Latest Trends Shaping the Future of Digital Fan Engagement

With over 66% of sports fans going online at least once per day to check out the most recent developments about their favorite team, it should come as no surprise to anyone that digital engagement with the fans is becoming increasingly more popular with every passing day.

This trend, however, presents both a significant opportunity as well as a severe challenge for sports clubs and teams to engage with their fans in an ever more content-saturated environment such as the internet. Here are the latest trends that will influence the digital fan engagement in the foreseeable future.

Reorganizing Fragmented Content

With the internet quickly becoming the preferred source to follow up on sports news, fans can keep up with their team’s activities whenever their heart desires. The internet brings a ton of bite-sized content such as instant replays, highlights, or behind-the-scenes previews, found on all sorts of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, or Snapchat. For all the marketing benefits that this fragmented content brings, sports clubs have a tough time engaging with their fans.

Even if some sports teams have their mobile apps, many fans prefer to keep themselves up to date by making use of the previously-mentioned social platforms. Fanisko Engage, on the other hand, can help sports clubs get back in touch with their fanbase by funneling all of this content on the platform.

As a software development kit (SDK), Fanisko can either enhance a team’s already-existing app or develop one from scratch. This platform powers the first ever Mixed Reality fan experience by combining augmented reality (AR) for gamification with AI for personalization, thus, allowing sports teams to connect with their fans wherever they are.

The Rise of eSports

In the Kleiner Perkins Internet Report 2017, it was highlighted that eSports are gaining more and more ground over traditional sports. In fact, 27% of Millennials said that they have a ‘significant preference’ for eSports, 13% slightly prefer it, as opposed to 27% who strongly favor and 15% who only slightly prefer traditional games. The remainder of 18% is comprised of millennials who have no inclination either way.

These percentages come in comparison to non-Millennials who noted that 45% prefer traditional sports and only 13% strongly favoring eSports. Of this group, the remaining 20% were indifferent, 13% had a slight inclination towards eSports while 11% said they slightly prefered traditional sports.

This trend comes at a time when McDonald’s, a Worldwide TOP Olympic Partner since 1976, has ended its deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ahead of time. It was also in 2017 when McDonalds Australia partnered up with Blizzard to sponsor their Starcraft II World Championship Series. Vodafone Spain, on the other hand, launched its own Twitch Channel to live stream esports gameplay and other gaming news.

Globalization

With the internet, many sports leagues have seen a surge in the size of their overall the size of their overall fanbase. Nevertheless, most of these fans will never physically attend a match only because of their geographical location.

It is why certain sports teams such as Manchester United, have decided to partner up with regional sponsors, in an attempt at reaching to their ever-growing international fanbase. Manchester United is the most dominant football team online in China.

The Bundesliga and the English Premier League are the first two soccer leagues concerning popularity in the world, quickly followed by the Spanish La Liga. The last one, however, has since opened several permanent offices in the APAC region to counter this shortcoming and outpace the others regarding fan engagement.

Conclusion

These trends presented will become increasingly more transparent and widespread as time goes on. Other such macro-trends will also present themselves in the upcoming years as new technologies will be reshaping the sports industry like never before.

It is safe to say that humanity would not have reached very far if everything was left to chance and speculation. All marketing and other business strategies, in general, function the way they do because they make use of hard data and statistics. Understanding one’s fans, their habits and behaviors, their likes and dislikes, is the only sure way to drive better and more efficient engagement. Fan engagement analytics is not only useful for enhancing the live game experience and even increase the overall fan base, but it can also help in increasing sponsor partnerships.

The NFL is even taking it a step further. Back in 2015, it partnered up with SAP, an enterprise software company so as to bring high-quality, relevant analytics to their fans. Avid sports fans have always been analytically-oriented, using all sorts of data and other statistical information at their disposal in an attempt at predicting the outcome of various games or seasons.

With this partnership, the NFL is now providing their fans with relevant information for driving more fan engagement. Unsurprisingly, it works. Though technically, that is not fan analytics, per se, it, nevertheless, proves the point of just how useful andcrucial hard data really is – and in the least expected ways, no less.

Fan Engagement and Fan Analytics

Fan-based analytics can be gathered from many sources such as social media, the internet, the stadium, or all sorts of other channels of communication. By putting all this information together, sports teams can better understand how their fans interact with the sport and with the club’s brand. With having this detailed information, decision-makers can devise better strategies that are specifically tailored to fit their objectives and can cater to their fan base exactly how and when they want to.

Trends can also be predicted better, which, in turn, results in higher ticket sales, higher TV ratings, and more profitable sponsorships. In short, fan data is a cumulation of the fans’ overall feelings and expectations in regards to the team’s performance. The key is to know how to access that information and put it to good use.

But as useful as fan analytics is, its main downside is that it’s somewhat hard to get. As fragmented as sports co ntent is nowadays – spread over social media, broadcast TV, stadium attendance, and so on – it can become quite a challenge to get all the necessary data in time.

Enter Fanisko Engage

Fanisko Engage is, as its name would suggest, an all-encompassing fan engagement platform. In short, it is an app that individual teams or leagues can use to attract and entertain their fan base with all sorts of content that they would otherwise find spread out all over the internet. Be it short videos, behind the scenes moments, highlights, fantasy sports, or VR/AR gaming, this platform has it all. With it, fans can keep themselves updated on the team’s progress without having to shift from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram and TV. Everything exists, conveniently, on this platform.

Asfar as the teams are concerned, this is excellent news since they can better connect and interact with their fans without having to look for them all over the web. What’s more, this platform provides analytics services. It gathers and presents data and metrics regarding performance, activity on the platform, fan behavioral insights, and predictive analytics.

Conclusion

Sports clubs will, thus, have the chance to understand their followers better and drive better fan engagement in the process. Information, after all, is power.