In most sports, every game is an eventful, emotional experience that lingers. Even if you’re not an avid sports fan attending a regular mid-season game, you will walk out charged with the power of team spirit in the arena. This might be enough for team fans and team management, but there is an intelligible and reasonable way to amplify every gameday — a sports team app. It elevates the fan experience and the game to a new level, offers better marketing management, and helps process Big data.
Sports apps deliver next-level fan experience
Being an avid fan is like a secondary full-time job, so fans will enjoy every tech advancement that makes this job easier. A sports team app has the ability to bring changes to the field that extend beyond the existing gameday experience, complementing and enhancing it.
First, sports apps converge all team-related content in one place: news, videos, photos, statistics, game schedule — everything. Social media integration is always included, so fans can share the content on Facebook; however, the discussion can take place on the fan wall within an app, without the need to move anywhere else.
This is only the kick-off. Sports apps can use beacon technology to help fans navigate to their seats and order food; start flashmobs with push notifications to invigorate a goal; stream Live chats with the team’s star players; and more.
Furthermore, sport team apps can leverage Augmented reality: fans can point their smartphones at players to view stats on their smartphone screens, an experience that will remind them of playing their favorite games, like FIFA and Madden NFL.
The future for this is promising. FOX has already streamed Super Bowl 2016 highlights to VR headsets with their FOX Go application. Concurrently, the proliferation of sport team apps paves the way to smart stadiums, which will use more elaborate tech than beacons, elevating the experience further.
Sport team apps as a marketing tool
If team’s management decides to leverage the benefits of a sports app, they will also intercept the ball in the marketing field. Sport team apps usually come with tools to orchestrate fan engagement. These tools allow marketing teams to send targeted notifications at key moments—before games, during key game moments, and after seasonal team accomplishments. Thus, posting across multiple social media channels becomes optional.
Moreover, teams can incorporate their mobile stores into their apps. This opportunity not only contributes to the concept of all-in-one mobile experience, it also adheres to the trend that people increasingly prefer to make purchases on their smartphones. This also goes for buying tickets: sport team apps eliminate the fans’ need to use ticket apps, saving their time.
Sports apps tackle Big Data easily
Any sport relies on statistics and other game-related information, from total goals scored in a particular season to stadium layout. Devoted fans love these numbers, and they enjoy discussing them at length when they come together. Team management reacts in accord, delivering all the information in one place.
A branded sports app empowers marketing teams to shed light on deeper details: what age group likes to discuss a particular content category, when, and how often. Teams will not only get to know their fans better but tailor a better all-around fan experience. (That after-game selfie session didn’t go as well as planned? The marketing team will find out faster and react accordingly.) There is a lot of information and little time to go through it, let alone present it in a clear form. The backend of sport team apps can process the data quickly and deliver results to marketing teams in the shape of actionable analytics.