Sports and entertainment brands are meeting their fans where they spend the most time – on their mobile devices. They’re already making it easy for audiences to engage year-round – and personalize their experience when they visit the venue for an event.

But, cord-cutting, augmented reality and a host of other technology developments are changing the ways people watch games and events live. This puts companies like Twitter, Facebook, and a host of streaming upstarts in a position to monetize the content that teams and brand can and should own.

But the right mobile strategy – and underlying platform – can put brands back in control and ensure they’re capitalizing on the huge revenue opportunity that is just waiting to be unlocked. With the right combination of strategies, sports and entertainment brands can and should:

• Offer immersive and engaging augmented reality content
• Take control of streaming rights and deliver engaging content to superfans at every point of their journey to the arena
• Monetize streamed content with contextually-relevant advertising that takes into account fans’ behavior, preferences and location

Use Case

A family of four visits the arena for a game. On the way, passengers in the car  enjoy access to streamed content from the arena that is available only to those that sign up for the team loyalty program.

At the game, with new, immersive offerings, everyone in the famly can take advantage of fun activities during the game, like voting on the next play, or which player will score next via the team app on their mobile device. Simply adding these opportunities takes fans from passive viewers, to active participants in the game.

The next time someone on the team scores, everyone who guessed correctly could receive exclusive AR video of the player who scored, as well as other related content that they’d be incented to share with their social networks. For each share, they might receive a certain number of loyalty points toward purchasing that player’s jersey or something else at the arena.

Moving forward, based on the ways that the fan interacts with and uses the content that has been shared with them, brands can begin to make assumptions about what the interests of the person who uses that particular device and serve up personalized advertising and content to him or her whenever they interact with the team app, attend a game, or watch via their device.

The Opportunity

With the right data and analytics – and a creative approach to content, blackout management, and rights, teams, brands, and venues can begin to monetize content in new ways, and increase their presence and control on the platforms fans use both in the arena, and at home.  We predict big changes in the ways brand deliver content — and fans consume it — over the coming year.