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We’ve come a long way from “take me out to the ball game, buy me some peanuts and cracker jack.”
These days, sport means spectacle: Excitement! Engagement! Tech! A recent QuestDIY survey showed that fans are open to the potentials of AR and VR—and that brands have ample room to leverage these platforms.
Few brands know this better than ARound, a start-up that’s leveraging augmented-reality to level-up the live sports experience.
From AR-enabled, home-run-derby games to real-time stats layered atop your view of the field, ARound becomes a new stadium companion. Bonus: It’s accessible through the web, no app download required.
Partnerships with franchises like the Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals, and Los Angeles Rams have raised ARound’s profile.
Now, the team is heading to Stagwell's Sport Beach at Cannes next week to preview some exciting work that they’ve done for major-league soccer.
I chatted with ARound CEO Josh Beatty and CCO Dana Ware about how augmented reality is a game changer for fans and brands alike.
What’s ARound’s reason for being? What are you trying to achieve?
Josh Beatty: What we love to do is bring brands into the action of live sporting events, and give them a new marketing platform for them to bring their story to life in new ways.
How is ARound taking advantage of those pre-game or mid-game moments—when people would otherwise be getting drinks, or scrolling through Instagram?
JB: We work closely with teams to really understand where they see this fitting in most effectively. There’s a lot of downtime in baseball, whereas in soccer, people are glued to the action for 90 minutes.
But pre-game is something that we can really carve out and create new meaning within. We've proven that out within the NBA and with the NFL.
This can hopefully become a tradition that fans can feel ownership over, and brands can really see as an effective means to communicate and convert their audience.
Once the game starts, you’re shifting into a different mode. How does ARound augment the event once the teams actually take the field?
JB: There’s a shared, real-time AR experience that allows you to see other fans in the stadium interacting with content.
And then we also bring data visualizations onto the field, driven by sports APIs. We’re really thinking about different audiences and how we can provide channels they can tap into to augment their experience the way they want.
Obviously you want ARound to be a great experience for brands and sports fans alike. You don’t want the fans to feel like they’re being exhausted by something that’s overly ad-saturated.
Dana Ware: A bunch of us at ARound are gamers, and we like to make games. We’re creating stuff that’s actually fun and engaging. We're able to bring brands in there in a seamless way to make it not feel as though we're cramming this ad down your throat.
Also, we give you real life loot. We do partnerships with brands who give out real merchandise through our digital loot boxes; fans can go to the store and redeem it for a real life prize. We’re crossing the digital with the physical in a way that’s never really been done before, especially for live events.
You’re not the first company to try to leverage AR within the context of live events, of course. What did you see that was missing the mark?
JB: Augmented reality tech has been around for a really long time. But the majority of it is really just focused on yourself.
What we realized is that we could turn the camera around and focus on the things that matter—the people, places and shared passions around us—and use that as a way to bring people together.
While most of the internet is divisive and isolating, we see shared AR as the opposite. It's a place of connections and interactions.
—Josh Beatty, CEO of ARound
Fan interaction is indeed so key here, the social aspect. It reminds me a bit of Peloton: You’re having an experience with an instructor on your screen, but there are members of the community “high-fiving” you and engaging in light-touch ways.
DW: That’s a simple interaction, right? It doesn’t have a whole lot of depth behind it, but it’s still cute. And it’s the same for ARound, you can choose your level of engagement.
We’re building an ecosystem that allows us to do multiplayer games, but also games where you and a friend can go off and have a smaller-scale experience. You can also see other fans' profiles and the things they’ve collected.
We already know that these users have something in common, whether it’s their love of a sports team, or the city they live in, or physically being at this game in this moment of time. We just have to connect them with each other to build that community.
How would you counter someone who simply says, “You’re at a ball game. Get off your phone, look at the action.”
DW: When you go to a game, the irony is that half the people there are already on their cell phone. We're just, we're offering you something that could actually like bring you into the experience.
