@__tosh Yes, our primary focus is on football (soccer) for the moment, due to the EURO/http://www.uefa.com/ and the COPA America/http://www.ca2016.com/. We'll then cover selected sports at the Summer Olympics in Rio De Janeiro/https://www.olympic.org/rio-2016. With the traction from those major events, we'll then move to the European football market and cover most top leagues like the German Bundesliga, the Premier League, the Champions or Europa League (starting in August). As soon as we got a critical user base, we plan to launch additional US leagues.
Sports? I'd say the Top 6 sports worldwide for sure: Football ("soccer"), basketball, cricket, baseball, American football ("football"), and hockey. Down the road maybe also selected individual sports (think: golf, tennis etc). We've not looked much into eSports so far.
@ninthart haha, right. @__tosh there are 500 million dedicated football fans on Facebook based on a research study in 2014 for the FIFA World Cup (while Brazil has the most fans of any country with 53.8 million, surprisingly, the US is Number 2 with 48.9 million).
FB considers people a "football fan" if they liked a team or a player's page). Arguably the most important cultural passion point for Hispanics is football. Of the 48.9 million football fans in the US, 10 million of them exhibit Hispanic affinity. For this reason, the Olympics in Brazil will be very important for us. Neymar will be playing as well - so, the football tournament at the Olympics should draw some (local) attention.
Over the last few years major sports events changed from being consumed through a single channel (📺 TV) to rich multi-channel experiences 📺🖥💻📱🤖 including fan engagement before and after the actual games.
It is a bit like the best practices of e-sports finally coming to mainstream sports events. The UEFA EURO 2016 (huge soccer event in Europe) and Inscouts (predicting games, discussing with friends, getting rated on accuracy …) is a good case study for where fan base engagement this is heading. 🎯🔥😂👑
I expect that we'll see way more in this direction going forward as 📘 Facebook, 🐣 Twitter, 📺 Youtube and others are starting to partner with ⚽️🏀🏈⚾️ major sports events this year.
Facebook: http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016...
Twitter: https://nflcommunications.com/Pa...
YouTube: http://m.thedrum.com/news/2016/0...
@__tosh Thanks for hunting us.
Yes, I agree, technology is reinventing the sports fan experience massively right now. Even leagues and individual teams started to recognize this opportunity, as their "audience" is becoming more and more global - fans are very content-hungry, but also pretty demanding/picky on the other side. It's hard to satisfy them with "basic" content. Thus, they watch what they want, when they want, and where they want.
In short, challenges are everywhere, when it comes to fan engagement. Also second screen options are endless. So are the ways leagues and teams can reach them during live events. As it becomes ingrained into the sports experience, the second screen must be about the fan, providing deeper engagement, better exposure and increasing value for fans.
With Inscouts, we focus on solving this problem - open issue: what will get fans in the stands or on their couches back home to engage?
@mikeseeh We picked this idea because we are our own customer - all of us are huge and passionate sports fans. Before launching Inscouts, we mainly used WhatsApp (special groups for different friends and interests - for instance, one group for ManU & Bayern Munich because of "Basti Schweinsteiger", another one for "NHL-related stuff") to discuss our favourite leagues, teams or players. There were no apps/platforms available that drive social conversations in sports most effectively with ratings. This was the reason why we decided to finally go for it (we saw the gap, and felt the need as a fan).
As mentioned above, conversations are not really genuine and often a lot of “Blah Blah”. It's challenging for fans, as there are too many choices, especially during live games. Fans can’t connect in authentic ways. Fans can’t rate favorite teams. Fans can’t rate individual players. As a result, it's pretty hard to get fans in the stands and back home on the couch to engage.
So, what's new about it? This is quite simple => Inscouts is all about *** performance ratings *** - fans can rate their most favourite teams and players on a scale from 1 to 6 *** 1= poor performance, 6= outstanding *** across leagues & sports to compete with their friends and peers (think: leaderboards & rankings).
Our goal with Inscouts? We want to create the best fan engagement platform available that covers the entire "fan journey" (pre-game, live, post-game - all gamified). Each user gets a "performance-score" for each game based on his individual predictions (pre-game), and ratings (live/post-game) compared to the entire crowd.
@__tosh I think it is great to see these platforms finally opening up. Personally, I'd love to see that as a fan (think about being in the stadium and chatting with a "stats bot" of your most favourite league or team. Or even breaking it down to an individual player level). With all the Inscouts data, those bots could be pimped up with additional data and fan analytics (think: wisdom of crowds).
@__tosh I think that eSports is huge, and getting even bigger over the next couple of years. Sports in general is a global phenomenon, and highly valued in society. eSports is not clearly there yet (but it's a growing trend): http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/2...
Fans *** no matter if sports or eSports *** are super passionate so this is the common basis. Can eSports be considered "real" sports? For me, yes - as there are many parallels between traditional (athletic) sports and eSports. The debate over whether eSports are a “real” sport or not is ongoing and somewhat semantic.
In "traditional" sports, there is high drama (because so many people are paying attention). Thus, it bonds you to other people - on a micro level, it brings friends together, on a macro level, it gives the greater community another thing to bond over. People love this feeling - that’s why Christmas songs make everyone happy. When they play in public all December, it’s like we’re all in holiday mode together. I guess, this is the same for eSports, right?
Maybe the difference is that eSports fans are more tech-savvy, and hence, open for new technology.
@fdorfbauer The entire "fan journey" is our main focus. In-game ("live") the most important part. In-game actions drive post-game discussions. (A) pre-game: you can predict the game score, and the man-of-the-match (for each team), (B) live: you can rate teams & players from 1 to 6, and thus, vote for the man-of-the-match (for each team), (C): post-game: you get your user-score (based on all predictions & ratings made), share and spread it (via social media channels like Twitter, FB, WhatsApp, FB Messenger, Telegram, Spark & Co), and compete with your friends (think: rankings/leaderboards across groups, leagues, teams, games etc). You can also win badges.
Due to the fact that Inscouts gives fans a "real voice", you can finally stop all "Blah Blah" about teams & players, and get into real - *** with ratings ***. We feel that this is where the industry is heading - make social conversations in sports more genuine, more fact-based and data-driven (think: deeper fan analytics).
@gekitz this talk addresses not only how fan behavior is changing, but also explores opportunities for sport brands to recognize and capitalize on these emerging trends: http://www.sloansportsconference...
I guess that data collected will drive sports in a direction unimaginable. However, the entertainment value of sharing these data creates a host of new possibilities for both TV and social networks. Let's see how this plays out in the future!
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