SCREENS, WI-FI & MATCHDAY HEAVEN

Andrew-Christopher

Andrew is Sales Director of OAMM, the operator of the largest network of Australian sports and concert venue screens, including Allianz, SCG, Etihad and All Phones Arena.

Story: Andrew Christopher

There’s a good reason why the stadiums have invested and continue to invest technology. The primary reason is to improve the fans’ experience. The more the broadcasters provide more camera angles, allow you to pause live play, and jump between games, the greater the temptation for the footy fan to watch it from the couch.

With that in mind, priority number one is for every fan to have a bird’s eye view of what’s on the pitch — whatever seat they might be in.

To achieve this, the received wisdom from The States (which is a good few years further down the track) is to complement the big screens with an IPTV network across the venue precincts: the major thoroughfares, F&B areas, queueing areas, bathrooms etc. The aim is to ensure every fan is within eyeshot of a screen regardless of where they might be. In some cases there might be 1500 screens across the venue broadcasting the feed.

WHERE THE BRAND FITS

The stadium has its own clean feed, so brands can become part of the broadcast in the same way they might become part of the TV broadcast. But the stadium can offer something different to the broadcaster. Brands can run live social media content across the bottom of the screen, for example; they can run call to action messaging — especially F&B, wagering, digital content brands that want to drive a direct response — they can use the screens to drive that response.

The really cool thing about the IPTV network is that we can break up or zone the venue. Accessing 80,000 people at a stadium is great but brands want to drill down into particular pockets of the stadium to promote certain products and services. If you think about a bank for instance, it might want to promote a high-end credit card into affluent members’ or corporate box areas. Then they might want to promote a more mainstream product into general admission. It allows them to have a presence and integration at major events but to drill down into audiences in a way not many other approaches can. F&B is another area that benefits from its own zone.

PIECE OF THE WI-FI PIE

The second piece of the stadium puzzle is the mobile phone/wi-fi connection.

Traditionally, the problem has been: the greater the audience, the more the 3G and 4G networks were struggling. The answer is high-density wi-fi. Wi-fi can offer fans a richer experience and solve the internet access problem: fans can’t get a fast free data when there are 40,000 people trying to dial in at once. Once the fan has joined the wi-fi network there’s a opportunity for brands to target the fans and acquire their data — to offer them entry to competitions, to offer them F&B specials; content you can’t access unless you’re at the ground on that particular day.

Pivotal to this is the stadium app. The app hosts the offers that improve the fan’s gameday experience — which might be discounts on parking, merchandise, F&B.

Fans understand the transaction: free wi-fi in exchange for their data. And once the fans are using the app the brands have an understanding of who their audiences are and their behaviour in a way that previously they struggled to understand.

Previously you bought tickets for you and your mates, and the stadium only really retained any contact with you. This new platform opens up a communication link with a larger base of customer.

METRICS

Once the fan has downloaded the app we can learn from their behaviour: what handset they’re carrying and what offers they’re responding to. And we can look at the cross sections of the fans across the codes, how each code responds to the offers. For a brand in sport that’s critical information because it informs a lot of their marketing strategy in sport.

We’ve been talking to the brands that already invest in sport. They know they need to align themselves with the big codes; they invest big; but they struggle to get a lock on the best way to measure the return on that investment. In this case, an incremental extra amount of money buys them a whole world of new insights.

These brands have been sold to by the broadcaster, the codes and teams, without hard metrics to back up their claims. But this platform allows the brands to get out ahead of the sponsorship market and reap some invaluable insights from the handsets of the fans.

I mean, why spend $20m with the AFL simply to get your logo out there? Why not have a deeper engagement with the matchday fan?

BIG SCREEN/SMALL SCREEN MARRIAGE

OAMM works with two key suppliers: Cisco for the IPTV and Telstra for the high-density wi-fi. And it’s the brands that leverage both these aspects of the platform that are extracting the most: using screens to promote a marketing push that you can redeem on your handset.

Allianz Stadium has 1400 screens and Etihad even more, so just between these two venues you have around 3000 screens to push a promotion that drives takeup of a campaign. We’re very quickly seeing results in these types of cases.

Whenever a wicket is taken, a goal is scored or a try is in dispute via video replay, every eyeball is trained on a screen. That’s a brand’s opportunity to reinforce a campaign. And if you’re running with something exclusive and urgent — that can be redeemed before leaving the stadium — the chances of hooking these guys is really quite good.

But the platform’s influence is far greater than simply being a matchday sell. And you might think the sweetspot is for wagering, beer and pies. Interestingly, we’ve found the real value comes in developing the insights garnered from the fan on game day and using those insights to inform a strategy with the fan once he’s left the venue. So it’s not just about bombarding the fan with offers in the couple of hours they’re in the ground but developing a working knowledge of his behaviour, such that when you reach out to him via the app when he’s on the train on his daily commute, you’re actually offering him something he wants at a time that he wants it. And in this way, it can be much more than just an impulse-based call to action message service.