The Hurricanes' aggressive technology push has a lot to do with the team's location -- close to the technology hotbed Research Triangle Park. The four-year-old franchise has lived in the Raleigh, N.C., area for just two years, so it has plenty of incentive to increase its fan base. And as with most pro sports, selling tickets and team merchandise is key to winning fans. The team has pushed ticket promotions -- such as $5-off coupons to games -- to fans' PDAs and WAP (Wireless Access Protocol)-enabled mobile phones when they log onto its wireless site, other sports sites or local television-station sites.

"We really need to reach our fans where they live -- in their technology," says Howard Sadel, director of new media and graphic communications for the Hurricanes, whose wireless and regular (carolinahurricanes.com) Web sites are developed, managed and hosted by CompuWare. "When our fans come to our games, we want them to be part of the game. When they leave, we want them to still communicate with us."

When a Hurricanes fan logs onto the Hurricanes' WAP site with his cell phone, for instance, he may get an ad with a coupon automatically. He can then click and talk to a ticket-sales representative. A fan with a PDA also could click onto Ticketmaster's wireless site from the ad and place her order online.

Last season the Hurricanes also test-ran an online auction with Edeal to sell team memorabilia to raise money for charity, in conjunction with the on-site auctions the team runs at its home games. It was the world's first-ever wireless auction: Fans could participate in the auction from their wireless devices through an interface created by Atlanta-based hotpalm.

But with the small screen size and color limitations of wireless devices, the Hurricanes have had to be creative with the content they push to the devices. The typical cell-phone screen can display only a few lines of characters and little or no color, so flashy graphics are out. And the team logo is shown in bit-map/black-only format on wireless devices.

Other Hurricanes content sent by way of WAP to wireless devices is presented in pieces for that reason. Only the headline and first few paragraphs of a Hurricanes article from its regular Web site, for instance, shows up at one time on a wireless device, so you have to click to read the next lines of text.

And since wireless browsers aren't as intelligent as wired Web browsers -- they can't get the banner and content from multiple servers, only from a single server -- the Hurricanes use WindWire, a wireless advertising provider, to feed the content server ad information. "When the content server is pinged, that server reaches out to the WindWire ad server, which provides the appropriate ad for it to deliver to the wireless device," says Billy Purser, senior manager of marketing for WindWire.