Recognized industry leaders improves vertical integration of sports venues, teams, ticketing, and media distribution. Also notable are creating multi-purpose spaces, direct digital-to-consumer media, and esports hacking. The miraculous impact of mass communication technology is nothing new, from network photography to live broadcasting to cable to the Internet, each of which has had a significant impact on the consumption of sports entertainment.
The spirit of technology is often the winner in the race for consumer attention. Still, digital is a quantum leap in communication capabilities, and success in new playing arenas requires a fundamental approach to the sport.
Platform to win
Sports fan engagement describes the building blocks of the proposed digital sports platform. It helps sports organizations (and their sponsorships and media partners) discover new fans, better understand existing fans and deliver engaging, emotional experiences to today’s fans. A fan engagement framework makes this possible. Increase retention and usage, and revenue potential in a secure environment.
1. Data Platform– Every sports organization has unique data and uses digital assets from ticketing (watching) to merchandising (buying) to understand consumer capabilities better. The falling costs of cloud computing, the availability of third-party data, and the democratization of big data machine learning and data aggregation will likely encourage sports organizations to partner with IT service providers to build their data platforms.
Fan engagement platform allow clubs to discover new fans, enrich the opinions of existing fans and allow for customization throughout the campaign. Sponsors and media partners can leverage the same platform to drive user activation for a subset of the club’s interested fans. In addition to fan data, sports organizations have extensive information about game-related statistics.
Making them accessible to the masses is another aspect of the proposed data platform. It’s an exciting area for fans. Data usage for sports entertainment. Each match is an exciting event that involves in-depth data-driven discussions, social media interactions, and an even deeper understanding of the athletes’ challenges.
2. Fan experience platform– Besides physical assets, the club owns several digital assets (websites, apps, ticketing systems, and experience tours). However, not all clubs offer a seamless fan experience with all these assets. Customer experience engineering is another area where sports bodies should invest aggressively.
A deeper understanding of the fan journey from rookie to superfan and the touchpoints across digital and physical assets will help design seamless experiences—a truly digital experience. The platform allows sports organizations to capitalize on the importance of the moment. Seamlessly integrate social media trends into your club’s digital assets to drive conversion and spending through the ease of use and convenience of tailored offers.
3. Direct-to-consumer channels: Any club can reach fans directly worldwide on any device in today’s digital world. Creating digital ubiquity requires creating direct channels for consumers and partnerships with the various players in the digital ecosystem. By partnering with the right IT service provider, sports clubs and organizations can deliver quality and reliable content services to their fans. Leverage this channel to deliver videos, news, live updates, stats, and daily or hourly plays with appropriate social sharing enabled. Channels become part of the overall experience platform, allowing fans to navigate seamlessly, and data platforms enable the personalization of content, advertising messages, and campaigns.
4. Mixed reality and future forms of participation: Sports Fan Engagement Platformcreates another entry point into the fandom. Young people’s first experiences with sports are likely to be through electronic publications such as FIFA and Madden NFL. The club will combine the power of virtual reality, games, drone photography, immersive video, streaming content, and advanced analytics to give fans the feel of a professional match, star player technologies, and bring the big matches to life.
With the advent of 5G, clubs can offer Officially Licensed Digital Collectibles in their stadiums and fan areas. The clubs that perfect the digital twin of real-world sports interactions will likely win tomorrow’s digital world.
Fan interaction started to engage fans before, during, and after matches and as an ongoing link between clubs and fans. What started as an ‘app’ has become a platform that connects fans, players, sponsors, broadcasters, and other service providers and can define the future of clubs and even the sport they represent. Sports federations and clubs that successfully create and develop successful audience participation platforms will be the winners in the digital age.