Technology and the fan experience have become synonymous in the era of digitized sports broadcasting. Whether you think of fantasy sports, OTT platforms streaming live events, or websites engaging fans with regular content updates, technology significantly enhances their ability to achieve the same excitement and energy they would experience in person. Sports platforms can engage fans and deliver a holistic experience by embracing digital innovation.
Leading sports platforms collaborate with experts like Viafoura to integrate features like live blogs and real-time chat on their websites. Click here to learn about the plethora of features that you can benefit from.
What makes digital innovation in sports important?
As the world progresses towards technological advances on every front, sports fans aren’t being left behind. OTT owners and sports event broadcasters have significantly benefited from new sophisticated technologies that they’ve been using to keep their fans engaged, even in the restricted social times of the pandemic.
While sports events appeal to fans, who love to participate and experience the hype even when not in person, it’s important to deploy the right technologies to foster better communication. In the end, the goal is to nurture the essence of community feeling among the users.
Unless you integrate your sports platforms with relevant features like live chat, blogs, or online communities, you will find it challenging to hook your visitors. This is why sports platforms prefer working closely with online engagement companies like Viafoura to ensure better interaction among their fans.
What digital features should your sports platform have?
The digital fan experience largely pivots around the features you integrate into your platform. By deploying powerful tools for community engagement, the social sports experience can be truly immersive! It’s clear that rather than external social media platforms or an OTT app, its best to engage sports fans on your official website. And to succeed, what matters most is the kind of experience you offer them.
1. The power of analytics
Think about an engaging, non-toxic and troll-free online environment where sports fans can enjoy a safe space to discuss their love of the game. Analytics can help make this happen by providing useful data that you can use to modify and improve your content.
- Live blogs rolling out a real-time account of the event can deliver a play-by-play experience to fans.
- Sports fans are likely to check out the content you tag with their favourite teams.
- Similarly, they might also check out tagged content with each category or player, as per their interests.
- You can use analytics tools to evaluate their preferences and strategize your content.
- Successful platforms provide personalized news feeds based on gathered data to foster better engagement.
2. Live chat
Integrating a community chat feature significantly helps sports platforms leverage engagement. By hosting the chat feature in your community, you can bring enthusiastic discussions and conversations to your platform.
Sports fans are habitually attracted to like-minded people that share their interests. While watching sports events alone is perfectly enjoyable, many would love the opportunity to discuss and share their excitement and responses to the event with others. With live service events and fantasy sports gaining prominence, even more users are learning about the benefits of communicating with their fellow sports enthusiasts in real-time.
Companies like Viafoura integrate lightweight community chat features that users can access through their mobile devices. This way, you can craft a better online experience for your fans, where they can share text, images, video, etc. Nowadays, it’s possible for fans to experience the same level of excitement and engagement at home as they would in the stadium.
3. Live blogs
Live blogs continue to keep sports fans engrossed with content customized for them.
- Leading sports platforms capitalize on the power of analytics to generate fresh content ideas.
- Along with this, they publish live blogs on the platforms to cover specific stories that fans would find interesting. This adds a more detailed or analytic approach to sports news interpretation.
- Moreover, you can publish evergreen pieces of content on your website to boost SEO. The secret to success and engagement lies in publishing contextual information in your live blogs.
Just like running commentary in sports, live blogging enables sports platforms to publish opinionated content in real-time. On top of this, live blogging presents you with virtually limitless possibilities in terms of content ideas. The key to generating fresh content time and time again is through understanding the interests and preferences of your visitors. Based off this knowledge, you can adjust and provide catered content for them.
4. Streamlined content moderation
While sports events are exciting, fans often get heated and engage in arguments. Moderating your content in the sports community is of utmost priority. By shutting down trolls in quick time, you can preserve the energetic and safe space provided by your platforms.
- When you come across personal attacks, verbal abuse, or any other inappropriate behaviour, you need to be prompt with your action.
- You can consider using software solutions that let you leverage their tools and moderation services.
- Some OTTs and sports platforms even hire content moderators from these expert teams to uphold the integrity of their platforms.
- Professionals can assist you with an auto-moderation engine that prevents inappropriate content from being published on your platform.
- In summary, this helps OTT platforms and sports websites to maintain a healthy vibe and appropriate level of enthusiasm.
5. Optimizing your revenue
Digital engagement brands empower sports platforms to capture first-party data with the help of sophisticated tools. By scrutinizing this data, they generate valuable insights into their behaviour that can be used to adjust their content and encourage a favourable response to what’s being offered.
This lets you acquire a loyal and recurring audience that you can further study for retention, and it’s clear that a happy audience is much more likely to accept your CTAs and end up earning you revenue.
Endnote
As technology continues to evolve and due to the recent pandemic, more sports fans than ever before have adjusted to consuming content in a virtual format. Therefore, crafting a holistic sports experience is a priority for OTT platforms and sports broadcasters. The process becomes amazingly easy when you collaborate with a digital experience company like Viafoura.
Engagement experts can guide you in deploying tools to set measurable goals. This ensures that sports platforms can take the right steps to measure engagement and tweak their strategies to grow their community.
