How gamification is shaping the future of the fan experience

The world is getting more interactive and more digital at what can sometimes seem an overwhelming rate. Fundamentally for you as a business owner, director, or manager, the way brands have to communicate with audiences to engage them is changing too…

In fact, it’s been changing for a while.

Since the early 2000s, with the rapid rise and fall of multiple social media platforms, and the development of Web 2.0, marketing has been as much about how your audience interacts with your messaging, and the content they themselves are putting out into the ether, as it is about your brand’s original ad concepts and slogans.

When it comes to sports, specifically, shaping the fan experience, this rapid advancement of technology brings rising expectations from audiences, but also, opportunities to augment and serve sports fan audiences on a potentially global scale that simply wasn’t possible before.

Understanding gamification in the context of sports

Modern gamification has really presented itself as the MVP-in-waiting on the sports marketing professional’s starting lineup. By modern gamification, we mean the application of game mechanics to pull on specific psychological levers to elicit a desired response from a user through a digital format.

The rapid rise in the popularity (and accessibility) of smartphones marks the point in time where gamification became prolific. Suddenly brands were able to include apps on web pages and within QR codes that could recommend products, or administer quizzes that assigned users a profile (“Which Friends character are you?” and such like), as well as instant win games that could deliver prizes and promotional codes in a visually engaging way.

Why it works

It works because human beings are hard-wired to play. Board games, playground games, video games, mobile games, strategy games, sports – within at least one of those broad categories, nearly every member of the population participates.

It’s a medium that’s appealing. At school, teachers typically have to motivate their pupils to read their textbooks, but at breaktime or recess, games of football, curby, tig, hide-and-seek, poddy, marbles, etc., will break out organically and enthusiastically.

The immersive power of gameplay has anecdotally been shown to help children learn new languages, and been manipulated by everyone from the US military to school teachers to enhance user concentration and foster knowledge and skill retention.

By the same token, brands have been using gamification experiences to encourage target customers to absorb their branded messaging, and to motivate them towards taking desired actions.

Why gamification belongs in sports marketing

Imagine a world where you’re marketed to in a gamified format by the company that sells you irons and washing machines, but the football team you watch play every week on the TV, and watch play live whenever schedule and budget aligns, only play fundamentals, and keep their engagement with you strictly traditional and one-way. It’s weird, right?

Maybe you’re a fan like your parents before you, and win or lose, this is your team – their static by-the-numbers approach to communications doesn’t bother you. But what about your kids? What about attracting new fans and building the team’s brand globally?

The next generation of fans will expect more of how you engage with them

The fact is, younger generations work on faster feedback cycles than older generations, and as more and more young people identify as global citizens, sports teams need to adapt to what technology is available to them to not only retain their local fanbase, but to appeal to fans across the country, and in some cases, across the planet.

For example, it might have been a bit of a novelty in the 90s for someone in the UK to follow an NFL team, but today, big teams like the Miami Dolphins and the Dallas Cowboys have huge international followings of merchandise-wearing diehards who aren’t afraid of a few late nights to experience the ups and downs with the rest of the fandom.

Streaming platforms make it so easy to follow different sports around the world that the teams fans follow, and even the sports fans follow, aren’t dictated by geography. Advanced digital techniques like gamification can act as a bridge to help teams create a sense of community that reflects this.

Sports fans want to do more than just watch

Sports fans are, by nature, more susceptible to gamification than perhaps any other type of audience. They’re demonstrably obsessive and governed by the repetition of a schedule of games. Whether they’re supporting their team’s season with the NFL, the NBA, or the Premier League, following their favourite tennis players through a Grandslam, or tracking the pro peloton through a grand tour like it’s a second job, sports fans are committed.

What’s more, like any spectator, they like to feel a sense of ownership about what they’re passionate about. They like to interact and do more than just follow. Look at the origins of fantasy sports. In the 30 for 30 documentary “Silly Little Game,” one of the founders of fantasy sports literally says, “I thought about baseball all the time, and I wanted to possess it.”

Modern gamification enables teams (and race or event organisers) to engage their audiences by appealing to this unique quality. Customised Quizzes can challenge your fans to prove they know their team history more than anyone else. Media Contests and attached Voting Galleries allow fans to show the whole community who’s got the best tailgate set-up before the big game.

Highly versatile and hyper effective

The opportunities for organisers, clubs, and competitions to improve the fan experience to retain, grow, and satisfy audiences is growing day by day. Here are some of the broader ways gamification can be incorporated to elevate the fan experience, with blow-by-blow examples.

To generate excitement, build community, and reward a fanbase

This is specifically aimed at sports teams. Whatever your sport, you’re likely competing for the next generation of fans, and this means community building, distributing prizes, and building a sense of continuity by the digital means that appeal to your target audience.

As already mentioned, sports team fan bases can not only be dotted across the country, but across the world. There are Manchester United fans making pilgrimages to Old Trafford from the likes of Hong Kong, and Green Bay Packers fans taking expeditions to Lambeau Field from as far away as Australia.

Customising Photo Contests where you invite your global fanbase to show their support for the team, and connecting it through a Voting Gallery, is a great way to inspire a global sense of community among fans. Highlight images people submit can then be shared on social media to help promote the Voting Gallery and drive further engagement.

Branding Drimify’s various sports games to your club’s colours, kit, and style – including Football, Basketball, American Football, and Rugby – and enabling the leaderboard function, is another way your community of fans can be brought together, except instead of showing team pride, they’re getting a chance to participate and compete against one another. The top 100 at the end of a campaign can then be entered into a prize draw for chances to win kit, tickets, and other merchandise.

Pro tip: Customised Drimify games can be integrated into your club’s app, or could even include calls to action to encourage players to sign up for your club’s app, redirecting them to create an account at the end of the experience.

Gamify your stadium, ground, or venue

As much as gamification opens up opportunities in the digital space, it’s also a tool to maximise opportunities in your physical space.

Unlike most stores, or museums or other attractions, as a sports team, you’re literally getting thousands of your audience physically returning to your venue week-in-week-out. For some fans, it’s a special treat to visit the stadium, but for some, it’s part of their routine. While the hoardings and big advertising spaces will typically be paid up by sponsoring brands, you can put QR codes that open up gamified experiences on the backs of seats, refreshments and food areas, outside areas, as well as in and around the club shop (and even matchday programmes if your club still produces them).

These could have Quizzes audiences can play at breaks or through half-time, or branded mini-games that contribute to a leaderboard displayed around the stadium. Use them to promote your club shop, or brands who sell food and drink within the stadium (who may also act as partners in the promotion).

Compliment a classic: Does your team invite one lucky fan to try and make a shot from the halfway line at halftime for a chance at a fabulous prize? By all means keep that great tradition going, but having a digitised companion game your entire audience can access is a way to engage everyone.

You could even have the person who gets to take the halfcourt shot be selected from a draw of the top 10 scorers in your customised Basketball Game.

Satisfy sponsors while entertaining fans

If the fans are your club’s life blood, your sponsors are the bones that give the organisation structure. You only need to look at the naming conventions for stadiums and cycling teams to know that without deep-pocketed partner brands, we wouldn’t have high level sports to enjoy. Their capital pays for superstars, development programmes, advanced scientific testing, and all the support staff and experts that can give a team a competitive edge.

Part of sponsoring a team means being a part of marketing, and you can use gamification to deliver value to your sponsors. Let’s say for example you’re a basketball team, and your team’s main sponsor is a hotel chain.

You could customise a user journey made up of multiple apps that meet multiple requirements using Drimify’s Combo™ game engine. This basically allows you to deliver users from game to game to game, to craft a direct user journey packed with variety, and allows you to keep them on your branded messages for longer (or the branded messages of your sponsor).

It could all start with a Quiz, challenging them to answer club trivia. Then it moves to an intermediate content screen, where they learn a bit about your sponsor’s facilities. Then they go directly to a Survey, to answer questions about travelling to away games to gather first party data for your sponsor. Finally, they land on a branded Spin the Wheel, where alongside club merchandise, one lucky winner gets an away day package including match tickets and their hotel stay. Bonus spot prizes can be given out after the fact to the highest performers of the Quiz.

Pro tip: Having variations of this gamified experience run once a month, or once every 2 months are a great way to build relationships with your sponsors and with your fans. You can adjust the content you’re delivering on behalf of the sponsors too – maybe for one promotion it’s on what they’re doing to support the club, for another it’s what they’re doing to help charities.

To create a participatory element for fans that tie into results

Another way you could gamify the fan experience is by setting up your own fantasy league.

If they think they can do a better job than your manager, invite them to demonstrate their knowledge rather than just talking trash on X (Twitter).

As much as this is an option for sports teams to have their fans compete amongst themselves, it’s also something tournament organisers can do to generate engagement among fans of the competition. The UEFA Champions League, the World Cup, the Super Bowl, or even for individual tournaments within the Olympics.

Fans pick from a roster of available players, and how those players then collectively perform in the tournament affects their overall score. Fans are rewarded for their knowledge of players and ability to predict the results.

Everything for a reason

It’s important to remember why you’re using gamification for the fan experience if you’re going to get the desired results. You’re not using gamification experiences to entertain people, or rather, entertainment isn’t the end result, but the vehicle by which you deliver on business objectives your club, organisation or event has.

If you think of your marketing strategy like a sports team, the gamification side isn’t your Haaland, your Brady, or your Tadej Pogacar. It’s more like De Bruyne setting up the shots on goal, the entire offensive line stopping Brady getting sacked, or Adam Yates rhythmically pacing every other contender into the shadowrealm to line things up for his leader. Gamification is a means to an end, an ever more important tool to enhance your marketing strategy, and better communicate with the fans and elevate their experience.

Fans are an essential resource for any sports team, sporting event, or adjacent organisation, and as the technology and expectations of audiences evolve, it’s in serving the fan experience where the greatest opportunities for innovation lie.

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