Enhancing the Fan Experience with Data-Driven Insights

ForewordPart OnePart TwoPart Three

Conclusion

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TEXT HERE 22FOREWORD

While every sports franchise has the ultimate goal of winning, their number one goal is

to win over the hearts and minds of fans and build a devoted following.

The professional sports industry is growing, and in North America alone is expected to reach a worth of $73.5 billion in 2019, says Forbes. In an industry of this size, sports franchises face a couple of realities: fans have less time, more choices, and high expectations. These harsh realities are changing the game (pun intended). Today, the success of a team relies on their relationship with fans – not the scoreboard.

The modern sports fan expects and craves a meaningful relationship with the teams they choose to support. It is now more important than ever for sports franchises to have a thorough understanding of their audience and potential fan base. Marketing must align with the lifestyle of the fan, their consumption habits, and their interests and passions.

In this eBook, powered by the Affinio platform, we will take you on a journey from the very basics of understanding fan culture, identifying the right sports sponsorship and marketing opportunities, to creating the ultimate fan experience by leveraging behavioral data.

TEXT HERE 3PART ONE: Fan Culture

If you’ve ever been to a professional sporting event, you’ve likely witnessed some super

fans in the stands. You know, the individuals donning their favorite jersey, face-painted, noisemakers in tow, and cheering as loud as they possibly can. While every franchise has the ultimate goal of winning, their number one goal is to win over the hearts and minds of fans and build a devoted following.

But what makes a fan a fan? Why do individuals love and support some teams over others? For some, perhaps they remember their Dad taking them to a ball game at a young age. For others, maybe their team of choice is from their hometown or a city they love. Whatever the reason a fan feels allegiance to a particular team, franchises must understand their motivations and tap into these emotional anchors. Here’s why:

“Performance on the scoreboard no longer translates to seat sales.”

We live in an age where “performance on the scoreboard no longer translates to seat sales,” which means teams need to build a more significant brand experience that extends far beyond stadium walls. The modern sports fan expects and craves a meaningful relationship with the teams they choose to support. Franchises must understand the lifestyle of their fan, their consumption habits, and their interests and passions on an intimate level.

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4PART ONE

As shared by MediaPost: Teams that put customers first, value the customer

intelligence of their fans, and leverage fan insight to influence business decisions are the ones that will win (and not just games) in the long run.

Affinio makes it possible to tap into the sports fan culture and find out what makes fans tick. By leveraging interest and behavioral data, sports teams are armed with the insights to not only speak to their fans (and potential fans) using the right language, but also make relevant sponsorship deals, content choices, ad placements, and more. As an example of the insights that teams can leverage using Affinio, we analyzed the fan base of the New England Patriots.

Affinio uses unsupervised segmentation to form clusters of individuals with shared interests and affinities. In this analysis, we segmented the Patriots’ audience into 14 interest-based clusters. What’s important to note is that each cluster has their motivation for supporting the team. How a franchise connects to each of these fan clusters should differ.

What you’ll see on the following pages is while both fan clusters share a love of the New England Patriots, their motivations for supporting the team likely differ and the way the team communicates with them should too. For the Boston Sports fans, their proximity to the action and appreciation of the “Beantown” is probably the most significant tie. But for the Moms Who Love Pop Culture fans, they have a devotion to some of the most popular players and their celebrity friends. Either way, for the Patriots (or any sports franchise) to successfully hold onto the attention of fans and cultivate a following of super fans, they need to speak to them in the most relevant way possible an understand their motivations. These are just some of the insights sports marketers must leverage to connect with fans.

New England Patriots @Patriots

Platform: Twitter Followers of: @Patriots Location: USA Audience Size: 382,089 Unique Users

TEXT HERE 55PART ONE: Boston Sports Fans

TEXT HERE 66PART ONE: Moms Who Love Pop Culture

TEXT HERE 77PART TWO: Data-Driven Sponsorships & Partnerships

One way to authentically connect with fans is to form relevant sponsorship agreements.

Today, the sports sponsorship industry is booming. According to Darin White, Founding Director of the Sports Marketing Program & Professor at Samford University,

Sponsorship marketing is one of the fastest growing forms of advertising around the globe. It has exploded into a $60 billion industry in North America.

It seems teams are jumping at every new sponsorship opportunity to engage their fans and appear relevant. But instead of jumping at the latest ‘shiny’ topic, what if you had a data-backed method to identify potential sponsorship opportunities you know will resonate with your fan base?

Numerous professional sports organizations have used Affinio to tap into fan culture and build data-driven sponsorship strategies to reach and engage fans. As explained by Darrin White, “utilizing social media and cutting-edge analytics, marketing researchers have discovered highly effective ways of fostering the transference of fan passion from the team to commercial brands.”

With Affinio’s intelligence, we can immediately gain insight into audience preferences identify the top 1000 contextually relevant brands, organizations, media, and more that matter most to your core fanbase. This type of “fan-first” approach can be crafted to create sponsorships that resonate with the fans.

8PART TWO

Let’s take a look at potential sponsorship opportunities for the @Patriots in our same Affinio analysis.

The Analysis

Through the use of machine learning and social media analysis, Affinio’s algorithm analyzes the connections between audience members, the content they share, and the interests of the audience. One of the outputs of Affinio analyses is a list of contextually-relevant accounts to an audience including the top celebrities, media, organizations, and brands. This list is found under the Interests section of every Affinio report.

Affinio identified the following brands as some

Actioning Media Insights

Affinio identified E! Network as a top network for the Moms Who Love Pop Culture as well as shows like The Real Housewives and reality TV celebrities. Perhaps the E! Network could create a show “The Wives Behind the Patriots” that caters to this audience and strengthens their affinity to the team.

Actioning Brand Insights

Affinio identifed Victoria’s Secret as a top retail/fashion brand to the Moms Who Love Pop Culture segment. Perhaps The Patriots could collaborate with the Victoria’s Secret sports apparel department (VSX) to create a Pats-branded line that this segment could wear to games and seamlessly fits into their lifestyle.

Actioning Demographic Insights

Affinio identified that the majority of individuals inside the Moms Who Love Pop Culture segment live outside of New England in the eastern US. Affinio also identified that JetBlue Airways is their airline of choice. Perhaps there is a package deal when flying into Massachusetts you can receive complimentary game tickets.

of the most contextually-relevant to the Moms Who Love Pop Culture cluster. Here’s a couple of examples of how the Patriots could reach this cluster and strengthen their loyalty by leveraging interest data.

Sponsorship deals aren’t going away, and with more and more competition for fan attention, ensuring the right partner selection is vital. By leveraging Affinio’s quantifiable data, sports franchises, as well as brands, are armed with actionable insights to use in structuring winning sponsorship deals that increase exposure, revenue, and fan loyalty.

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Despite the fact the sports industry is growing, teams have been struggling in recent years

to keep sports fans in stadium seats. With ticket sales dwindling, stadiums have had to start making big moves and big investments to get fans coming to the games.

No wonder this is an issue, have you seen what fans are building in their basements? People are building personalized “fan caves” that are equipped with extreme comfort, concession stands, personalized decor, multiple screens, and the latest in sports-viewing technology. Not

9PART THREE:Enhancing the In-Stadium Experience

only is the at-home fan experience the most amazing it’s ever been, reliable wifi and data allow sports fans to engage with other fans online, watch (and rewatch) instant replays, look up player and team stats, check in on other games, etc. during game down times. The at-home experience is more interactive than ever before and truly gives the in-stadium experience a run for its money. There are no bathroom or concession lineups, no loud drunken fans (or maybe there are?), and the snacks are well within budget. The at-home experience is truly a personalized one.

TEXT HERE 1010PART THREE

To compete with this, high-tech stadiums are being constructed all around the world with

fan experience at the center of their strategy. Sports venues are incorporating state of the art technology to ensure that the fan experience in-stadium is better than ever before. Levi’s Stadium, reportedly the ‘most high-tech’ stadium in the world, allows it’s 70,000+ fan capacity to connect seamlessly to wifi and 4G. Along with powerful connectivity, stadium technology upgrades include apps and beacons that help fans:

• Find parking spots

• Purchase premium seat upgrades

• Order food + beverages to their seats

• Find the closest restroom with the shortest line

• Watch high-def replays and close-up videos

• View exclusive content

• Receive promotions and coupons

• Get home faster with traffic information

While all of this is wonderful and truly enhances the fan experience, it still doesn’t offer the same personalization that the at-home experience can. Fans will get used to these upgrades as a standard of service and the in-home experience will continue to get better and better. In a recent journey to get to know the fan experience and marketing world a little better, we connected with a few sports marketing experts. A common theme seemed to emerge from our conversations. When strategizing fan experience implementation, whether it’s related to the stadium or sponsorship opportunities, the fans seem to be considered as one, the fans.

Stadiums, teams, and sponsors need to take

an audience-first - or - “fan-first” approach to enhancing the fan experience. To clarify, let’s take a look at our Patriots audience again. By using Affinio to run an interest-based segmentation analysis, we are able to understand all of the different types of fans that exist and what would enhance each of their experiences, help engage them, and keep them coming back for more.

As you can see, this is an extremely varied audience. While it’s the Patriots that gets them to come together, there are a lot of unique communities. With this data, we can learn a lot more about the interests, passions, and culture of each community.

11PART THREE

To enhance the fan experience, this affinity data can be used to identify:

These are just a few examples. By taking a fan-first approach, stadiums and teams can make their fans feel like they are receiving a truly personalized experience that resonates with them and keeps them coming out to the game.

Favourite player of each community

What other sports teams they are interested in

What food these fans love

What music should be played during game downtime

The top celebrity affinities for potential appearances

What giveaways would resonate with these fans

Which communities are adopting sponsor and team

hashtags

Where these fans go to get news about the team

What types of team-related content each community

engages with

TEXT HERE 1212CONCLUSION

The professional sports industry will continue to evolve and with it, so must marketers.

In order to grow ticket sales and keep fans in their seats, sports marketers will need to adapt and invest in understanding their fanbase. The lifestyle, motivations, and consumption habits of fans cannot be ignored and must be taken into account when building strategies, both on and off the field.

To learn more about how Affinio supports professional sports teams, request a demo.

affinio.com | @Affinio | info@affinio.com