How To Create Sustainable Fan Engagement With Digital Tech
Discover fan engagement’s digital journey: pre-event teasers, in-event interactives, and post-event offers.
Dibyendu Halder, chief business officer of communications media and entertainment at LTIMindtree, explains how digital innovations like AR and VR change fan engagement in media with pre-event excitement to post-event experiences.
Nothing compares to the experience of being a passionate fan. Rooting for a favorite soccer team or attending an opera performance is inspiring and evokes strong emotions. More than any other industry, media, and entertainment is an experienced business. Fan engagement must be constantly and carefully nurtured.
But whether they’re attending a soccer match, theater performance, or live concert, fans do not want to be passive spectators. They want to feel like they actively participated and want the experience to bridge the online and offline worlds, which helps them form a stronger emotional connection to the event.
Media and entertainment companies, whether they be broadcasters, publishers, gaming companies, sports organizations, or entertainment venues – have a limitless opportunity to engage fans pre-event, during-event, and post-event, thanks to advances in immersive digital technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
In the United States, the National Basketball Association’s augmented reality app allows fans to insert a 3D avatar of themselves into a live game. Using their smartphone, fans can create a 360-degree scan of themselves that can replace an actual player in a game. These avatars then mimic the movements and reactions of a player in real-time, enabling fans to virtually become part of a game involving their favorite teams and players.
The widespread prevalence of smartphones and cheaper internet has made it possible for media and entertainment businesses to take customer engagement to a new level, creating lifelong fans.
Taking Fan Engagement to an Unprecedented Level
The concept of fan engagement goes back to ancient times. The construction of one of the first venues that regularly drew tens of thousands of fans, the Colosseum in Rome, was completed in the first century.
Unlike ancient times when publicity of upcoming events – or, more aptly, spectacles – required little more than word-of-mouth to draw sellout crowds, modern event promoters collectively spend billions annually to attract and engage fans.
Targeting fans via social media, personalized offerings, loyalty promotions, and reward programs initiates an accelerated journey of digital engagement. This digital fan engagement generates data that can be used to help measure the success of an event and can also be used to analyze the needs and expectations of individual fans.
Here is how media and entertainment companies can transform the fan engagement journey using these digital technologies.
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Pre-event Engagement
The fan journey begins with the event’s announcement, such as the publication of a team’s game schedule for the upcoming season or the dates and locations of a band’s newly announced tour. Organizers can reach millions of users through blogs and social media messaging, posting to platforms like Facebook and Instagram with exclusive, event-specific hashtags.
To further engage fans, social media messaging should include hyperlinks to direct them to dedicated web pages containing ticket-buying information and event venue details. Unique experiences in the ticket buying process, such as access to a seat view, lower prices for early booking, and group discounts, also enhance user engagement.
To highlight the event and generate buzz, dedicated web pages should be regularly updated with teasers, such as video clips from the team’s latest victory, a popular song the band played on a recent tour date, or a sneak peek into an upcoming event. These videos can also include behind-the-scenes stories and interviews.
Organizers can utilize regularly scheduled event-specific quizzes or giveaway contests to incorporate interactive elements and build brand awareness. For example, to promote sporting events, online quizzes about the team or specific players can be used to offer participants rewards on the go or discounted merchandise. Promotions offering this type of user interaction can be segmented over time and include leaderboards to enhance user engagement and rank the overall team knowledge of each participant.
Additional promotional opportunities include offering loyalty points to fans who share their event experience on social media or exclusive offers to fans who register to receive alerts via mobile devices when they are near event-specific or sponsored retailers.
In-event Fan Engagement
Fans will feel connected and engaged when they can access items and purchase-related offers exclusively available to event attendees.
Fans also want easy access to public transportation information, directions to the venue, and parking options. Once they arrive, deploying technologies that oversee crowd monitoring and diversion to minimize entry gate delays and QR code scanning can expedite entry for all attendees.
Once past the ticket gate, AR Wayfinding technology can provide a cutting-edge, futuristic guide for them to navigate the venue using their mobile device. Using AR Wayfinding, attendees can see the closest point of entry/exit in a stadium, locate any seat, and find amenities such as food and beverage stations, merchandise vendors, and locations of stadium services.
Many National Football League teams now offer fans the chance to appear alongside players in videos or photographs using in-stadium AR technology. These immersive experiences delight fans of all ages by projecting their image onto screens where they interact virtually with their favorite player or pose for a photo flanked by one or multiple team members.
Sports organizations can further drive in-game fan excitement and energy by offering an AR experience that projects game stats all over the field or plays interactive games with other fans. Fans at home can use AR or VR to watch the game from various camera angles beyond what’s shown on the TV broadcast.
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Post-event Engagement
Media and entertainment companies can best sustain fans’ long-term enthusiasm and excitement by continuing to engage them with personalized offers and experiences long after the event. Sending fans special merchandise discounts and personalized offers year-round is an effective way to build brand loyalty.
Sports teams can send fans non-fungible tokens (NFT) collectibles – such as trading cards or memorabilia. Entertainment venues can provide fans with suggestions to visit nearby restaurants, bars, merchandise shops, and hotels to make their event experience more enjoyable.
Towards a Holistic Fan Experience Journey
Fans have practically endless options for live entertainment. That’s why it’s vital for media and entertainment businesses not to miss an opportunity to make each part of the fan experience personalized and memorable.
Fans must be treated as customers ready to buy goods if provided with a timely and convenient option. Reimagining fan engagement requires media and entertainment companies to eliminate barriers between the online and offline worlds.
For generations of people who have attended live shows and sports events or viewed traditional entertainment or sports broadcasts on TV, digital technologies like AR and VR and artificial intelligence are poised to change the fan experience forever.
Which strategies have you applied to enrich fan engagement experiences in your business? Let us know on Facebook, X, and LinkedIn. We’d love to hear from you!
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