How sports tech startups can bring in fan management

According to a survey conducted by The Current State of Sports Technology, 78 percent of respondents believed that fan engagement technologies such as live streaming, content platforms, and esports will have the biggest impact on the sports industry in the next 12 months. Here are some of them:

• Blockchain: Blockchain technology can help teams develop tokenised membership or precisely ‘fan tokens’ to engage fans. Fan tokenisation is an engagement model that has already begun in Europe and is yet to be adopted in Asia. In fan tokenisation, both the teams and fans can be engaged in various levels of team decisions such as voting for the colour of the jersey for the next tournament.

• Player auction using token mechanism: When the player auction session begins team franchises can bring in heavy engagement from fans by taking opinions from them. Franchises through fan token mechanism can design a reward mechanism where fans can build their potential team and win rewards for correct prediction in the form of reward points that can be converted to fan tokens.

• Gamification: Gamification for fan engagement is nascent on traditional social media platforms but holds potential. Playing games on blockchain technology offers great avenues of fan engagement during the off-season. The rewards for winning games can be in the form of fan tokens that can be exchanged for merchandise or financial gain.

What lies ahead for the sports tech?

A new report from the Capgemini Research Institute finds that Indian sports fans are accepting of emerging technologies such as virtual reality, gamification, and contests in their sports viewing experience both inside and outside the stadium.

Sports fans love to remain active and will never shy away from any opportunity that requires expressing their views and engaging with like-minded people for the teams they support. By saying meaningful engagement, we mean viewers crave a deeper engagement by becoming experts in their ways by understanding strategies of the game, the player statistics, and their strengths and weaknesses, which through technology the sports tech startups should utilise and drive fan engagement.

Advantages to brands with the metaverse – a potential marketing platform

• Reach out to the Gen Z audience: The lower out of consumption in the pandemic has fuelled the interest in virtual gaming among youngsters especially Gen Z. According to the Red Lab report, India is among the top five global markets in virtual gaming constituting a user base of 440 million is 16 percent of the worldwide gamer population of 2.7 billion. This is good news for brands as in the future they can go beyond conventional marketing in billboards, TV, apps, and social media and enable in-game advertising to communicate their offerings to the metaverse natives. For instance, Unilever Turkey utilised specific creatives for in-gaming messaging that highlighted their links in a virtual football game of the metaverse. The creatives replicated ads that one would expect to see in a real-world football match without interrupting the gaming experience. 

• Releasing NFT is a revenue churner: Over the years merchandise business has been a revenue earning medium mostly in sports.Realising which Netflix too launched its merchandise of favourite web series characters on its website. In the future, OTT platforms, football, and cricket clubs, and film houses can utilise metaverse for releasing merchandise or collectibles in NFT format. Recent Bollywood sports film 83 ahead of its release, already tasted the success of releasing NFT in the metaverse by minting in the polygon blockchain $MATIC. The digital tokens consisted of autographed physical cricket memorabilia, video scenes, animated digital avatars, unseen posters, and images. 

• Build long-lasting relations: Brands in their metaverse initiatives must create an immersive experience by being well-versed in knowing the language, slang, and culture. Doing this will help businesses to forge a beneficial connection with customers by working with them, empowering them, and rewarding them.

Marketing in the metaverse will provide an experiential and immersive experience to the customers. Though the technology is nascent it will offer plenty of room for innovations for marketers.