Nottingham Forest launch official club app with InCrowd

Download for iPhone – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nottingham-forest-official/id1059689288?mt=8

Download for Android – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.tribehive.fli.nottingham&hl=en_GB

  • Live scores, league tables, fan voting, match statistics, news and video content and much more now available in fans’ pockets.
  • All content can now be accessed 24/7 wherever fans are, including at the City ground through InCrowd’s stadium connectivity software.

Fans now have access to an array of exclusive Nottingham Forest content thanks to the release of their new official club app.

Users will be able to access content throughout the week, on match day, at home as well as in a packed City Ground, thanks to the app’s unique and powerful connectivity software. 

The latest crucial club news and behind the scenes content can now be accessed 24/7 both in text and video format, directly from the fans’ pockets.

The latest travel information to and from the City Ground is available through the live and up-to-date travel section and fans will also be able to access and post to Twitter, check the in-game live match statistics as well as vote for their Man of the Match wherever they are. Other interactive gamification elements will be made available in the new year

For those not lucky enough to be at the game, live scores and audio commentary courtesy of Forest Player (subscription required) will be available to keep fans up-to-date. Video highlights will be accessible for those fans who have missed the day’s events or for those that just want to relive the action. 

Forest’s progress can be seen, live, within the dynamic league table feature as well as all previous results and upcoming fixtures for the rest of the season.

Tickets for upcoming fixtures and all club merchandise can now be bought via the club shop section within the app. 

Ben White, Media & Communications Manager at Nottingham Forest commented “We are always looking for opportunities to expand our digital offering to fans. With the combination of club news as it happens, the range of content and features, and of course the connectivity technology, this is part of our commitment to optimise the Nottingham Forest fan experience.’

Aidan Cooney, CEO at InCrowd said, ‘Nottingham Forest are setting a benchmark by embarking upon an exciting new venture to provide their fans with the best mobile club platform on the market today. We are extremely pleased to have been a part of this process.”

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InCrowd’s Archie Woodhead named as Leader in the Sports Industry NextGen list

Our very own Archie Woodhead has been named as one of 28 leaders in the much sought after Sports Industry NextGen list.

The 28 individuals showed they had the potential, the drive, the motivation, the commitment and the integrity to be named a Sport Industry NextGen Leader, who will all be entitled to the Leadership Package, to help the group grow and develop together.

The Sport Industry NextGen Leaders were selected after a thorough steering process and will be assessed in person by the judges at an educational and training morning on Wednesday 27th January via a series of group challenges, individual tasks and interviews.

Read more at http://www.sportindustry.biz/events/next-gen/2015/nextgenleaders#udUYbUsUmwZFMSTZ.99https://t.co/W7oGbdlVNO

What 5G means for sport

Sport rights holders are approached by numerous companies looking to sell Wi-Fi and other in stadia connectivity solutions. The reasons for this are three fold:

1. Smart phone penetration in the UK will reach 80% by the end of 2015, fans now have devices that will benefit from connectivity

2. Fans, particularly the millennials generation expect to be connected. A Cisco study shows that 44% of fans site connectivity as very important to their experience with over half now preferring to watch at home

3. Connectivity allows rights holders and sponsors to talk to fans when they are at their most engaged

Most solutions are expensive and it is often difficult to justify the cost of a Wi-Fi install. The advent of 5G, due to be released in South Korea in 2018 will dramatically change connectivity and as a result in stadia fan engagement.

The Power of 5G

Scientists from Surrey University believe it is now possible to run a wireless data connection at an astounding 800Gbps – which would allow users to download 33 HD films in a single second. The speeds and huge data capacities will revolutionise many markets and sport is just one of these.

The UK and South Korea are leading the way; Surrey University and partners will be deploying 5G trials in Brighton and a number of other testbeds around the UK, whilst there are plans to launch a temporary trial for 2018’s Winter Olympic Games. It is likely that this will be more widely available in the UK by 2020.

How will 5G affect current systems?

 

1.    High-Density Wi-Fi

Although high density Wi-Fi has been installed in a limited number of venues in the UK, providers such as Cisco and Huawei and have found it hard to gain acceptance from clubs. With costs ranging from £500K to £2m per venue this is hardly a surprise. In addition, calibrating all the access points in a concrete bowl is an incredibly complicated task and reliability can be a problem. 5G could make the need for high density Wi-Fi completely redundant.

2.    Peer-to-Peer Networking

Using Wi-Fi direct (the technology that automatically connects your mobile phone to your Wi-Fi at home), peer to peer networking enables phones with the same mobile app to share information in a local network rather than needing to connect directly to Wi-Fi or 3G/4G. If one person has a connection in the stadium then they share the live scores with all those sitting in the same stand.

The more people on this network, the better it performs and for this reason it could become more important when 5G hits the UK market and clubs are looking to share larger amounts of data with their fans.

3.    Multicasting

Multicasting is a networking technology that greatly reduces the cost of distributing over any wireless network.  If a thousand people want to see the same content, rather than sending the same content one thousand times, multicast will allow all thousand devices to register and receive a single sending of the data. Essentially it allows a one-to-many distribution of content (e.g. video) rather than having to replicate data requests from multiple users. This technology can be used by clubs to send out video highlights to fans at half time. Multicast will likely be available in the next generation of 5G systems, as well as its availability in Wi-Fi, and will thus provide a legitimate alternative to a pure Wi-Fi solution.

What will this mean for fans?

In stadia fan experience is about atmosphere, being with friends and cheering your team. What does 5G have to do with this? Connectivity does not necessarily change the fan experience but it can dramatically enhance it.

Here are a few areas where providing fans with mobile functionality can enhance their experience:

1. Content: delivering live match analysis, half time replays and ref decisions to fans. TV does this brilliantly and currently fans are less well informed in the stadium

2. Participation: enabling fans to take part in voting for the man of the match, betting, predicting the score at half time and even challenging away fans to quiz head to heads

3. Logistics: ordering drinks, tickets to the next match, knowing how long it will take to the leave the stadium, upgrading  your seat

Much of this functionality is possible at the moment but 5G will make this activities like this more seamless for fans and less expensive for rights holders. Combine this with good old fashioned team support and there will be no comparison when it comes to experience.

Image: ©Getty Images

InCrowd at the 2015 Rugby Expo

InCrowd will be present at the Rugby Expo from November 26th – 27th on stand A6. We will be on hand to discuss our club apps, sponsorship opportunities and to explain our award winning stadium connectivity solution.

We will also be running our mobile game competition; ‘Handoff Challenge’ where you will be able to test your skills against some rugby legends. The top scorer across the two days will be awarded an iPad.

So feel free to come and say hello and take part!

 

A few simple charity fundraising tricks for sports clubs

67 million tickets are sold for spectator sports in the UK each year. This represents a huge opportunity for charities to involve the crowd in fundraising, much like charities at the London Marathon do. Crowd initiatives will create positive sentiments towards the sports club and improve the fan’s experience. It would also be a lot simpler than running 26.2 miles around London!

australia_pink

High volume, small payments are integral to fundraising plans

  • Micropayments are more accessible than ever: traditional direct debit donations (e.g. £3 a month), SMS payments and rounding up at the till are all examples of charities benefiting from micropayments. Using a range of these, Unicef raised £3.7 million at the Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony.
  • Significant benefits: the majority of charities who receive most of their funding from members of the public (rather than government funding), get in excess of 60% of their income from donations of £10 or less.

Increased ticket sales to certain personality types

Behavioural psychologists such as Carl Jung, Myers and Briggs have developed the idea that different personalities react well to different messaging.

A personality type with values linked to authenticity, community, ethics and morality has been proven to react better to more charitable messages. For sports clubs, this personality type could form up to 30% of their customer base so promoting charitable causes would increase ticket sales amongst this group.

Ethical Goods, a company that matches charities with businesses, produced a 400% uplift in sales for Harrogate Spa at the same time as raising over £1.6m+ for Pump Aid through a simple partnership promotion.

Benefits of marketing through charities

Charities are masters of managing databases to build support. Their relationships need to last a lifetime. For example, a supporter acquired through an event or direct debit relationship may go on to leave a legacy and learning those trends over many years is vital to a charities success.

Consequently charities have an engaged audience who will react well to sensibly targeted marketing coming from the charity. If a charity can promote tickets for the club and in turn raise more money then this seems like a fair exchange.

Some Ideas for Starters

The key to all these ideas is that the team, players or fans need to be involved in the fundraising process.

  1. Sponsor me to wear Pink
  • Players are sponsored by fans and their team mates (perhaps a week’s wages) to wear a pink shirt during the match in support for Breast Cancer Care or Cancer Research.
  • Fans, in the same way as being sponsored for a marathon, are sponsored by their friends and family to attend the match dressed head to toe in pink.
  • Both players and fans would set up fundraising pages and it would certainly create a buzz around the home team’s city as well as some fantastic photo opps.
  1. Ticket donation matched by the club… IF the team wins
  • On purchasing the ticket a fan can donate £5 to a charity.
  • This amount will be matched by the club if the team wins.
  1. £1 per goal
  • Season ticket holders donate £1 for every goal scored that season.
  • This is matched by the club for each ticket holder.
  1. Charity Seating
  • Most sold out participant events reserve entries for charities, after a certain point it is only possible to enter if you commit to raising money for charity.
  • In the same way, for the final 1,000 tickets, a club could add a £10 donation to each ticket.

Continuing the hard work of clubs and player

Scepticism often surrounds the good work that clubs and players do for charitable causes, mainly due to the size of player wages. Sometimes this is justified but often not. There are multiple cases of clubs working in the community – there were 39,658 football player visits to charitable schemes in the 2013-14 season alone.

Involving the crowd goes a step further and would provide many commercial and PR benefits to both the clubs and associated charities.

Mass Participation Sports Should use the Nectar Card Model to Increase Event Entries

A whopping 95% of consumers in the UK own at least one loyalty card. With so much focus on doing 30 minutes of exercise 3 times a week I believe people should be rewarded for taking part in running, cycling and swimming events using the successful Nectar card model.

This would have two effects:

  1. Increased participation: Nectar found that after a card holder was first rewarded they increased their activity in all shops associated with the card by 10%. The feeling of being rewarded and the material benefits that come with a points scheme would drive participation.
  2. Improved customer understanding: With enough event organisers taking part in the scheme, a single view of each participant would be created rather than multiple disparate data sets currently owned and guarded by event organisers.

Using Data to Funnel Participation

Event organisers like IMG, Human Race and Limelight would be able to learn more about customer behaviour outside their own events, answering questions such as:

  • How do I compare when retaining customers or attracting new customers?
  • Is someone who took part in a Colour Run seeking new challenges?
  • Has a seemingly lapsed runner moved on to triathlon?

The data would show which participant has a greater propensity to enter a particular type of event. This in turn would lead to more targeted and effective marketing for the event organiser and ultimately a clear funnel of participation from first event through to regular exerciser.

Learning from the Theatre Industry

Purple Seven is a company that works with multiple theatres in the UK to create a holistic view of the habits of all theatre goers.

By collecting data from each ticket transaction (37m of them), Purple Seven can analyse anonymised data that allows theatres to improve their service for ticket buyers. 110 theatres provide this data to Purple Seven and benefit with higher ticket sales using the actionable insights created.

Rewarding All Activity

Wearable tech has grown rapidly in the last 3 years. Kantar Media predicts that there will be 13.1 million users of apps or wearable technology in the UK by 2015.

Apps and devices that measure exercise could become part of the scheme, increasing the frequency of reward and inspiring more participation and enjoyment in training. The more a participant’s exercise is tracked the better the rewards and experience will be.

Positive Message with Benefits for Sponsors

Rewarding people for being active and healthy is a more positive message than for their “loyalty” to a coffee chain. It presents numerous opportunities for brands to become part of that reward, creating healthier opportunities for event sponsors to engage with participants.

What better way for a brand to connect with someone than offering a free coffee to congratulate them for completing their recent cycling challenge.

Tackling the Competitive Events (this is the most interesting Nectar stat in my opinion!)

One perceived problem of this rewards scheme is that event organisers may feel they are handing over participants to their competitors. Sainsbury’s looked long and hard at this with their Nectar relationship, especially as other brands that formed part of Nectar sold items like wine and petrol. What they found was that weekly spending at Sainsbury’s was 40% greater amongst people collecting from Sainsbury’s and two other Nectar affiliates than if they just collected at Sainsbury’s. This then increased to 100% if the collector was using Nectar at 5 or 6 affiliates.

 

The message here is that the more events on the scheme, the greater the benefits for those events individually and overall.

Worth the Investment?

This would require significant investment in technology to work across all event and exercise systems but I believe there is a compelling argument for rewarding participants for exercise.