Which player had the most RBI in 2015? Facebook Messenger wants to see if you know the answer.
A new Messenger bot, announced last month, will engage MLB fans in trivia via the popular Facebook chat service. The bot is one of several created by major sports leagues and teams aiming to drive engagement with fans on a deeper level. This pursuit of fans via Messenger makes sense: Facebook has announced that 1.3 billion people across the globe use the service every month.
“It really started from day one,” said Linda Lee, who works in strategic partnerships for Messenger. “They (the leagues) all followed the tremendous opportunity that Messenger affords in being able to utilize — in being able to really interact in a more personalized way to develop those fan relationships.”
The MLB bot follows a number of others, such as an NBA bot released during the 2016 NBA Finals that allowed users to request highlight clips of a specific player. The NBA Finals bot was one of the first—Facebook opened up Messenger to bots in April 2016. The Golden State Warriors and Denver Broncos are among the teams to have also created Messenger bots.
Bots are not new to MLB, however. The At-Bat and Ballpark apps both feature the technology — in fact, MLB launched a voice bot within At-Bat on Friday, according to Andrew Patterson, MLB Advanced Media’s director of new media. MLB learned of Facebook’s interest in incorporating bots into Messenger and approached the social network with the idea.
“I think that Facebook is more about friends and playing with people and engaging, we wanted to make fans (something) that was potentially a little bit different that was still baseball-related, but maybe not as baseball-centric,” Patterson said. “And we thought that trivia might be a really fun way to do that.”
An MLB spokesman added that with feedback from Facebook and users, they are constantly working to develop the bot. For example, topical questions were added for the ongoing postseason. Currently, there are 1,700 questions the bot can ask.
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According to Lee, the majority of Messenger users engage with the service through the app rather than through the desktop site, Messenger.com, or through their Facebook home page. That could prove important for the MLB bot, which users could use while at the ballpark.
“It’s very clear that they’re wanting to engage with businesses, brands, and especially when it comes to sports, (which have an) incredibly engaging type of fan base, which lends itself really well to how sports brands are looking to Messenger to reach those fans on this massive scale,” Lee said.
Lee added, however, that the bots are closely tied with their businesses’ Facebook pages, which the businesses will use to promote the bot to fans. Facebook pages for sports leagues and teams typically garner millions of likes and views.
It’s too early for MLB and Messenger to know the demographics of who’s using the bot, but both Lee and Patterson know the audience skews young. In a time when baseball has had well-reported trouble attracting a younger fan base, the Messenger bot could help engage that seemingly elusive market.
“We’re an open platform, so we’re all about making sure that businesses, organizations, these leagues, sports fans have all the tools that they need to really enable and offer compelling customer, fan, reader type of experiences,” Lee said, “and our mission is really to be the place where people can connect with businesses in that manner.”
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As MLB seeks to expand the bot’s capabilities, fans could see features such as categorized questions that could go all the way back to baseball’s beginnings or include questions about celebrity fans, Patterson said. In-game trivia is another intriguing feature that could materialize soon.
“One of the really cool experiences that we’re working on building and trying to understand is that real-time questions, so the things within the game that are actually affecting the game, actually having questions pertaining to that to be able to come up,” Patterson said.
“If you’re looking at the hat game or the shell game or the train race game that happens on the scoreboard,” he added, “you could do trivia, where fans could play trivia throughout the game and you could put those questions up and fans could play along, I think that would be a really cool experience for us to put forward in there.”
For now, fans can be content with testing their baseball knowledge within Messenger.
By the way, the answer the bot wants is Nolan Arenado, the Colorado Rockies’ third baseman.