When technology chases sports fans, everyone wins

“Biceps 25 inches” “Biceps 29 inches, chal card deh” “Chest 40 inches” *Arre, Chest 37 inches, yeah leh” If the conversation above sounds like gibberish to you, then you are not a 1990s kid. Unlike us you didn’t spend pocket money and time on WWF trump cards. My friends and I spent a significant portion of the late 90s playing with these trump cards while eating packets of Uncle Chips with Vengaboyz playing in the background. [caption id=“attachment_2241614” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] ISL made good use of Twitter to reach out to fans. File Photo.[/caption] Then middle school happened. We had less free time. The WWF trump cards also disappeared. But last December, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia. After 16 years, I played with trump cards again. Only this time it was on Twitter. The Indian Super League joined together with Twitter India to launch “Trump Cards” at the end of the league stage. Fans could collect a roster of 64 players by Tweeting to @IndSuperLeague with #ISLTrumps, all of which were then showcased on the #ISLTrumps page on the website. “The ISL was a new league that was launched last year and they really needed the fans to get to know the players better. It is then that the idea struck us – ISL Trump cards. We used technology to reincarnate a game that most Indian kids had played growing up. And I think we did a pretty good job ~160K tweets were sent with the #ISLTrumps,” Aneesh S Madani, Sports Partnership Head, Twitter India told Firstpost with a big grin. Most sports teams and associations understand that in 2015 it’s a lot easier for a fan to be distracted even during a big game than it was a few years ago. Ironically, it is the same technology that is blamed for reducing our attention span, that is coming to the rescue and luring fans back into the action. Twitter is at the forefront of this phenomenon. Human beings are fundamentally collaborators and we want to share our experiences. It is this aspect of our psychology that Twitter taps into. If you are a sports fan under 40 there are high chances that you engage with a sports game through multiple devices. In fact, for a large number of people the second screen has become the primary screen. Twitter enables each one of us to turn into an expert, to find other fans to celebrate our team’s win or mourn the team’s loss or very simply take a selfie from the venue and “brag” about watching the game live. Aneesh was given instructions to make sports a Twittery experience. In 2013 Twitter entered its first formal association with a sports property in India – The IPL. “Even globally, IPL is in fact one of our most cutting edge partners," Aneesh said. “It recognizes and values the importance Twitter plays in enhancing the appeal of the property and creating greater stickiness. The sheer fact that the IPL lets consumers consume tweets for free via a missed call is a testimony to a shift in the consumption pattern of sports for the viewers.” The numbers support his story. There was a 102 percecnt increase in the use of the #IPL in tweets between week one of IPL8 and week one of IPL7. Accordingly to the “Twitter audience index” in just the first two weeks of IPL8, tweets related to the IPL garnered ~137 million impressions. While Twitter is doing a phenomenal job of taking the sporting action to the fans there is a young company which is attempting to do the reverse, that is taking the fans to the sporting action. Fanmode is a UK based company that lets fans use its platform to engage with their favourite sport teams during live events. You can cheer, clap or even wave a flag with Fanmode and your vibe will be transmitted to the live venue in real time. Fanmode will collate this energy turning it into graphical representation which will be displayed on Vibeboards for the live venues. “We want to turn the world into a stadium,” Piyush Chaudhary, General Manager of FanMode India, said. And FanMode is slowly finding partners as many believe in the benefits of going the extra mile to bring fans closer to the game and the players they root for. This is now the central idea of fan engagement. While the casual sports watcher will still continue to enjoy watching their sports on TV with a group of friends, increasingly, a substantial group seems to be interested in upping their experiences while engaging with the game –for example–taking part in fantasy leagues, tweeting their commentary or using apps to watch replays at multiple angles. Major League Baseball’s CTO, Joe Inzerillo, famous quote sums it up quite well. “Whether it’s good or bad that everyone is plugged in and connected all the time is a debate for philosophers. We just try to predict where our fans are going to go."