The NFL's Miami Dolphins have started the process of doing more to attract Hispanics sports fans.

At a team press conference on April 16, new Dolphins owner Stephen Ross was perplexed that the pro football team didn't even have a Spanish-language website.

“That’s one of the first things I said: ‘How can we not have this?’,” Ross said in comments appearing in the Miami Herald. “Pittsburgh has one. San Diego has one. How can Miami not have a Hispanic website? That was one of the most obvious things.”

Insiders tell HispanicSportsBusiness that the development of such a website is just getting started.

Additionally, a series of Dolphins Hispanic outreach programs have just entered the planning stages.

But team representatives declined to discuss its Latino efforts just yet. That’s because the Dolphins are only in the formative stages of putting together a Hispanic plan, insiders say.

It’s believed that many of the team’s Latino efforts will be launched by the start of the 2009 season. According to the Herald, the Dolphins will reveal many of its Hispanic outreach efforts in May.

Insiders say reaching out to fans in Spanish is a priority for the Dolphins organization.

“I think a lot of things weren’t done in the past to take advantage of what South Florida offers,” Ross said, according to the Herald.

The Dolphins observe Hispanic Heritage Month and have aired their games on Spanish-language radio since 1981.

WSUA-AM "Caracol 1260," the Grupo Latino de Radio-run Spanish News/Talker in Miami, has been the team’s Hispanic flagship since the 2005 season, when it signed a five-year deal with the club.

Caracol general manager Tomás Martínez tells HispanicSportsBusiness that a verbal agreement on a contract extension is already in place with the team.

Terms of the deal are still being finalized, and Martínez declined to comment on the dollar value of the agreement.

René Giraldo and Roly Martín, who have called every regular-season game en español for the Dolphins since 1984, remain behind the booth for the 2009 season.

WSUA obtained the rights to Spanish play-by-play of all Dolphins games following the demise of WNMA-AM 1210, the Miami flagship for Radio Unica. Before WNMA, the Dolphins enjoyed a partnership with WQBA-AM 1140.

As a league, the NFL actively began targeting Hispanic fans at the end of the 2003 season. It created a "Hispanic Task Force," and launched Latino community events across the U.S. designed to raise interest in the league’s teams.

At the time, the NFL licensed special team T-shirts emblazoned with Spanish phrases. For the Dolphins, the shirts sported the word azúcar, or “sugar.” For the Denver Broncos, shirts read "de todo corazón."

• Twelve teams - the Dallas Cowboys, Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers, Arizona Cardinals, Denver Broncos, San Francisco 49ers, Houston Texans, New York Jets, Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings, New Orleans Saints and Washington Redskins - broadcast their games on local Spanish-language radio.

• In February 2008 the NFL relaunched its own Spanish-language site, NFLatino.com, in partnership with Univision.com. Current coverage focuses on the NFL Draft and highly touted USC quarterback Mark Sánchez (see related story in this edition)