Look beyond “Social Channels” to create long term relationship with fans
Sports teams have always had highly dedicated fans rooting for them. Time and again we have even seen fans passionately rooting for their favorite teams and players. Sports over the years, has become more than just an activity that we indulge in for entertainment. Today an increasingly large number of people view their favorite sport as second only to religion and idolize the stars in the team. Every basketball playing kid aspires to be a LeBron and every 40 year old Patriots fan feels connected with Tom Brady.
Why is engagement with fans so important?
This growing craze among the population for their favorite sport is the perfect leverage for sports teams to use to keep fans engaged even outside of the stadium. Today many teams earn a big chunk of their revenue through sales of their merchandise and from sponsorship deals. To be able to keep the revenue flowing through these channels, it is important to keep the fans engaged even outside the stadium and also during the off season period.
A few decades ago, teams would employ simpler means of communicating with their fans to engage with them. Some of these traditional methods included using radio, having mascots interact and take pictures with audiences while distributing freebies.
Now, in these changing times, these traditional methods aren’t enough to help teams achieve their objectives. It is due to these reasons that teams need to change their approach toward fan engagement.
What are the modern ways teams need to look at for creating sustained engagement?
In times when people are becoming increasingly tech savvy, sports teams shouldn’t fall behind for any reason either. The Operations Heads or Marketing Heads or for that matter anyone tasked with ensuring steady engagement with fans needs to understand this and take the necessary steps. From using social media to connect with fans to using technology to stay connected with them throughout, teams need to do whatever seems necessary.
Our platform, Fanisko, is a technology driven application that fans could install on their smartphones and stay in touch with their favorite team. One of the ways in which our app creates fan engagement is through fantasy games that are based on the Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality technologies. In simpler words, our games offer a mix of fantasy and reality to the fans letting them build their own teams with their choice of players from the pool and face off against other fans using the app.The fans can even be quizzed for their knowledge of the teams and the sport itself by attempting trivia questions. Fans could also predict outcomes of games beforehand and stand a chance to win exciting rewards that teams post for winners.
Sports teams stand to benefit using Fanisko as a one stop fan engagement platform. Fanisko can create increased fan engagement apart from game time engagement. This directly creates higher attendance at games and even increased viewership as far as fans sitting at home and watching are concerned. This has a direct impact on the quality of the sponsorship deals for the team. The analytics section in Fanisko lets the teams analyze various data points & figure out areas of impact and areas of improvement needed for fan engagement. The teams could also make sure that all the important information concerning any new developments are shared with the fans. After all, fans they do have the right to know! Fanisko is the platform much needed by a team looking to engage beyond the “Social” channels and wanting to create long term, engaging and profitable relationship with fans.
To know in detail and get a demo of the way Fanisko works and why we call it the best fan engagement platform out there, click here.