by Tom McDonnell, Co-founder & CEO,
Sep 2022
It's no longer just about the live match; fans expect a different experience from your live sports. Real-time engagement (RTE) can deliver a new way in which fans interact with your brand, leading to long-term sticky relationships.
If you're new to the idea of RTE, we define it as interactivity that increases user attention and loyalty pre/during and after matches. Common themes include participation, interactivity, gamification, and augmenting pure video experience with layers of live sports data or social commentary.
For sports rights-holders, a great way to leverage real-time engagement and in doing so take their live sports to the next level is with an event centre experience. This video-centric immersive experience gives fans everything they need to engage around a game leading to a stickier experience, increasing subscriptions and conversions.
In other words, if you are looking to build relationships and connect with your fans every week beyond them passively watching your team/league/event you need to be considering an event centre.
Let's talk about the benefits of creating a digital event centre around your live sports.
Aggregate engagement around your live sport
Think about the fan journey. Before a match day, a fan might be checking social media, supporter sites, sports news sites and chatting with friends on messaging platforms. They might be participating in prediction quizzes or other gamified experiences around the sports they love. If they're a local fan, they may purchase a ticket and enjoy the match in person.
Global and local fans alike may check Twitter or Instagram after the event to watch interviews with the players or see what other fans are saying. And then… that's it on to the next one. That's a pretty straightforward fan journey, five or six touchpoints max.
As sports and media brands grow and compete to build a global fan base, a key differentiator can often engage fans beyond the event itself. Building event centres that consolidate various real-time interactive features like gamification, live video, social commentary are vital to building engagement and participation, upscaling a live event for fans.
Imagine creating an all-in-one event centre for your sports property where fans can participate in polls or quizzes before the event, predictions gaming during the live-action. After the live match, fans could vote on the favourite player of the match or enjoy video replays with interactive quizzes layered. All of these touchpoints where the fan has engaged with your digital property, every vote or poll answered is what we call interactivity.
Read how JockeyClub extended engagement throughout the season with an event centre.
The effect on your business: driving subscriptions and conversions
Interactivity can build a sense of community between fans and brands. But if we're looking at more tangible effects, event centres can be a great way to increase subscriptions and conversions. You can use interactive experiences to build your subscription audience by giving extra points, incentives, or access to premium content for members only.
Speedweek Hub attracted over 100k visitors across the event and converted many into registered, interacting fans. These fans were enticed by the ability to participate in real-time. The average session time of these users was 21 minutes, and each participated in interaction around the live stream over 2.5 times on average.
Adding payment and conversion options within the event experience allows you to maximise revenue from merchandise sales or in-venue products. It creates more significant opportunities for sponsors, too. An event centre also allows you to own every piece of engagement for your live event, and the attention and interaction can provide valuable data for your business.
Build and scale your event centre experience with Monterosa / Interaction Cloud™
Brands looking to build websites and apps around their event that utilise interactive elements can see their engagement skyrocket. Monterosa's real-time engagement platform, Monterosa / Interaction Cloud™, helps you create event centres full of interactive experiences like polls, games, quizzes, trivia— and more— for your fans to enjoy.
When the Liverpool Football Club (LFC) built an Event Centre with Monterosa, they increased their matchday audience by 10x. The new Match Centre was designed, built and deployed within six weeks, attracted a global audience, and included 1.6m unique users.
Want to see how our Event Centre can help you grow your global fan base? Arrange a demo with our team.
