Increase your fan engagement with these 5 tools!

There are tons of cool new technologies out there that you as a consumer or sports marketer probably love to use. Did you feel at all overwhelmed by all the new popular tools that came out in the last year or did you use some of them and created your best sports marketing campaign so far? Well, this past year gave us many new technologies to experiment with the fans and to develop new ways of engaging with them. In this post I will share my top 5 fan engagement tools that you should try and include in your sports marketing strategy in 2017 and all of them are about the view!

The AR view

I really love the views you can produce and engage with the Spectacles, as I explained in my previous blog post. AR to play Pokémon GO has made a huge impact on attracting new communities of younger fans to stadiums, but also on connecting the grandparents who can play Pokémon GO together with their grandchildren.

AR can be used in a variety of ways. For example, you could boost your brand’s merchandise sales at the stadium with the experience that NIKE has applied (see the video below). There are other ways to use AR as well. Have you ever felt that your match programme could be more fun? Bring it into AR, where you could have cool visualization of the players. Bring back values and tell your younger fans a story with the help of AR technology. Make it fresh and exciting for them because they never experienced those days of glory.

NIKE has taken AR to the next engagement level! If you are ever close to Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, France, visit their store and experience this in person. Now imagine how many more things you can do with AR.

The VR view

VR has certainly exploded and is taking the view experiences to new level in the past year.But there are so many people that can’t afford VR at home, so how can you improve the availability of VR view experience?

Maybe Manchester City has the right solution? They will have VR that could be viewed in 2D and this is a great opportunity that allows both the ones that can afford VR as well as the ones who cannot. Of course the 2D experience can’t be as good as actual VR but it can give your fans a chance to feel included and also experience a new angle.

The pitch view

Next up is the pitch view, actually sitting on the pitch/court/field or whatever the surface your favorite team is playing on is called. Can everybody afford this? Of course not! It is too expensive (at least for me) but it is affordable for some and they will pay for it. Several different sponsor activations have been done through this and more are coming, so if you are a sponsor or a sports club you should start planning your special activation at the same level the actual game is played.

The audio view

But hey, view and engagement can be experienced in so many different ways and I believe one platform in the future will make an impact. And it is an audio platform!

Let’s say “Alexa” and you can connect to sports in your own way! I am talking about Amazon Echo, and this is a great tool to “view” sports. With the help of this cool tool you can stay up to date with the latest scores when you can’t actually watch the game. You can also stay up to date with social media, just ask Alexa. I mean, talking and listening might be the easiest way of interacting and could be the best “view”. What is also exciting about Alexa is that “she” will become your best friend because she will learn what you like the more you talk to her. Echo is your own personal Sports relationship management buddy.

The last minute view platform

When watching sports on TV today, especially US Major Leagues, the commercials are only increasing and it is no surprise that people rather watch Netflix instead.

NBA is suggesting the alternative of purchasing the last minutes of a game. This is something really interesting. First of all, maybe we don’t have time to watch a whole game. But also, maybe you saw on social media or have been receiving notifications that there is a close game and you just want to watch the end of it.

Conclusion

I love seeing these trends in digital and innovation are spilling over to sports. There is always a new way to see things, as I mentioned in my previous article about Spectacles. We love new experiences and there are always early adopters who are willing to try new stuff out.

With today’s digital and global communities it is quite impossible to miss a big sports event and if you planned to watch some game in replay you will already know the end result – what’s exciting about that?!

With all this said, I would be interested to hear your thoughts about this topic. Feel free to write them in the comments below or Tweet at @promo_overtime or @jakobwikenstal