The NFL Players Association has agreed to expand the number of National Football League players featured on MogoTXT Inc.?s text-messaging platform.

The deal is designed to position NFL stars to benefit from the emergence of social networking and mobile media. Marques Colston, Percy Harvin, Pierre Thomas, Erik Coleman, Chris Cooley, Jay Feely, Lance Moore, Steve Slaton and Ian Johnson have joined Terrell Owens, Santonio Holmes and other NFL personalities on the MogoTXT platform.

Representing more than 1,800 active and many retired NFL players, the NFL Players Association markets players as personalities, as well as professional athletes.

Through an exclusive sponsorship agreement between the organization and the NFL, players are integrated into NFL sponsor activation programs.

In addition, under an exclusive agreement between the NFLPA and the NFL, NFLplayers.com, the company?s official Web site, is part of the part of the NFL Internet Network.

Each year NFLPA negotiates and facilitates marketing opportunities for players.  NFLPA activities include retail licensing, corporate sponsorships and promotions, special events, radio and television projects, publishing and the Internet. 

MogoTXT is a mobile messaging company focused on delivering immersive and entertaining mobile experiences for its users.

In addition to offering its mobile and online services in the United States and China, MogoTXT provides a platform for sports stars and other celebrities send a single text message to automatically update all of their fans on MogoTXT, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other Web sites.

By enabling athletes and celebrities to connect with their fans regardless of where they are, MogoTXT helps aggregate dispersed fans into larger audiences for marketing and other monetization purposes.

Under the new partnership, MogoTXT, the NFL Players Association and participating NFL stars will share revenues generated from content created by the SMS microblogging platform.

MogoTXT, the NFL Players Association and participating stars will also donate a significant portion of the revenues to selected charities, including charitable initiatives sponsored or supported by the NFL Players Association and participating NFL stars.

The new partnership has enabled the following NFL players to join MogoTXT?s growing roster of NFL and NBA sports personalities:
Erik Coleman, safety, Atlanta Falcons
Marques Colston, wide receiver, New Orleans Saints
Lance Moore, wide receiver, New Orleans Saints
Pierre Thomas, running back, New Orleans Saints
Chris Cooley, tight end, Washington Redskins
Jay Feely, placekicker, New York Jets
Percy Harvin, wide receiver, Minnesota Vikings
Ian Johnson, running back, Minnesota Vikings
Steve Slaton, running back, Houston Texans

MogoTXT has also added a new group-texting channel to its service that enables fans to see the back-and-forth text-message conversations among Marques Colston, Lance Moore and Pierre Thomas as New Orleans enjoys an undefeated season and proceeds to the NFL playoffs.

Sports fans in the U.S. can join any or all of MogoTXT?s public texting groups for free by signing up at http://www.mogotxt.com.

Microblogging via SMS
Mobile Marketer?s Dan Butcher interviewed Andrew Won, CEO of MogoTXT, San Francisco, CA. Here is what he had to say:

What is the strategy behind the partnership between MogoTXT and the NFL Players Association?
The strategy is to help NFL players benefit from the emergence of social media and the advent of the ability of sports stars and other celebrities to build large fan followings on Twitter, Facebook and other social-networking sites.

MogoTXT and [the] NFL Players [Association] have entered into a multi-year agreement to work together to provide both convenience and monetization opportunities for NFL players, [the] NFL Players [Association] and their charities.

It is about helping NFL players, who already use or are thinking about using Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other Web sites, to optimize their use of these services and to also build fan followings on MogoTXT at http://mogotxt.com/mogotxt.

MogoTXT provides its services to NFL players free of charge.

MogoTXT also provides NFL players with MogoTXT?s ?text only once, but update fans everywhere? convenience.

If an NFL player sends a text message to MogoTXT, MogoTXT can automatically forward that message to all of the player's fans on MogoTXT, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and to the player's own Web site just as if the player took the time to manually type messages on all of these sites.

MogoTXT's "text only once" capability solves the all-too-frequent problem of NFL players and other athletes becoming too busy to blog to fans during critical times like the playoffs, when fan interest happens to be the highest.

The ease with which a short text message can be sent and MogoTXT's ability to deliver the same text message everywhere solves this problem.

By forwarding an NFL player's message to all of his fans regardless of where the fans reside on the Internet, MogoTXT also helps the NFL player aggregate his dispersed fans into a single large audience and helps the player achieve critical mass much sooner for marketing and monetization purposes.

With regard to monetization, MogoTXT is currently in discussions with some major brands and also with mobile advertising networks about featuring ads in conjunction with MogoTXT?s growing portfolio of premium sports content.

What brands will take advantage of the NFL microblogs by sponsoring one or more of them?
The brands that will take advantage of these microblogs are generally the same brands that currently advertise in conjunction with professional football and other major sports.

As part of its partnership with MogoTXT, [the] NFL Players [Association] will be introducing MogoTXT to its partners such as Gatorade, Pepsi, Electronic Arts and Reebok.

Also, MogoTXT will soon start translating the text messages of NFL players into Spanish for Spanish-speaking fans of professional football.

This will create big opportunities for MogoTXT, the NFL players who work with MogoTXT, and [the] NFL Players [Association] with both existing advertisers and new advertisers that want to reach this audience.

MogoTXT will also start to syndicate its content in numerous foreign countries. This will open up opportunities with advertisers in each of these foreign markets.

What is the target demographic?
The same demographic that sports marketers and advertisers currently target.

How does MogoTXT get the word out about its mobile platform (i.e. marketing tactics)? Does MogoTXT run any advertising to promote the platform?
MogoTXT does a number of things to promote itself, but one of the most effective and least costly ways for MogoTXT to promote both MogoTXT and the athletes who work with MogoTXT is by connecting with the fans of each athlete on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and elsewhere.

Our reach grows both organically and every time we add new athletes to MogoTXT.

What I am very happy about is that MogoTXT fits very nicely into the existing social-network and mobile ecosystems.

To be sure, we leverage off and benefit from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, but we also enhance these services by adding sports stars and great content to these services that would not be present on these sites if MogoTXT did not provide this content.

And the advertisers and ad networks that MogoTXT is speaking with love the premium sports content that MogoTXT is making available for marketing purposes.

It?s great to be positioned to make money for MogoTXT, for NFL players, NBA players (see story) and other sports stars, for [the] NFL Players [Association] and for charities, while also enhancing the other online and mobile properties in the ecosystem.