Want to meet up with your friends across town at a bar before the Jaguars game? There’s an app for that.
The Jacksonville Jaguars have unveiled their new mobile app, in partnership with social startup Paranoid Fan, with a heavy focus on socialization whether at EverBank Field or in the neighborhood.
The app features a live chat room for Jags fans, along with private messaging and a specific gameday chat room for stadium spectators. The Paranoid Fan collaboration will create a “marketplace map” of tailgates at EverBank Field or bars and restaurants where Jaguars fans normally congregate, according to the announcement.
“We knew that it was important to develop a world-class app experience for our fans and turned to Paranoid Fan to help us accomplish this goal,” Steve Ziff, the Jaguars’ VP of marketing and digital media, said in a statement. “Working together, we’ve unlocked incredible opportunities to provide our fans with some of the most technologically-advanced and dynamically-built features, enhancing both their content and game day experiences. When fully complete, we believe this will be one of the best apps that exist in sports and entertainment.”
Like other sports team apps, the new Jaguars app will send out score updates, and fans can view weekly stats and standings. And, in a growing trend, the Jaguars are joining the group of professional sports teams and venues across the country to move toward mobile-only ticketing. The team is the first to use Ticketmaster’s most recent software development kit, which will support its completely mobile ticketing efforts. Fans who are registered with tickets can also use the app to put their names in the ring for seat upgrades and other perks.
Paranoid Fan comes into its partnership with the Jaguars following its selection as one of 10 teams in the inaugural Techstars Connection startup accelerator, which itself collaborated with AB InBev to choose startups that focused on beer. Paranoid Fan was seemingly chosen for its ability to connect fans at bars or tailgates near a sports venue.
“Paranoid Fan is excited to kick off the NFL season alongside the Jacksonville Jaguars with a new mobile application that will focus on driving social fan engagement around artificial intelligence and mapping,” Paranoid Fan CEO Augustin Gonzalez said in a statement. “Innovating around the game day and fan experience is paramount to us and the Jaguars.”
The app is currently in beta, according to the announcement, and more features — an informational chatbot, customer surveys, fantasy football integration, augmented reality and mobile payments — are set to come. A version of the app is being developed for Jaguars fans in the United Kingdom, where the team has played a game each year since 2013, and where they will face the Baltimore Ravens this Sunday.