• New York Times, Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:53 AM

Elizabeth Olson reports that sports teams and leagues are increasingly communicating with fans "intensively by mobile devices" and discovering that they are open to receiving lots of data and information because of their passion for their favorite teams. The NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers, for example, is sending out 1.5 million text messages a month.

NBA Mobile, which has 100 mobile applications, had more than 1.7 million downloads last season and the NHL has started a mobile site, m.nhl.com, that displays live game scores.

"Mobile has a lot of tentacles, from building a database of fans, reaching commercial sponsors, selling tickets and merchandising," says Michael Falato, vp of sales for mobile marketing company Txtstation. Speaking of tentacles, the data collected by the teams can later be tied to commercial uses such as signing up subscribers by cellular carriers, Olson reports.

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