As the industry continues to reopen and consumers shift further towards digital platforms, a unique opportunity has opened up to explore new ways to increase engagement. Live sports and event venues face a great need for digital contactless solutions, centralized real-time data hubs, and new avenues for fan engagement.

Advancing technologies now offer businesses the ability to integrate and connect their systems so that venues have the option to effectively manage contractors and vendors, plan and adapt to sales needs and meet fan’s expectations, all while meeting government guidelines.

Through unified venue management, sports venues can measure the value and purchasing habits of each fan across multiple properties, online and throughout all in-venue locations such as in-seat, food and beverage, retail, suites, and more. These insights will increase operational efficiencies and lead to increased profitability by utilizing the data to create predictive analysis.

Added benefits of a fully integrated solution include increased fan satisfaction, retention, and spending through omnichannel experiences and will allow venues to better manage future health and safety challenges with tools such as rapid mobile testing, integrated lab results, and exposure alert capabilities

The full power of unified venue management

The latest technology has the power to future-proof the sports and events industry from real-time interoperable data insights to enhanced customer experiences. Digital solutions open the door to engage with an increasingly tech-savvy market by introducing a unified platform to connect previously siloed data and commerce infrastructures. Venues can gain real-time insights to drive fan interactions and distribute personalized promotions.

Venues need to support multiple functions from sponsorship promotion to points of sale and venue access for teams of contractors, staff, and fans alike. Whether security concerns, such as evacuations and contact tracing, or providing a seamless fan experience, managing these issues efficiently can be impossible without easily accessible data.

Implementing technologies like a digital wallet pass will enable venues to collect data from promotions and POS systems across multiple platforms. This allows venues to get to know their fans and provide tailored offers. Additionally, this technology can be integrated into any physical environment using the existing infrastructure. Companies like Fobi offer app-less solutions allowing any venue using any system to enhance operations and modernize its infrastructure.

Regain control of your data

With siloed data from various platforms for ticket sales, inventory, and in-venue purchasing, venues struggle to plan and budget for operational needs. The ability to pinpoint areas to distribute staff, stock, or create better fan engagement in real-time is vital for businesses to maximize existing revenue streams and build new ones.

For sports venues, this includes brands and sponsorship deals. Utilizing digital platforms can increase your sponsorship dollars by enabling brands, suppliers, and distributors access to real-time campaign and activation performance metrics such as:

• Detailed ROI measurement and attribution of sponsorship activations
• Access to anonymized, real-time fan data
• Direct communication channel with fans through personalized promotions
• Marketing tools that increase wallet share and customer acquisition.

Engage with your fans from anywhere, anytime

Using digital solutions that unify commerce infrastructures presents the unique opportunity to leverage fan engagement from the moment they purchase their tickets to as they are leaving the event. Through targeted marketing systems linked to a fan’s unique ID, venues can use fully automated platforms to collect data throughout the customer journey and action it to provide a next-level fan experience. By using triggers based on location, time, and behaviors, venue operators can push promotions uniquely tailored to fans via a mobile pass.

The sporting and events industries can no longer afford to wait out the pandemic. A digital engagement solution like Fobi’s can provide new revenue streams and improve existing ones.

Pairing venue management insights with direct-to-user communication opens the door to new fan engagement opportunities for venues and sponsors alike. Fobi saw this with the World Boxing Council (WBC) as a proof of concept. Using Fobi's Wallet Pass saw a user retention rate of 89 percent via personalized promotions. Beyond this, Fobi increased gamification engagement rates by 53 percent with an interactive questionnaire to make sure fans were engaged before the event even started. You can read more about Fobi’s impact at the championship fight here.

Fans have become comfortable with digital solutions and, in most cases, prefer to reduce contact and automate processes. A joint study by the National Retail Federation and Forrester found that 63% of consumers globally reporting they would switch to a provider that installed contactless payment capability over an existing relationship.

The potential for venues to control their data and action it into new revenue streams through digitization is large. Improving current operational inefficiencies will enable operators to better adapt to changing regulations and limit the effect of future industry disruption ahead of time.

The future of venue management involves centralizing data, real-time fan engagement, and targeted promotional offers. The sports industry, the fans, and the technology are finally ready to benefit from these unified commerce solutions.

You can learn more about Fobi's Venue Management Solution and if it is right for your business here.