1. How has the Covid-19 outbreak impacted fan engagement, and why is digitalization well-suited to meet the changing situation we now find ourselves in?

We need to cope with the reality of a stadium without fans

We therefore have to rebuild not only user engagement but also an entirely new social dimension. Digital technologies can enable a brand-new user experience to cope with Covid-19 restrictions, but they can also enhance the experience we are used to, moving towards a new model of interaction with sports content.

2. Obviously nothing can replace live attendance in stadia/arenas, but how can the fan experience be improved by these technologies?

There is the opportunity to combine live experiences with the power of online tools

in particular leveraging interactivity, personalisation, immediacy and socialisation

Referring to interactive TV standards in particular- so HbbTV standards in Europe and ATSC3 in the US- there now is the opportunity to check real-times stats during the live experience, to access to multi-camera views providing different angles of sporting events, to chat with friends and exchange content with them, to navigate additional content during the event and also to experience gamification aspects both in terms of contest or betting.

3. What are the advantages for content owners and distributors?

This is the moment to create a new user engagement experience, to provide and distribute more targeted content and, of course, to make room for additional and targeted advertising as well as new monetization models. One of these new models could be for example

the transition from a traditional sponsorship model to an impulsive-buy or Watch&Buy eCommerce model

as it is now called.

4. What insights are yielded with regards to fan behaviour?

Audiences can be fully tracked so we can now analyse not only content consumption but also content preferences. We can now achieve better audience segmentation thanks to full tracking as supported by the interactive TV standards that I mentioned before. This results in a stronger finalisation of the audience and higher advertising value results.

5. Can you give a couple of real-world examples of these technologies in use?

At Fincons we have developed sport gamification killer app which combines traditional TV with OTT and therefore is a Hybrid TV solution and supports both contest and betting during live sport events, creating higher user engagement. We introduced live contests and leader boards to create highly engaging and sticky experiences making a strong game within the game, keeping interest active and introducing a new (virtual) social dimension within sport events fruition. Interactive TV combined with Gaming, Video Platforms and AI to gather and interpret data from multiple IoT sources and to automatically analyse content, enable these scenarios.

We also prepared a smart-watching personalised view of VOD content so not only optimising live viewing but also to provide higher value to recorded content which normally has little value. We created what we called Smart watching: being able to select a specific action to replay, to extract personalised highlights and provide direct navigation to preferred content through a smart player with key events within the video such as the specific Formula 1 driver to focus on, enhances VOD experience and makes a more efficient use of content.

We also developed a new prototype cooking app for the popular CBS This Morning Saturday segment, The Dish, that transforms the traditional sponsorship model into a direct Watch&Buy process.

6. When/if the world goes back to pre-Covid conditions, do you see these digital monetization technologies dropping off again, or do you think they can continue to coexist/improve the fan experience? 

Covid-19 restrictions gave us an opportunity to announce our solutions for fan engagement, but times were already ripe for the introduction of a new user experience which combines a curated traditional TV experience in one-to-many form with the one-to-one, participative and personalised culture that is so widely spread.

Finally, from a technology and user experience point of view, in spite of the difficulties posed by Covid-19, we were able strengthen the offering for broadcasters and content owners making us stronger and fitter.