Tuesday, February 20, 2007

A1GP 2007 at Taupo, New Zealand

My mate Simon Arkwright (aka The Professor) with his consultancy Sport Research Group gets some great gigs endeavouring to unravel the mysterious behaviours of sports fans, mostly in situations where there is a problem attracting or keeping them.

The model he has developed is called passionEight™ which I could explain but it's better you head off to his website for the full story. It's powerful stuff for decoding your fan or customer issues. The reader's digest version of the passions is this:

Principle #1 – There are 8 passionEight™ Passions
  • Passion for Novelty/Occasion relates to the desire to attend an event to experience something new, different or special.
  • Passion for People relates to the desire to attend the event with others rather than a strong desire to watch the sport event itself.
  • Passion for Player taps into the inclination of fans to form bonds with particular players for whatever reason.
  • Passion for Party relates to the entertainment factor which includes the atmosphere in the stands, event enhancement activities and/or the exciting play and players.
  • Passion for Contest/Success is about the desire for competition, and success. The focus here is results not style.
  • Passion for Community relates to loyalty to, and pride in, a particular community; whether that the cause of that pride and loyalty is territorial, ethnic, religious or cultural.
  • Passion for Code relates to the love of the sports code.
  • Passion for Team relates to a strong emotional link with a particular team rather than a love of the sports code or feelings of community.

He was kind enough to share the bounty of one of those gigs by getting me a photographer's pass to the A1GP in Taupo in early 2007. Would the A1GP model of fans dividing by a passion for their country work in a nation of rev-heads divided mostly by a passion for a brand of Australian 6 and 8 cylinder motor car? My task was to capture the context of the days of racing and the fans in the stands.

Here's a slideshow of the best images - bugger all of which are of fans!