Sport Without Fans, Does The Experience Match Up?
By Rob George
3pm on a Saturday in the UK, Sunday lunchtime on the US East Coast and an April evening across India; times which are significant with sports fans. It’s when communities form, families come together, and towns are decked out in colour to watch their local sides play.
However, much like with almost every industry across the globe, COVID-19 brought this to a halt as countries were plunged into lockdown. With it the sporting industry was presented with a challenge that it had never encountered before: How do you continue to deliver experiences for fans now they are confined to their homes?
The user needs
As the industry has grappled with this challenge, it has naturally turned to digital solutions to fill the void. Leagues and broadcasters across the world have recognised that the key to designing a great digital experience lies in addressing the user need.
But what is it that people love so much about live sport? Where does the user need lie?
Separate surveys conducted by Deloitte and by the English Football League conclude that atmosphere is the single biggest factor in encouraging fans to attend live events. Not far behind is the sense of community that individuals feel a part of when they step foot inside stadiums and arenas. Therefore on the surface it would appear to make sense that many of the revamped experiences have tried to digitally generate these for their customers. The question is, are these actually what users want from their digital experience?
Delivering these needs digitally
Anyone who has watched sport during lockdown will be familiar with the fake crowd noise which now provides a backdrop to all games. When broadcasting the Premier League, Sky Sports have attempted to utilise the experience of EA Sports, who operate in the e-sports market, to apply the same sound effects used in their video games to generate atmosphere for its programmes — highlighting how ‘physical’ sports have had to learn from ‘digital’ ones. Other leagues, such as the NBA, have gone further still, offering the chance to purchase a ‘virtual seat’ at events. This led to fans being seen on 17-foot-high video screens around basketball courts when the NBA resumed in July as the league tried both to create a unique experience and generate a sense of atmosphere.
In similar ways there have been efforts to generate a sense of community despite fans now being miles apart. Eleven Sports and BT Sport have introduced a ‘watch together’ feature to their shows, aiming to bring people together to watch and discuss the game online, generating that sense of community.
But how successful have these efforts been? Does the fact that providers offer the opportunity to mute these effects hint to the fact that more could be done? Should the industry in-fact be exploring a different set of user needs — digital as opposed to physical?
Learning from others
When looking to create a digital experience, sport can learn a lot from the retail industry. 20 years ago, users associated a luxury shopping experience with champagne on arrival or a personal assistant in-store. However, as retail has become dominated by the digital space, luxury experiences in the user’s eyes have become very different. It’s now the service that is offered by the likes of Net-a-Porter and Amazon — next day delivery, free returns, slick user experience — which sets these brands apart for users. The industry has recognised that customers want something different from their digital touchpoint — they don’t just want the physical experience replicated.
As such, sport should perhaps challenge itself in a different way. Rather than asking how we replicate the physical user experience, the industry should explore what fans really want from their digital experience. Some of the players in the market have adopted this approach and they are starting to see the results.
Digital innovation
Intel have become one of the market leaders in producing cutting-edge digital content and have consequently formed partnerships with many major leagues and sports teams across the globe. They have used digital innovation to drive the fan experience, providing an interesting blueprint for others to follow. Their TruView and Virtual Reality offerings use multiple cameras to capture the action from every angle available, enabling fans to get a 360-degree view of the event through virtual reality headsets. This opens up a viewing experience different to anything a user could access live and such benefits have been recognised by the industry. In 2020 alone Intel TruView extended partnerships with Manchester City and Arsenal, and are currently installed in 19 out of the 20 NFL teams — illustrating how well their innovations have been recevied.
To a similar extent BT Sport, one of the UK’s major sports broadcasters, have introduced augmented reality to their broadcasts. Viewers can display in-play stats and line-ups on screen whilst they are watching the action, as well as being able to zoom into parts of the pitch and pick from cameras all around the ground. Now, rather than be consigned to a single seat in a stadium, users can now choose to digitally move around the ground and access the game from every angle, equipped with stats and insights to enhance their experience.
These examples show how providers have gone beyond merely trying to replicate the physical matchday experience as they try to transport individuals into the now-empty grounds.
So, have they succeeded?
Putting the result into perspective
As we enter 2021 the slow return of fans to stadiums shouldn’t see broadcasters and leagues regarding their efforts as failures. Not even the most ardent support of the technology introduced would have expected it to replace the match day experience for everybody. However, we can analyse the success through a different lens.
The innovation borne out of the last year has helped allow sport to become more accessible as digital technology has opened up new experiences to wider audiences. Many people aren’t fortunate enough to attend live matches, with accessibility difficult, availability scarce and prices high, however the new offerings allow these individuals to better experience what makes the live event so special. As such it is the providers who have innovated who are succeeding — with BT sport reporting that viewing numbers were, for some events, ten times higher in May and June 2020 then they were pre-lockdown.
So, while it is true to say that for many fans, digital will never replicate the experience of attending a game live, the advancements of the offerings over the last few months have opened up new experiences to those who don’t have that opportunity. In here lies a lesson for designers as well as those in sport — truly successful digital experiences are created when a user’s digital needs are analysed and the power of technology is harnassed. It is not enough to simply try and replicate one contextual experience through an entirely different medium.
The sports industry may not have used digital to perfectly replicate its match-day experience, but it has used it to expand and enhance what it offers to its audience, making it more accessible and resilient to future challenges. Stadiums and arenas may have fallen quiet, but the industry has moved forward, innovating and re-imagining the experience it delivers.
Rob George — Experience Designer at Deloitte Digital
