Ways to Attract Sponsors for Your Sports Team

If you are not a board member of the biggest soccer or football clubs in the world, there is a strong possibility that you have troubles with the financial construction for the upcoming seasons.

If you are not a board member of the biggest soccer or football clubs in the world, there is a strong possibility that you have troubles with the financial construction for the upcoming seasons. Most professional clubs from smaller leagues struggle to find enough sponsors to survive in the harsh world of sports, while some amateur or high school clubs usually don’t have a sponsor at all.

However, it’s possible to attract sponsors to your team, no matter how small you are, or how obscure the sport your team competes in. All you have to do is show the sponsors that investing in your organization will pay off. Let’s have a look at what you can do to attract sponsors for your sports team:

Target the Right Prospects

Big teams in the most popular sports can attract the biggest companies in the world. They can always spend millions of dollars on marketing and broadcast their message to millions of people. If you’re in charge of a local, small club, you can’t pull off a marketing campaign like that.

Still, that doesn’t mean you should give up trying to find a sponsor that would fund the team and spur its growth. Local clubs can target local businesses to partner with, then work their way up from there. In case you need help raising awareness of your team, there’s a myriad of ways to connect with the local community. You can take part in charities and support the locals in any other way you can. That’s bound to give you some positive buzz and get more eyes on your team.

Think Outside the Box

Reaching out to local businesses or your community is easy. But once you outgrow them and need to start thinking about landing more prominent sponsors, how do you approach that issue? It’s no small feat to get the support of someone who’s never heard of you. If you’re doing great in the league, that’s awesome, but you will need way more than that to attract somebody who can elevate your club to a higher level.

Try to think outside the box and make your club unique on the market. One of the ways of achieving that is making sure your fan engagement is much stronger than that of your competitors. That sends a clear signal to the bigger fish that you’re doing something right, and that investing in your team can only pay off.

Use Modern Communication Channels

Last, but not the least, you have to use modern communication channels. By that, we don’t mean that you should build a static internet presentation and try to sell banners on the site to potential sponsors.

Instead, you should attract the sponsors by following the latest online trends and making your presence known to your fans. Sponsors need to know that with you they’ll get better bang for their buck than with any other team. That’s where a team app can help – by using it, you’re making sure you’re delivering the sponsor’s message through native content, and it pays off for both of you.

The Benefits of Fanisko Engage

As you can see, team app and fan engagement platforms do play a crucial role in convincing your sponsors to know that your team will be profitable for them. With Fanisko Engage, you’ll keep fans engaged and sponsors happy.

Visit our website for more information about what we do here at Fanisko and how we can help you build your team platform or enhance it.

Generate Buzz and Get Your Fan Base Excited About Your Team

Just like Apple or any other company, a sports team is a business, and they have to work hard to stay competitive.

Today, top athletes earn millions of dollars annually, and the most prominent sports teams have hundreds of millions of fans all over the globe. We live in the internet age, where everything is available to the user with a few clicks.

If you take a look at teams with enormous fan bases, you might think they don’t have to try hard to engage their fans. To an extent, that’s correct – sports fans are the most loyal customers in any industry. However, that doesn’t mean that those teams don’t have to create buzz around themselves to keep the fans excited. Just like Apple or any other company, a sports team is a business, and they have to work hard to stay competitive.

Fortunately, the digital world gives the opportunity to smaller local teams to stand out and quickly increase their fan base exponentially. Let’s have a look at ways to create buzz and get your fan base excited about your team:

Use Your Strengths and Team Events
Bring your ‘A’ game to the table and use everything you can to create buzz. For example, engaging fans through sharing important team news is a sure way to victory. Signed a new player? Make sure your fans know it! Contract extensions, big match announcements, all of those can be a chance to get fans involved. Don’t wait for them to gather news they’re hungry for – feed it to them, and they’ll be more engaged.

Take Advantage of Video Content
Recent studies suggest that we read less every year, especially online. We don’t have the time to sit down and get every bit of information. We catch up with recent events during idle times such as commuting. That’s why video content is on the rise – it requires little effort, and provides more information in the same amount of time. Studies also show that video is far more engaging and more natural to consume than any other type of content. It gives you a perfect opportunity to increase fan engagement and deliver content that’s easy for them to absorb.

Engage Fans via Polls
Polls can be a great way to engage your fan base if you implement them right. For example, you can engage the fans before an important match and ask how they think the game will end. You could even organize contests and reward those who guessed correctly. Poll them to find out what they think who the best player in the most recent game was, and give them the opportunity to see the results and discuss them.

A Helping Hand is Always Welcome
With Fanisko Engage, your team will get all these functionalities and more. Our SDK integration platform helps teams engage fans through video content, polls, fan contests, as well as AI, Mixed and Augmented reality. It’s intuitive, easy and exciting for fans to use. And its beneficial for the teams that experience higher engagement and increased session times.

Via Fanisko, you can easily keep your fans engaged and excited about your team. Don’t hesitate to visit our website for more information about our platform.

Changing Fan Behaviors towards Sports Betting

As a type of online gambling, sports betting has always had a faithful audience. Recently, with the legalization of sports betting in the U.S., we can expect the industry to grow further.

As a type of online gambling, sports betting has always had a faithful audience. Recently, with the legalization of sports betting in the U.S., we can expect the industry to grow further. The trend can be observed around the world as well, most notably with the boom of fantasy and betting market in India.

In the light of these developments, it’s beneficial to take a look at changing fan behaviors towards sports betting. That will help all sports industry professionals determine how they can make use of this ever-growing industry to connect with sports fans in a more meaningful way.

Betting in the U.S. and the Benefits of Legalization

In 2017, the polls in America showed a preference for sports betting legalization for the first time. According to the University of Massachusetts Lowell nationwide poll, 55% of participants voted in favor of legalization of sports betting. These results clearly show that the attitude towards betting is slowly changing and that avid sports fans enjoy the activity. It’s almost baffling that sports betting in the U.S. haven’t legalized until recently, despite driving the black market for years. Mainly when the benefits of legalization include increased state revenue, boosting fan engagement and supporting sports integrity, it’s clear why legalization has been a long time coming.

Fantasy Sports Market in India

Sports betting isn’t the only pastime of avid sports fans. In India, the fantasy sports market is booming, taking advantage of the 200 million online cricket fans hungry for more sports-related content. Creating your fantasy team out of all players in a league and then gathering points based on their real performance and stats is the basic concept of fantasy sports. It brings an element of competition into fan engagement, similar to how it happens in the sports themselves. The best part about fantasy sports is that it isn’t considered betting since it’s more a game of skill than chance.

In India, cricket is by far the most popular fantasy sport, followed by football and kabaddi. What people love about it is that they can run contests with their friends to see who’s got the best team. According to the IFSG report Scoring Big with Sports Gaming, fantasy sports are converting passive fans into active fans. The same report finds that the industry has grown a whopping 200% from 2017.

Fantasy Cricket Apps by Fanisko

It’s a good time to be a cricket fan in India, with the number of quality cricket apps that exist. Along with the Cricking app that keeps cricket fans updated on match scores and more, Fanisko also offers the app Cricking Duels, for all cricket fantasy sports fans. Our app not only allows you to play traditional cricket fantasy but also hybrid fantasy, where you are the 11th player in your fantasy team. Ball-by-ball prediction gives you more control over your team’s performance than ever before, and it certainly helps you engage with the sport better. It’s a full fantasy sports experience with an innovative twist that avid cricket fans will undoubtedly appreciate.

With the sports betting and fantasy sports market growing, it’s a great time to take advantage of the latest technologies to engage fans. Fanisko Engage is an SDK integration platform that will help any team improve their existing apps or create one for them. Visit our website for more information on how to use our platform to achieve maximum fan engagement.

Engagement of Fans of Lesser Known Sports

Even though the most well-known sports are the ones you’d usually expect to have the best fan engagement, it doesn’t have to be that way. Engaging fans of lesser known sports could be easy with the right tools. The secret is to create a loyal following, and some games are naturally better suited to that than others. A lot depends on the players, as well — big international successes may bring more interest for a lesser known sport. It is why the landscape of sports popularity is constantly changing, especially in India.

Image Courtesy: Pro Kabaddi

How Fans Engage with Lesser Known Sports

For years, the most popular sport in India has been cricket, and while its throne is still secure, new contenders are emerging. All of them drive fan engagement in different ways. A recent example is the launching of the Indian Super League in 2013 which inspired plenty of fan interest in football. The fact that many Bollywood stars own or co-own Indian football teams certainly helped its promotion. There is a similar way of driving interest in a lesser known sport — through its heroes.

Badminton saw a surge of popularity in India after P.V. Sindhu won an Olympic silver medal in 2016. The appeal of badminton in India more than doubled in the last few years thanks to Sindhu’s achievement. However, some sports rely on smart online marketing and appealing to younger audiences — such as Kabaddi.

The Popularity of Kabaddi

Kabaddi is not a well-known sport, especially outside of India. Two teams with seven players each (plus three subs) take turns doing “raids.” It consists of sending one player into the other team’s half of the court. The goal of the raid is to tag one or more members of the opposing team and return to their half of the court. The trick? The raider has limited time to accomplish this feat, or he fails to score points. Those are the basic rules of Kabaddi, the sport that has taken India by storm.

During 2014, the trend began to emerge with an increase in searches related to the Pro Kabaddi League. Season 5 of the league is the best one yet when it comes to traction, considering that the total number of queries exceeded 50% of all the queries combined last season during a couple of weeks. Fans mostly search for information on tournaments, with some of the searches related to game highlights and individual teams.

Fanisko Engage and the Improved Fan Experience

Even for smaller, lesser known sports, there are possibilities to get more fans, raise awareness and increase engagement. As we can see from the examples of football, badminton, and Kabaddi, it’s clear that all these sports thrive when there is more interest. With an improved fan experience, every game has even more potential to grow. A platform like Fanisko Engage provides excellent support and an opportunity for teams to build and engage their following. It’s an SDK integration platform, meaning that it enhances the existing apps of organizations and clubs, or it can create one for them.

Here at Fanisko, we are happy to serve niche markets and help them grow with our fan engagement platform that gives excellent results to our clients. For more information about Fanisko Engage, take a look at our website.

How Do You Engage Fans in the Age of Short Attention Spans?

We live in the age of short attention spans – the fact that scientific research has confirmed. Digitalization of all aspects of our lives has brought us some good things, but also plenty of distractions. According to Microsoft Corp. study, we now have an average attention span of about 8 seconds. Whether it stagnates or continues to deteriorate, one thing for sure: the current downward trend is being felt in all industries.

When it comes to sport, the decline in ratings and general TV viewership is undoubtedly becoming more worrisome for sports executives. Since fans are overwhelmed by options across a multitude of devices, they can’t keep up. So how do you engage fans in the age of short attention spans?

Millennials as Part of the Equation

While millennials are hardly to blame for the overall drop in ratings, it is interesting to take a look at how they approach sports. For example, Nielsen data for the NFL shows that even though it may seem that ratings have decreased among millennials, the number of millennials who watch NFL has in fact seen an increase. So what caused the drop? It was that millennials watched fewer games, and there was also a decline in the minutes observed per game. As it turns out, fans are starting to watch sports less often, and for shorter periods of time.

The Importance of Keeping Fans Engaged

A decrease in fan engagement is the last thing any sports executive or club desires. In more ways than one, sport thrives precisely off of fan engagement, being the only industry where you get fans and loyalty even if you lack results. For this reason, it’s critical for the sports industry to find ways to battle short attention spans. TV is losing relevance, but merely to alter the platform from TV video to PC and mobile might not be enough. But what if the digital sports experience could innovate in ways that drive more fan engagement?

Battling Short Attention Spans

The fear of missing out drives Today’s generation and that fear should be exploited in productive ways. There are plenty of suggestions for improving fan engagement by feeding them information and making sports even more accessible to follow. Designing products that can make the best out of the digital age is the way to go. Make content more interactive and relevant to the fans, to keep them engaged even on days when no matches are being played.

Digital Platforms for Fan Engagement

Fortunately, some platforms can help clubs and teams engage fans so that they don’t leave to do other things. Fanisko Engage is one such product, as it offers plenty of features that have helped our clients see increased session times and higher engagement. It’s an SDK integration platform that utilizes Mixed and Augmented Reality as well as AI to improve the fan experience, gamification, and personalization.

Conclusion

Industries need to move fast and evolve in the digital era, and sports is no exception. Our product Fanisko Engage provides teams with just the kind of solution they need to stay relevant and attractive to fans. Visit our website for more information on it.