How fans consume and interact with their chosen media has accelerated at an unprecedented rate over the last two years. Even with the return of full stadiums, it is simply not good enough to return to what has worked in the past – how fans across the world consume content has evolved, shifting from large physical audiences to larger and more engaged digital audiences and as a result media, rights holders and brands are in a race to innovate.
Nielsen’s latest report highlights the effects that this has had on the industry. The proliferation of OTT media has amplified content globally with 40.7% of fans now opting to stream live sports through digital platforms rather than traditional avenues. Furthermore, 39.39% of fans will watch non-live content that’s related to a sports event, showing the importance of content, especially among Gen Z. Interestingly, demand for content related to the event is almost as high as the demand for the event itself.
In addition, one screen just isn’t enough in 2022. Multi-screen viewing activities are on the rise as more fans scan social media, play games, text and order food while consuming a sports match. 47% of those who watch sport on TV or OTT and simultaneously consume other live content, with Gen Z again leading the charge.
The below table breaks down what people are doing on their phone while watching sport:
At Elevate Sports we are constantly pushing rights holders and brands to innovate and think creatively how they can provide the content their fans are looking for and also build new revenue streams around that. We have just finished participating in the Arsenal Innovation Lab powered by Yolo Group, an excellent forward thinking programme designed to help find pioneering tech to help improve the fan experience. Using our partner Sodyo’s scanning technology we created a solution that we believe will help Arsenal and other rights holders provide personalized content to their fans (often talked about but very difficult to achieve at scale) and help drive commercial revenues.
By integrating the Sodyo SDK into the brands/rights holders/federations app they will now be able to capture the 35% of people and ever more the increasingly more important 46% of Gen Z, who use apps while consuming a live sports event, ensuring they stay within the commercial and partner ecosystem.
Fans will simply scan a small customizable marker (think a patented QR code on steroids!) and are then instantly connected to any actionable content the rights holder desires to promote or deliver. The markers can be scanned at distance across a variety of media platforms – indoor, outdoor, print, digital, broadcast and more.
These custom markers offer a multitude of advantages over existing scanning technologies and unlike QR codes every scan is recorded and tracked by the rights holder, allowing you to make data driven decisions and provide measurable results to partners.
Please feel free to contact us and give us your problems…so we can deliver the right solutions!