According to an Associated Press poll in January 2014, “about half of Americans say they are fans of pro football.” That’s roughly 158 million people, and with that many fans comes many opinions, ideas, and experiences. With an overwhelming range of football expertise, it’s difficult to imagine a community of football fans where you can share your thoughts and ideas and actually be heard. Yet, a new app called uSTADIUM is quickly creating a buzz among football fans all across the country, as the first ever social networking app that is entirely focused on creating a community of football fans and enhancing the fan experience.
According to co-founder Nick Spano, uSTADIUM differentiates itself by focusing exclusively on football fans. Most sport social networking apps lend themselves to several major sports. However, uSTADIUM is aimed solely at the most popular sport in North America. Spano explains, “We want uSTADIUM to be the one-stop for football fans to interact and meet. Whether that means debating quarterbacks, meeting up for a tailgate or selling/buying tickets to Sunday’s game.”
All football fans, take notice: uSTADIUM is here to become the place for football fans.
Here’s how uSTADIUM works:
The Features
The uSTADIUM app is appealing with its sleek and simple interface design. It allows users to create profiles, upload pictures, videos and text without being limited by the number of characters, and offers contests for users. The app has four main features that allow users to connect with one another to share thoughts, opinions, and ideas in a variety of ways.
Activity
The first feature that appears to users – the Activity feature — is the backbone of the uSTADIUM app. Unlike Twitter where characters and text is limited, uSTADIUM encourages its users to engage and share thoughts that are as expressive as they want. Spano explains, “Activity is the page similar to your timeline. This allows fans to post about anything in the football world. They can post videos, pictures or just plain text.”
And similar to your timeline, uSTADIUM offers users the chance to rate posts, with straightforward likes, dislikes, and comment icons. According to Spano, “The best part of our Like/Dislike is it’s completely anonymous to the public. While the person who posts it can see who likes/dislikes, the public can’t. This allows for a ton of interactions as fellow uSTADIUM users can be as honest as possible.”
Live
The second feature is the LIVE feature, which allows users to focus their efforts on a single game or single team. For example, Spano explains, “If you’re just a Jet fan and want to talk about their game vs. the Patriots, go over to LIVE and talk about the big game.”
Users can still post and rate in the same way they can in the Activity page, but the LIVE feature makes is quick and convenient to engage and interact with other users that are watching the same game as you.
Contest
Win. Free. Stuff. These are three words that everyone enjoys hearing, and uSTADIUM enjoys this unique feature. While the Activity and LIVE features offer users a platform to discuss the game and upload pictures and videos to share their experiences, uSTADIUM also wants to reward its users creativity with the Contest feature. Get the creative juices flowing because you can win free prizes by uploading unique entries for each contest.
Spano admits the contest portal is his favorite: “This allows the creativity to flow and who doesn’t love winning awesome prizes? Whether it’s a copy of Madden of your favorite teams jersey, this section makes people put their thinking caps on and go to town!” The contest portal is a unique concept that uSTADIUM hopes to maximize in order to increase user engagement. And seriously, who doesn’t love free prizes?
Profile
In order to post and upload entries, you must first sign up for a profile. Each user has a profile with a unique username and a chance to upload a picture and write a bio. The profile portal is your personal center for notifications and all of your posts. Users can input as much, or as little, information as they would like and it’s extremely simple and easy to navigate.
Bonus: Huddles
While uSTADIUM aims to be the place to go on your smartphone for a community of football fans, they also want to be the go-to place for an off-line community of football fans. Spano explains, “We understand that the mass user-migration to ‘real’ interaction and true interpersonal relationships (i.e. meetup and dating sites) has no better venue than sports: sports bars, groups, events, and second-screen integration. We want to make that as much part of our brand as anything else.”
This is another unique aspect of uSTADIUM: they are not limiting interactions to just mobile phones. They want their users and fans to be able to connect beyond the artificial interactions that develop on the app and expand into real-life conversations where fans can debate their favorite quarterbacks or meet up to watch the game. The uSTADIUM team even hosted an NFL Draft Party in NYC where they invited hundreds of people for food and drinks while watching the first round of the draft and checking out the app.
uSTADIUM has covered all its bases when it comes to being the one-stop place for football fans. From sharing thoughts and following your favorite team, to free prizes and in-person get togethers, uSTADIUM looks to be a fun app to download and try as NFL training camps are around the corner.