Arizona State University (ASU) started promoting the use of smart phones for sports social media engagement at its 44-23 victory over USC on Saturday, and plans to continue the program at Oregon, Colorado and California home games.

Among other tactics aimed at driving smart phone use, ASU is running contests on its video boards during timeouts that allow attendees to participate in contests. The application involved is called Fanatic Fans, and it uses a check-in function similar to Foursquare. Once fans have checked in, their location is tracked and they are given the opportunity to interact with other fans at the game, or receive promotional offers based on stadium location.  

The ASU launch marks one of the most aggressive moves to date by a major college athletic program to mirror sports social media innovations occurring in the NFL, particularly at Miami Dolphins home games.

To make its smartphone strategy a reality, the Sun Devils partnered with location-based application developer Calibrus. This is another step toward widespread adoption of these types of applications at sporting events, which Mobile Sports Report expects the practice to be widespread by the end of 2013.

On Friday, Mobile Sports Report predicted “Moneyball” would surpass box-office predictions. We thought that Hollywood experts underestimated the power of the sports social media community, and figured that a box-office debut North of $23 million was in the offing. We were wrong.

“Moneyball” came in second to “The Lion King” in weekend box office, grossing $20.6 million over the weekend. According to the Wall Street Journal, 64% of the audience was over the age of 35 and almost evenly split by gender, with females making up the 49% of the audience.

But what’s $2.4 million among friends, anyway?

The opening was considered solid, and social media played a big part in the positive vibe the picture enjoys in its first full week of release. With the World Series coming up, and plenty of positive buzz surrounding the picture, Fox News is speculating that “Moneyball” could be the most successful baseball movie of all time.

And there was plenty of social media buzz around the picture, including this Tweet from “The Office” star Rainn Wilson:

“I call my left one ‘Moneyball’ ”

(Of course, Mobile Sports Report and its followers know enough not to take sports social media too seriously, even if we made it perfectly clear for the world to see on Friday that our box-office prediction skills leave something to be desired, so we tweeted @rainnwilson today: “I call my left one Rainn Wilson.” More on “Moneyball” as this story continues to develop.

Moneyball first sports movie to leverage SocialGuideMovies

“Moneyball,” the Brad Pitt movie about Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, is primed to be one of Hollywood’s first sports social-media grandslams.

Box office predictions include Rope of Silicon at $21.84 million, while TotalNerd puts the opening at $22.4 million. MobileSportsReport believes the Hollywood pundits have underestimated the power of the growing sports social media community. We think “Moneyball” will easily clear the $23 million marker this weekend, on its way to becoming one of the 2011 movie season’s hits.

Why will “Moneyball” exceed expectations?

What Hollywood doesn’t seem to know about “Moneyball” is that it is tailor-made for the mobile sports viewing phenomenon that is occurring across the United States. According to Juniper Research, mobile sports content and services could reach $3.8 billion in 2011. “Moneyball” plays right into the sweet spot of this emerging market of hard-core sports fans, who most often had to get a smartphone or tablet device to manage their fantasy teams, and now use it to get a 360-degree of the game through Twitter and, increasingly, as their primary screen for watching sports live. This audience is chock full of influential Twitter power users and the easily influenced. Those are the people who are going to push the “Moneyball” box office past expectations.

MobileSportsReport says:

If “Moneyball” is as good as people say it is, the mobile sports community will play a significant role in driving people who might not otherwise go to the movies. And, if that happens, things could get a lot more box office boff for the Hollywood suits who greenlit this pic.”

For their part, the producers of “Moneyball” are getting busy to get the mobile sports community involved, engaged and motivated. Consider some of the things “Moneyball” has done so far on Twitter, since the movie’s opening:

1. Posted the hashmarks of every former Oakland A’s player who is active on Twitter and mentioned on the movie
2. Retweeted positive press from the NYTimes, Roger Ebert and RottenTomatoes, among others
3. Promised to repost photos of moviegoers who wear Oakland A’s gear to “Moneyball.”