Sport­ing en­thu­si­asts gath­ered in their num­bers on June 3 at the All Out Sports Bar, Queen's Park Oval, Wood­brook for the launch of Fan­lime.com, a Web site that rep­re­sents the next ma­jor step in the evo­lu­tion of sports me­dia.It is the first site to al­low fans to tru­ly en­gage and in­ter­act with all of their favourite ath­letes, brands and fel­low sports-en­thu­si­asts, in one place.This ex­cit­ing new ven­ture will al­so bring the fu­ture of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing to spon­sors, ath­letes and fans around the world.Fo­cused on the goal of bridg­ing the gap be­tween the ath­lete and the fan, "Fan­lime makes the ath­lete more ac­ces­si­ble and is the first site to give the fan a true voice," said founder, Marc Far­rell.

He stat­ed that "fans are able to en­gage with their favourite ath­letes and brands like nev­er be­fore, while ex­press­ing their own per­son­al sport­ing iden­ti­ty."With sports and en­ter­tain­ment be­ing one of the most lu­cra­tive in­dus­tries glob­al­ly, Fan­lime has the po­ten­tial to make ath­letes not just pop­u­lar play­ers on the field, but to el­e­vate them to rock star sta­tus in the minds of their fans.Fan­lime will in­te­grate the el­e­ments of sport around which fans typ­i­cal­ly cre­ate con­ver­sa­tion, ca­ma­raderie and com­pe­ti­tion, and al­low users to recre­ate the en­tire so­cial sport­ing ex­pe­ri­ence on­line; cus­tomis­ing their con­tent, shar­ing and con­vers­ing with their friends, and re­ceiv­ing unique ac­cess to events, mer­chan­dise, and deals, all based on their spe­cif­ic points of in­ter­est.Far­rell ex­plained that "fans are not the on­ly peo­ple who will ben­e­fit from a re­la­tion­ship with Fan­lime.

Ath­letes, many of whom al­ready en­gage with their fans through var­i­ous plat­forms, will re­ceive a boost in re­defin­ing them­selves as more than sim­ply play­ers on the field."They will be able to give fans what they have been clam­or­ing for-in­sight in­to their per­son­al in­ter­ests, re­la­tion­ships with spon­sors, prod­ucts and caus­es-while gain­ing the abil­i­ty to mon­e­tise this in­ter­ac­tion with their loy­al fan base."Far­rell con­tin­ued: "Brands will ben­e­fit from the abil­i­ty to align them­selves more di­rect­ly with their most prized as­sets: the ath­letes they work with."He added that "brands will al­so gain the ad­van­tage of a di­rect con­nec­tion with their au­di­ence. Imag­ine cre­at­ing be­hind the scenes con­tent, show­cas­ing a com­mer­cial they're shoot­ing or a prod­uct they're launch­ing, with one of their star ath­letes" Ac­cord­ing to Far­rell, Fan­lime was a win win sit­u­a­tion."Users are able to en­gage with friends, ath­letes and brands in new ways, while ath­letes and com­pa­nies can bet­ter lever­age the sup­port of their fans to en­hance their brand. That's why the lime starts here."