AR – Fanisko

Benefits for Using Augmented Reality in Sports and Events for Athletes and Fans

When it comes to IT and technology trends, there is no question that augmented reality is something everyone is talking about. While AR may still be in its early stages, there is no question it is here to stay. This technology is helping to transform the entire consumer experience and present an array of new opportunities for businesses. When used to its full potential, augmented reality in the sports industry helps to bring positive and vital changes to audiences and fans, marketing departments, and more.

The Use of AR in the Realm of Professional Sports

You have likely heard of both AR and VR. These futuristic technologies are here to stay and, like any other useful invention, can have a positive impact on user’s lives. When discussing AR and its use in the sports industry, you can see how gradually and naturally it has been entering into the routines of various sports figures and competitions. When used to its full potential, augmented reality can improve an athlete’s skills, reduce the risks of injuries and failures, and enhance the fan’s viewing experience.

The Use of AR During Tournaments

It is possible to apply augmented reality to various sports competitions to help secure a fair game. You can already see how this works thanks to the Hawk-Eye system, which has been used for several years. This technology offers a 3D representation of a ball’s trajectory and is used in an array of sports, including volleyball, association football, Rugby Union, hurling, badminton, Gaelic football, tennis, and cricked.

While the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is predicted that when this is rescheduled, even more, AR elements will be used. Streaming events online and watching sports on television will be more realistic thanks to the use of this technology.

The most important benefit of watching on TV or online is that you get more detailed information about what is going on. For example, if you have seats that are far from the field, it can be hard to see everyone and make out what is going on. However, with a marker-based AR app or smart glasses, these issues are eliminated.

AR and Practice

Sports teams, trainers, and athletes are always searching for effective ways to get better results and ensure they win. The use of new technologies is a significant bonus for any professional athlete who wants to improve their techniques.

AR is predicted to become a beneficial tool that will provide real-time data about each jump, throw, push, run distance, and hit. With this information, everyone involved in the training process will be able to correct their actions, make the right decisions, and change the techniques, if needed.

Are You Ready to Implement AR in Your Sports Activities?

As you can see, there is an array of benefits offered by using AR for sports events. Athletes, trainers, and fans will soon see these benefits firsthand.

How Fan Analytics Plays a Key Role in Promoting Fan Engagement?

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.

How AR is Used in Fan Engagement and Sports Media

Software companies have noticed this shift in sports content consumption and changing behaviors, and are now delivering all sorts of high-end and easy to use solutions to fill in those needs. Either working in collaboration with sports leagues or catering to the fans directly, these companies are changing the way we interact with the sporting world.

The overall sports experience is not as it used to be. If in the past, most of what implied fan engagement revolved around Sunday Football or Baseball October, today’s sports fans want to be connected and interact with theirteams and favorite players, 24/7.

If high-depth TV and nationwide fantasy leagues made fans feel more close to their teams and even engage in a more active role than before, present-day audiences are looking to immerse themselves into a participatory-style viewing experience further.

The Rise of Augmented and Virtual Realities (AR/VR)

Even though the MLB is notorious for its willingness to stick to tradition through thick and thin, not even it can deny the need for some technological innovation to keep up with the changing times and consumer expectations. Back in September 2017, major league baseball announced the launch of its new app, aptly called At Bat.

This AR app allows fans to use their phones or tablets by pointing them at the field, look at each at-bat and instantly obtain a comprehensive view of each player’s stats. That’s not all that At Bat can deliver. It can also analyze every play happening on the field, displaying useful data such as speed and trajectory for every single hit.

Let’s also not forget about Hawk-Eye, the VR technology that’s been part of tennis, cricket, badminton, curling, rugby, or volleyball as early as 2002. Its technique makes use of several high-performance cameras positioned at different angles that, combined, generate a 3D image and depict the ball’s trajectory.

As of late, the NBA has also joined the AR/VR club. The league announced, not that long ago, that it partnered up with Next VR and that it has plans to broadcast all of its future games in virtual reality. Even the major league soccer (MLS) is delving into this realm. DC United has been experimenting with various ways of incorporating augmented application technologies to drive more fan engagement.

Sports leagues aren’t the only ones taking such a proactive approach to these relatively new technologies. Individual developers are coming up with their solutions regarding VR/AR to satisfy the fans’ needs. One such example being Fanisko Engage. Not only does it provide its users with these technologies, enhancing their overall enjoyment, but it manages to funnel all other content about their favorite teams under the same roof.

Conclusion

In short, augmented and virtual reality technologies are here to stay. Regardless of whether sports leagues are willing to implement them or not, consumers want to feel more engaged with the teams they love, and AR/VR is quickly becoming the norm in this regard.

Meet CSK AR : Fan Engagement Innovation

READ : http://www.fanisko.com/fan-engagement-innovation-meet-csk-ar/

Fan engagement innovation: Meet CSK AR

Who doesn’t desire to look like Dhoni?
Well, The CSK AR app provides you with that. Pretty cool, right?

Even though still in its infancy, the rise and popularity of Augmented Reality (AR) is pervading into every possible industry in the world with the sports fan engagement leading the business.

While other sports like NBA, NFL has gone through countless innovations with AR, The cricket fans, especially in India, are yet to experience AR.

Though the AR apps in cricket have been around for a long time now, it wasn’t quite popular until the Melbourne Renegades, and few other Big Bash teams used them in the recently concluded Big Bash tournament.

With over 20 million followers, The Chennai Super Kings (CSK) is known for their innovations to keep the fans engaged, and they have done it once again.

The long wait for the Indian cricket fans to experience AR has come to an end. Indian cricket fans, meet the cool kid on the block “CSK AR App”.

Powered by Fanisko and Binaryface, the CSK AR app uses real-time face effects, lets the fans take a selfie using five different face filters and allows them to share the pictures in social media for bragging rights.

Who doesn’t desire to look like Dhoni?
Well, The CSK AR app provides you with that. Pretty cool, right?

Fanisko has been working their hearts out to take fan engagement to the next level and is successful in solving fan engagement problems for brands and franchises with the millennial fan base. CSK AR App is an excellent example. We turn loyal fans into digital diehards.

Fanisko offers their fan engagement platform Fanisko | Engage as a backend plugin that infuses sports teams apps to engage and retain the connected millennial. Think live play-by-play predictions, AR/VR/MR games, engagement rewards, and a personalized stream of all team news and social buzz – 24/7, 365. Fanisko has further innovated to create hybrid play along fantasy platform Cricking Duels. Fanisko’s connection to CSK is not something new – in 2015, Fanisko (a/k/a Cricking) partnered with CSK for 2015 IPL season as their official Fan engagement partner.

You can download the app, CSK AR from Google Play store.

What Can Sports Brands Do to Get Closer to Their Fans

Present-day sports fans are all about versatility and convenience, both of which being possible and facilitated by technology. This innovation is also something that all sports brands need to embrace, sooner rather than later in order to get closer to their fans.

The entire economy is trying to find ways to better adapt to the speed things are changing everywhere in the world. Sports are not the exception. In the recent past, watching broadcast TV and going to the stadium were the two main ways through which sports brands used to interact with their fanbase the most. Today’s innovative technologies, however, are turning that notion on its head.

On-Demand Media

Social media has completely changed the way businesses are marketing their products nowadays. When it comes to sports, however, more and more people are turning to Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, Twitter, or Snapchat and live streaming games instead of watching them on TV. Nevertheless, these social platforms aren’t necessarily replacing TV, per se, but reinventing it.

Though it might seem challenging for some, branching out to various social media outlets presents ample opportunities waiting to be exploited. Not only will this trend open up new opportunities, but it will also allow for a more level playing field where even the smaller sports brands have a chance to be heard.

Live Social Displays and other Ballgame Experiences

Not even stadiums are exempt from this change. If in the past, kiss cams were all the hype, today, these are a thing of the past. Various, state of the art technologies have made it here as well. Snapchat has partnered up with software provider Tagboard, as well as with several teams from the NBA, NFL, MLB, and MLS in order to display live content on the jumbotron. Fans can now post and see live content for the entire stadium and TV watchers to see.

The San Francisco Giants, the Golden State Warriors, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Seattle Sounders FC, and the Arizona Coyotes, among others, are all using Instagram Stories in a similar manner. High-speed Wi-Fi on the stadium has also brought with it other conveniences so as to cater to their fans. The San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams are providing in-seat food delivery.

VR/AR and other Reality-Enhancing Experiences

Virtual and Augmented Reality is the next big thing in sports entertainment. Not that long ago, in September 2017, the MLB announced the introduction of a new app called At Bat. With it, fans on the stadium can point their mobile phones at individual players, giving them instant statistics such as arm strength, catch probability, as well as base percentage and batting averages. MLS team DC United is also pioneering this technology in somewhat of a similar manner as the MLB, as a means to get better in touch with their fans.

Conclusion

In short, technology is the way through which sports brands can better connect and interact with their fans. Nevertheless, the sheer amount of content and diversity can become overwhelming pretty fast. Certain fan-engagement platforms such as Fanisko Engage can, however, bring much of this new tech under the same roof, thus giving fans the experience they want, as well as the teams the ability to properly engage with them.

The Use of AR in the Realm of Professional Sports

The Use of AR During Tournaments

AR and Practice

Are You Ready to Implement AR in Your Sports Activities?

Schedule a Free demo