FanThreeSixty’s Fan Cam Delivers User-generated Content to Fans’ Mobile Devices Via Sony Ci

FanThreeSixty is giving sports fans a better mobile entertainment experience and helping teams and venues build stronger relationships with their fans, through its newest mobile feature, FanCam. Leveraging Sony Ci cloud-hosted technology, FanCam allows registered users of a team or venue’s mobile application to take pictures using custom overlays created by the team, property or sponsors. These overlays harness the power of creativity to capture fans’ memorable moments, offer experiential sponsorship opportunities, and increase app adoption and engagement.

When a fan shares their photo with the organization, the user-generated content is sent to Sony’s Ci Media Cloud Platform where the organization can review, approve and download photos to use on a variety of channels including marketing, videoboards, and IPTV.

Through this partnership, Sony has scaled its solution to allow FanThreeSixty clients to upload and download FanCam content more efficiently, plus the addition of back-end services to move multiple images from workspace to workspace with out losing valuable metadata. Sony Ci’s fully cloud-based solution makes it a simple solution for users.

“We are excited about our continued partnership with Sony Ci to enhance the in-game experience for fans across all of our clients,” says Robb Heineman, partner and CEO of FanThreeSixty and Sporting Club, the ownership group of Sporting Kansas City. “Our partners are quickly seeing impressive results with this technology to increase app adoption and engagement, resulting in the ability to better understand their fans and deliver what they love at the perfect moment.”

FanThreeSixty launched FanCam in August of 2015 in partnership with partner/client Sporting Kansas City through its Uphoria app. After its launch, active apps users have increased by 149 percent during its first three matches of 2016 compared to 2015.

Following this powerful proof-of-concept, FanThreeSixty launched FanCam across all its clients with apps built on its Uphoria framework in late 2015. Since then, thousands of photos have been taken using FanCam.

“Our whole reason for being is to help our customers and partners create and deliver compelling content,” says David Rosen, VP, Solutions Business Development, Sony Professional Solutions Americas. “Fans want to share their experiences with other fans to create lasting memories, and our collaboration with FanThreeSixty provides the perfect way to host and deliver this dynamic user-generated content.”

With the Uphoria mobile framework, more active app users means more opportunities for FanThreeSixty clients to learn about their fans. Through the delivery of relevant content, experiences, and sponsorable assets, Uphoria seamlessly captures fan habits and behaviors within the platform’s larger data ecosystem. This provides FanThreeSixty partners with the ability to continuously create more personalized experiences for fans, enhancing their lifetime value and providing beneficial data back to sponsors.

Earlier this year, the SCG Trust in Sydney, Australia promoted a highly engaging and compelling app experience for the Sydney Sevens at Allianz Stadium, a large tournament of the World Rugby Sevens Series. FanCam was a key component of its fan engagement strategy and even used it to feature the best costumes worn at the event. Fans took hundreds of photos and there was a 29 percent increase in app downloads the week of the event.

At Etihad Stadium in Melbourne, Australia, FanCam has sparked an increase in application adoption and engagement. They’ve created a experiential overlays for a wide variety of events hosted at the stadium, and have collaborated with their partners to incorporate sponsored content into the overlays. Etihad is quickly seeing engagement results among its fans including a 58 percent increase in app downloads within two months of launching FanCam.

“We don’t feel fan engagement strategies should just be about building the next shiny object,” says Heineman. “It’s about utilizing technologies like Sony Ci and FanCam to provide value to the fan as well as give marketable information back to our partners.”