Case Study: Gaming’s Impact on the Los Angeles Auto Show
As an event organizer you are constantly struggling to bring in new attendees, as well as create recurring ones. How then can you offer an engagement point to make your event standout from the others and keep people coming back?
This case study was conducted to see if gaming can be that engagement point organizers are looking for. Conducted at the Los Angeles Auto Show, this study was a collaboration between Experient, a leader in experiential event design, and Hubtag, a video game broadcasting and esport technology company. Below are the notes and observations we saw during the event.
Gaming By the Numbers
Why add gaming to your event? Isn’t there a social stigma around gaming? Not anymore.
Technology continues to advance and gaming becomes more and more immersive. The result is, a global population of gamers that is increasing by staggering amounts. In the past five years we have seen gaming become age agnostic and now every generation has access to electronic devices, virtually everyone is becoming a gamer.
The vibrant amateur market of gaming and esports is growing in a number of different ways. This provides an excellent chance for event organizers to offer an activation opportunity for sponsorship, allowing the sponsor to reach a demographic and generational audience in a more authentic way.
Relevant Stats:
- esport viewership grows to 188 million in 2015
- 577 Million in Ad Revenue from esport Events
- 65% of viewers who identify as hardcore gamers watch livestreams
- Total market value for gaming video content reaches 3.8 Billion
- 486,411,939 Global Audience for esport events
Metrics provided by SuperData
With such a wide global audience, gaming is a great way to engage multiple demographics at an event or tradeshow. How you implement some kind of gaming element into your event largely depends on the type of event you are planning, the audience you want to reach, and the brand you want to promote.
The Case Study
Hubtag, in conjunction with Microsoft and Experient, recently ran a company experiment to see how gaming impacts physical events.
The Idea: By providing a gaming install at a physical event, we can increase attendee engagement while also generating an return on investment for the booth exhibitor.
With so many events to attend in a year, it is important for organizers to create a lasting experience for attendees to fuel the growth and audience retention they need to survive.
Event Details
Working with the Los Angeles Auto Show organizers, we were able to secure booth space in the After Market Hall of the event at this year’s show. In total the LA Auto show ran from November 19th-28th, with 3 press days prior to the public days. The booth was set up on the final press day, in preparation for opening weekend. We chose Microsoft’s latest racing title, Forza 6, because of the natural fit with the demographic that attends an Auto show.
One of the main success points was having the 15 Xbox’s in addition to the playseat. This allowed guests an opportunity to play while waiting for their turn in the seat.
The booth consisted of a 15x15 space near the entrance. We set up several fold out tables around the outside of the booth, with a lounge area sporting couches and tables in the middle. Around the perimeter there were 15 Xbox One’s in GAEMS Cases, all running the Forza 6 Demo. Additionally, we placed an official Forza Playseat in the middle of the booth that was hooked up to a 55 Inch television. Attendees would line up and race in the seat for a more simulated experience, or sit down at one of the many Xbox’s that were available.
Metrics
Being a case study, Hubtag’s main role at the LA Auto Show was to document the experience and build a strong case study for Microsoft and LA Auto to demonstrate a solid return on investment. We tracked a number of analytics and engagement points from attendees throughout the 10 days of the show.
Opening weekend saw the most traffic out of the entire show for the booth. Being both a weekend, and the public opening, we easily supported several thousand attendees in just the first 3 days. From there traffic was highest in the afternoons, while still peaking on the weekends. The Forza Playseat was a main engagement point which enticed guest to interact with the activation. After hearing and seeing someone physically race in a seat, attendees would wander in to see what the booth was all about. From there they would either stay and watch, or enjoy one of the 15 available Xbox One’s.
The booth did extremely well with kids in particular. The most common occurrence would be the kids being drawn in by the video games while the parents would sit down and relax in the lounge area. This made it easy to talk to the parents about the various Microsoft products that were available for the holidays while the children experienced the game.
The average person would race 1.3 times, primarily on the Rio De Janiero track.
In addition to a strong interest in Forza, our attendees were extremely interested in the GAEMS Cases. These gaming on the go cases generated a lot of buzz because of their ease of use and setup. They were ideal for our booth setup because it allowed us to assemble and tear down very easily, as well as keeping the consoles rooted to avoid someone stealing a unit. What this proved to us that we could support multiple sponsors in one activation. The enthusiasm of the over 13,000 guests were infectious!
There was not a retail component for this case study, in the future we plan to encourage exhibitors to sell merchandise on location with an “event discount” to further drive revenue numbers. This approach could help offset the physical cost of the activation.
Not only did we see success from an attendee engagement standpoint, our partners at Microsoft saw direct results as well. Although no sales were provided on location, Microsoft saw great ROI for their local stores. We used discount cards that allow us to track interactions between the event and the retail stores. This accounted for over $3,000 in revenue for the local Microsoft store prior to the conclusion of the event.
Overall, all parties involved in the execution of this event were happy with the results. Microsoft saw a direct return on investment at their local stores, LA Auto created a unique value add for their attendees, and Hubtag and Experient walked away with validation that gaming can successfully be implemented in an industry specific trade show.
We believe the event and trade show Industry should pay close attention to how gaming can impact an event.
Experiential design and attendee engagement are critical to a successful event. With gaming becoming more immersive and widely adopted, it will soon become standard to have a virtual experience at any event or trade show.
If you would like to talk about gaming, esports, or its impact on a tradeshow/events feel free to reach out
Background on Hubtag
Hubtag is an esport technology company providing resources and broadcast solutions to video gamers. Our current product is the Hubtag Caster, a livestream production suite that provides powerful production elements for gamers in an easy to manage way, such as live Twitter display, on-stream polling, and custom scene transitions. In addition to our software, we also run the Hubtag Academy, a free knowledge resource for online gamers, streamers, and event organizers.
For additional information contact: taylor@hubtag.net
Background on Experient
We earn our reputation every day with each meeting, convention, conference and exhibition that we manage for our clients. Our experienced professionals are dedicated to Perfecting the Event Experience for our customers by consistently delivering leading-edge thinking, risk-reducing solutions and the best technology platforms in the industry. Our core services include providing meeting planning, meeting management, event planning, site sourcing, hotel contract negotiation, registration, housing, and lead retrieval services for association, tradeshow, sports & enthusiast and government clients.
For additional information contact: brian.strickland@experient-inc.com
