There are few sporting events that come close to matching the magnitude of the Super Bowl. The game–and everything surrounding it–serves as a microcosm of society. Trends arise to the forefront that later extend to other avenues. Social media acts as the prism that highlights all of this intel.
Ad Age reported that the term “Super Bowl”, itself, registered close to five million social mentions. Opportunistic advertisers used this event to multiply their social conversation more than six times to that of their monthly average. Twitter also confirmed, of these ads, an eight percent uptick in leveraging hashtags from the year prior–a notable margin in light of the nearly 25 million comprised total tweets during the course of the game.
Conversely, there’s a larger emphasis to engage the 82,529 fans in attendance and the 111.5 million viewers watching elsewhere via social media.
For the first time in Super Bowl history, the NFL decided to open up and promote social at the game for the fans. This endeavor was made possible through their long-standing partnership with The Famous Group, an integrated production and software development firm based in Los Angeles. The prime real estate at MetLife Stadium to amplify these social channels resided on the four 18’ x 130’ HD LED video boards, which performed through utilizing The Famous Group’s VIXI technology.
VIXI stands as a software platform consisting of three main applications: live, web, and active. The first of which deals with what’s visible at the venue. The second serves as a digital interface for either social media platform or websites. And the third connects gesture motion devices and allows users to interact with it akin to Microsoft Kinect. All of these versions streamline hashtagged social content from the outlets’ APIs that a moderator can search through its content management system, which are manually selected to then display on the video boards. The capability exists to use any combination of them together; the NFL, though, just elected the former one.
On Super Bowl Sunday, The Famous Group aggregated photos and tweets well in advance of the game, having already been on site the day before to program the software and ensure the content’s visibility across the different panels. They compiled the most relevant pieces of content funneled by the “#SB48” hashtag, which was live and pushed by the league for more than a week prior. By the time the Seattle Seahawks won the big game, VIXI disseminated over 41,000 individual items that combined a Twitter and Instagram reach of 755,272,690 and 3,833,100, 557 impressions.
An NFL spokesperson described to SportTechie a moment where they briefly switched to another segment on the video boards and suddenly had to reverse course when asked, “Where did VIXI go?”, in response to fans’ demand.
While this activation drew success in its Super Bowl debut, The Famous Group has deployed this technology to various sports clients on numerous occasions. The development of VIXI took eight months in the making; it then launched for the Dallas Cowboys’ Draft Day party hosted inside of AT&T Stadium last year. They have since have had the Atlanta Falcons, Indiana Pacers, Toronto Blue Jays, and the 2014 Winter X Games among others deploy it as well.
Yet, there are startups entering this space, looking to tap into the user-generated social content within sporting events. This budding business primes to flourish going forward as teams aim to improve the in-venue experience. Capturing the social conversation and displaying it on video boards provides a simplified solution. The overall functionality, flexibility, and compatibility of the technology makes it easy for teams to implement without a barrier for fans to partake in.
During the #SportsConf earlier this year, Josh Decker, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tagboard, a competitor in the marketplace, made the admission that they “never thought of to be a sports business or be in the sports business” from their inception as of two years ago. They focused early on a web-based experience that honed in all the conversation from the different social networks into one destination. The idea of placing this medium outdoors came externally for them.
“The thing that makes us different from everything else out there is our expertise and experience in automating data to large format video screens,” says The Famous Group’s Executive Producer, Andrew Isaacson, to SportTechie.
He mentioned that VIXI’s software derives from their previous NFL work around the Stats-In-A-Box application, which dynamically showed statistics on every screen available across the league’s 32 different venues. This template has intended from the outset to make it easier for the control room personnel to operate. They viewed this opportunity through the lens of what sports broadcasters have been doing, in terms of visually showcasing content at HD quality.
“Our core business is in the creative services for the in-stadium production. We come from it from having 17 years of experience for providing content,” says The Famous Group’s Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director, Greg Harvey.
“We’re not a startup company that is just selling images to screen,” Harvey continues. “We came to this as a natural progression from where everything has changed in the sports industry.”
Since this presented the first time the Super Bowl leveraged this technology, the NFL passed on having any sponsorship integration. The league just wanted to have something for the fans to enjoy. Isaacson explained that in the backend of the software, tiles can be replaced with a sponsor’s logo, which can be done on a moment’s notice, per quarter, or every 15 minutes as it’s been sold to advertisers. VIXI also has the ability to go to a full-screen stillframe for video.
The NFL spokesperson added: “The NFL was very pleased with the performance of the platform. Fan engagement is growing importance to the NFL; and VIVI proved to be an effective way to entertain fans and enhance their game day experience.”
Before the NFL uses VIXI technology next at the upcoming draft, however, the Famous Group has partnered with NCAA to offer this to college fans at the Final Four. All four university fan bases will receive the chance to be featured inside AT&T Stadium’s massive video boards during yesterday’s team practices, tonight’s games, and then for Monday’s championship. The NCAA hasn’t decided whether sponsorship will be included, but the platform could easily serve as a value add to the likes of Coke Zero or Buick–both major sponsors evident in the official March Madness app. The younger demographics coming from the respective student bodies coupled with AT&T’s connectivity that took place at the Super Bowl and again now at the Final Four certainly bodes well for The Famous Group, too.