Technology Is Taking the Sports Fan Experience to a Whole New Level

There is no denying the fact that technology is changing the way fans engage with their teams. On-demand entertainment is pushing advertisers and media companies to look for new ways on how to capitalize on this fragmented digital landscape. TV viewership is slowly fading as fans are now accessing all sorts of streaming packages online.

There is no denying the fact that technology is changing the way fans engage with their teams. On-demand entertainment is pushing advertisers and media companies to look for new ways on how to capitalize on this fragmented digital landscape. TV viewership is slowly fading as fans are now accessing all sorts of streaming packages online.

These digital options allow fans to not only watch a sporting event but to also be more engaged through the medium. In today’s world, fans have a multitude of options available to them. They can watch high-definition highlights; have access to play-by-play predictions, behind-the-scenes content, AR/VR interactions and games, up-to-date events, and much more – all from the comfort of their own homes.

The Digital Fan

This high-degree of convenience and increased level of engagement offers sports leagues and individual teams a set of unique opportunities that weren’t there before. With digital platforms such as the Fanisko Engage, sports fans have access to all of that fragmented content instantaneously and from the same source. They can keep themselves updated on what their teams are doing 24/7, becoming more engaged and connected as a result. Sports teams can now understand the wants and needs of their fans by making use of digital analytics provided by these platforms so as to enhance the fan experience and not actually distract from it.

The NBA is a living testament to the benefits of what digital fan engagement can bring. It makes clever use of what today’s technology has to offer in order to make its fans more engaged and more actively involved in sharing their enthusiasm with others. In an interview, Courtney Brunious, the associate director of the USC Sports Institute, said that “[The] NBA has been one of the most forward-looking leagues in terms of technology, in terms of being on top of new innovations in tech. As a whole, I would say the NBA is probably the most tech-savvy amongst the leagues.”

From Screen to the Ballgame

This high level of digitization, quality, and convenience has also pushed for more engagement in the stadiums. High-speed internet is available in many stadiums around the country, allowing fans to check instant replays, order food, drinks and merchandise to be brought to their seats, and even look for the shortest line to the bathroom.

Fans are now looking for both convenience and diversity in the way they connect with their teams. The future of sports lies in this interconnectivity that brings together teams, venues, and fans like never before. Understanding how technology is evolving and how it can be implemented into the industry is instrumental for the success of every league or the individual team. It doesn’t really matter how big they are, or how large the venue is as long as their fan base is constantly growing. And the only safe way to do that is to keep up with technology and what trends are there, ready to enhance the fan experience.

About Fanisko:

Fanisko (www.fanisko.com) offers a one-stop fan engagement platform, Fanisko|Engage, that helps sports and entertainment brands increase mobile fan retention, digital engagement and revenue opportunities. Today’s fans want more from their leagues and teams. We help leagues and teams embrace today’s “SmartFan” demand while maximizing fan potential for sponsors. Our mobile first, one-stop platform targeting millennials with a combination of unique content strategy, product offering including gaming, predictive and behavioral analytics and AR/VR technologies will target and engage the right audience.

So, if you are any sports association, league or a club planning to deliver an amazing mobile based fan engagement platform to build your fanbase, we would like to hear from you.

Keeping up with the Millennial and Gen-Z Tech-Savvy Sports Fan

The world is changing, and it’s changing so fast that many businesses, big and small, can hardly keep up. The same thing can be said about sports leagues and teams who are finding it increasingly hard to engage with their fans in today’s times.

The world is changing, and it’s changing so fast that many businesses, big and small, can hardly keep up. The same thing can be said about sports leagues and teams who are finding it increasingly hard to engage with their fans in today’s times.

It was not that long ago when broadcast and cable television dominated sports viewership. This made it somewhat easy for sports leagues to track their fans’ likes, dislikes, habits, and preferences since TV acted as a sort of “funnel” where most supporters gathered to consume their product. But those days are fast disappearing and TV’s monopoly on entertainment is now over.

Statistics show that traditional TV viewership is in decline among all demographics below the age of 49. Teenagers between the ages of 12 and 17 are showing the greatest decrease, with their viewership dropping by a whopping 11% year after year. Sports also seems to take an extra hit as people between the ages of 18 to 24 show the least interest in it among all other entertainment shows.

From TV to Social Media

Despite these facts, there is still some hope. While traditional TV viewership may be declining, digital usage is on the rise. What’s more, 86% of Americans still consider themselves sports fans. Even more hopeful is the fact that the majority of these fans, especially those between the ages of 15 and 36, are willing to pay for quality sports content.

Among millennials, the most commonly used outlets from where they get their sports content are Facebook and YouTube, and a total of 92% of sports fans between the ages of 18 and 24 use social media as their main source for sports information.

What really draws millennials and the so-called Generation Z (those born after 2000) to these digital outlets is the convenience of having access to all sorts of highlights, bloopers, or behind-the-scenes perspectives that keep the entertainment going long after the game is over.

Enter Fanisko Engage

Sports teams have tried to get ahead of the game here by creating their own digital apps in an attempt at keeping their fans entertained. But while fans are consistently engaged with their teams, they are doing it in all sorts of digital places except within the team’s app.

What Fanisko Engage does here is to bring both the benefits of social media and traditional TV viewing into one platform. Fans no longer need to change from Facebook to YouTube to Instagram to Twitter and then back again since all they need is within this one-stop engagement platform. It also offers live play-by-play predictions, AR/VR games, engagement rewards, and personalized content to keep the fanbase “under the same roof.”

Fans are sure to respond to this sort of diversity as well as the convenience of having everything they need on one single platform. It increases their engagement time, it keeps them on the team’s page for longer, and because of the integrated analytics system, it helps the marketing department better understand their wants and needs for a better overall experience.

Fanisko offers a one-stop fan engagement platform, Fanisko|Engage, that helps sports and entertainment brands increase mobile fan retention, digital engagement and revenue opportunities. Today’s fans want more from their leagues and teams. We help leagues and teams embrace today’s “SmartFan” demand while maximizing fan potential for sponsors. Our mobile first, one-stop platform targeting millennials with a combination of unique content strategy, product offering including gaming, predictive and behavioral analytics and AR/VR technologies will target and engage the right audience.

An Inside Look at Manchester United’s Staggering Revenue Through Fan Engagement

With a breathtaking number of 659 million supporters, it is safe to say that the fanbase of EPL giant Manchester United (https://www.manutd.com/) is nothing short of colossal. Let me explain you the significance of this number – this is twice the population of the United States of America and almost half the population of China. Constituting to 8% of the world population, the fan base of  Premier league’s most successful could hold its own ground to become the fourth largest practiced religion after Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.

With a breathtaking number of 659 million supporters, it is safe to say that the fanbase of EPL giant Manchester United (https://www.manutd.com/) is nothing short of colossal. Let me explain you the significance of this number – this is twice the population of the United States of America and almost half the population of China. Constituting to 8% of the world population, the fan base of  Premier league’s most successful could hold its own ground to become the fourth largest practiced religion after Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.

The club is engaged in fan interaction with over 100 million followers digitally, with over 70 million followers on Facebook, 20 million on Instagram and 17 million on Twitter. Furthermore, they have over a million subscribers to their official app and close to 175,000 subscribers to their MUTV app and digital cable channel which is available to 165 countries.

Revenue Through Fan Engagement

It’s one thing to create a massive fan base but it’s a whole different game to metamorphose it into an effective revenue model and that’s exactly what Manchester United have been successful at. The revenue generated through fan engagement has contributed effectively helping the club to post a record-breaking overall revenue of  £581 million ($817 million) last year. Manchester United converts only 1% of its 659 million fans to MUTV subscription at an average of just £1 per month (the pricing will vary by country, taking fans’ respective purchasing power into account and is as low as around £1.60 per month in India to around £6.30 per month in Finland). This helps the club to generate nearly £80 million ($102 million)  per year in additional revenues apart from their primary revenue via broadcasting rights, brand endorsements, and sponsorships.

Now let’s see how this £80 million transcends on to the pitch. This money can fund the signing of as many as two to three top players with five-year contracts or could contribute to one-third of the club’s overall annual wage budget of the entire squad which, is around £232 million ($256 million). That’s in addition to the usual business Manchester United conducts during the transfer windows, which tends to be quite substantial already.Moving on to the most amusing factor about their fanbase is that close to 85% live in developing economies around the world, with more than half in Asia and only close to 7% of the fanbase turns up to their stadium through the course of their soccer season. This makes the club to keep fans engaged between matches through social media and their dedicated apps. The fans are provided with the right and robust content including gamification and mixed reality at the right time in as many as 27 languages, through various mediums. This creates more interaction, greater advertising and merchandising opportunities among its predominantly young fanbase.

In summary, Manchester United’s staggering revenue generated through fan engagement include the following:

  • Robust content
  • Gamification
  • Mixed Reality
  • Fan loyalty
  • Sponsorships
  • MUTV subscription

About Fanisko:

Fanisko (www.fanisko.com) offers a one-stop fan engagement platform, Fanisko|Engage, that helps sports and entertainment brands increase mobile fan retention, digital engagement and revenue opportunities. Today’s fans want more from their leagues and teams. We help leagues and teams embrace today’s “SmartFan” demand while maximizing fan potential for sponsors. Our mobile first, one-stop platform targeting millennials with a combination of unique content strategy, product offering including gaming, predictive and behavioral analytics and AR/VR technologies will target and engage the right audience.

So, if you are any sports association, league or a club planning to deliver an amazing mobile based fan engagement platform to build your fanbase, we would like to hear from you.

*Revenue and fan base statistics were taken from BBC, Independent, MUFC’s social media accounts, and official website respectively*

 

 

 

Fanisko – Just What A Marketing Agency And Its Clients Need!

Our years of experience having worked with sports teams that we have come up with our fan engagement platform – Fanisko.

Why is fan engagement so important?

Over the years, engagement with fans has acquired a new level of importance altogether for sports teams. Various revenue generation streams such as merchandise sales, sponsorship’s and media largely depend on the level of engagement with fans. In other words, fan engagement has evolved into a wholesale growth strategy used by elite sports team for profit maximization.

An important aspect of fan engagement is to get as many viewers in the seats as possible. Common opinion states that an empty stadium represents poor fan engagement. An empty seat is a missed commercial opportunity. Therefore, sports organizations and marketers always look for ways to fill their stadiums as close to maximum capacity as possible, further maximizing revenue.

We understand this need and importance associated with fan engagement. It is based on this understanding and our years of experience having worked with sports teams that we have come up with our fan engagement platform – Fanisko.

Let’s deep dive to understand fan engagement

Of course there are many ways to engage with fans. Traditional methods of engagement like engaging with the fans inside the stadium are becoming outdated now. Engaging with fans inside the stadium alone is not going to be enough now. In times when fans are becoming increasingly dependent on digital platforms for consumption of content for entertainment and news, it would be deemed orthodox if a sports team were to decide against leveraging on this trend for fan engagement.

Since marketing and operations departments are tasked with the responsibility of engaging with fans they often take the help of marketing agencies for the same. These are agencies that specialize in offering marketing consulting and managing digital media presence for sports teams.

Our role in the entire process!

We sense the opportunity for a special engagement between marketing agencies and our platform. We work with sports team helping them strengthen their bond with their fans. Teams we understand face a number of challenges which we help them tackle. Some of these challenges are their inability to push good content to fans, offering rewards to them and making them a part of loyalty programs in appreciation of their commitment towards them and of course offering fantasy games for them to stay engaged and entertained.

We at Fanisko have tried and tested that a one stop digital platform could tackle all these challenges with great effect. Our platform is technology driven which enables us to bring the best to the sports teams using it. From being able to offer rewards to fans to offering innovative gaming that is a mix of Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality, our platform offers many distinctive features which cannot be found on any other engagement platform in today’s times. We allow fans of teams to build their own teams and play in the fantasy leagues. We allow them take part in trivia and polls and reward them for their dedication to the sport and their favorite team.

This was just a little on what our app has on offer for the fans whereas the teams too gain a lot from using our platform. Teams in addition to gaining increased engagement with their fans are also able to push pressing news about any new developments concerning the team to the fans. They are able to gain insights into what works and what doesn’t with regards to their content and communications strategy.

Wondering what’s in it for you?

Just imagine if the team that you are associated with was able to derive these benefits? Wouldn’t it help your relationship with them and make your job easier too with the help of our platform? It obviously would! It would also give your team more confidence when building a strategy with technology as its core base.

Apart from an association with Fanisko helping your bond with your team, it will also serve as a new stream of revenue for your firm. Yes, we’d be happy to work on a revenue share model with your agency.

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.