to the model. Needless to say, it was successful enough to encourage us to get this deal done quickly in time for March Madness and the start of the Major League Baseball season.

To get things started, our first promotion will be around St. Patrick’s Day. Evidently green sports gear is all the rage these days and we’re hoping to take advantage of that to kick off the partnership with a bang. If you’re interested in picking up some green gear of your own, head on over to the FanSection FanShop.

Source: http://blog.fansection.com/2009/03/moving-beyond-advertising-sports-apparel-sales/