Author: Mark Silver

Ask 10 different sports executive what fan engagement means, and I’d bet you’d get 10 different answers, and that’s perfectly okay. The truth is that fan engagement is a personal thing, and it’s only the fan who can truly answer the question.

I would like to propose a moratorium on the use of the term fan engagement by sports properties and the vast ecosystem of agencies and technology providers who support them. Really, what is fan engagement anyway?

As a kid growing up in Toronto in the 80s who closely followed the rise of the Toronto Blue Jays (version 1.0), just being able to watch an away game on television was a family affair. Or, sitting in the general admission bleachers at Exhibition Stadium, where my parents carefully protected me from the ruckus fans, well, that was an entirely different experience, but I’d say that both fulfilled my definition at the time for fan engagement.

Fast forward to today, where I can get every Jays game on any screen and in 4K, I’d still argue that’s fan engagement. And while the Jays have visibly invested in things like loyalty cards for ticket purchasers that double as your ticket and mobile wallet, or they have a great social visualization that fills the jumbotron during warm-ups, I would not consider these investments in fan engagement. We know what they’re up to with the loyalty card, and the social visualization is an easy way to fill the screen with content before the game starts. Both of these initiatives have little fan participation thus not fan engagement and a reason to attend the game.

To get to the point, the challenge of our time is that very few sports organizations are taking a fan-centered approach to fan engagement. I will give the Jays full credit for trying, and because many other sports organizations are doing the same, I’ll stop picking on them, because what I see happening in many organizers is that fan engagement is defined as one thing for ticket purchasers and then something entirely different for families, millennials, fan clubs and sponsors. The only true “fan engagement” activity that spans all types of purchasers and fan demographics is social. However, as we all know, while social is certainly a part of any integrated sponsorship package, and more recently it can be used to transact directly with ticket or merchandise purchasers, it is extremely difficult to obtain any significant reach without buying distribution. The bigger problem is that all this effort and investment in social is only making the social platforms more powerful by aiding and abetting their accumulation of a vast intimate data set of YOUR fans that they are willing to sell to the highest bidder.

At Stadium Digital we define fan engagement based on direct relationships with fans. That relationship could include actions such as purchase, digital content consumption, social activity, contest entry, fantasy play or a attending a game. The essential ingredient is YOU, the sports property, and YOUR fans. As we see it, fan engagement is not bound to those in attendance or the broadcast audience, which is why our Fan Platform was built to bridge the relationship with the fan so they can engage wherever they are. It’s truly for anyone who wants to subscribe to be a member of your fan base, in a relationship that YOU own and control. And when we say control, we mean the data, where YOU decide what data to track, YOU decide who to share it with and how to use it. The data itself becomes your monetizable intellectual property.

For more on how we have helped our clients collect and use data, here’s a recent case study.