Meet the U.K.’s Zappar, which has worked with two NFL franchises — the San Francisco 49ers and the Minnesota Vikings.
Zappar’s partnership with the 49ers sees fans being able to unlock AR experiences with souvenir cups. From there, all they need to do is to log into team’s official app and they can see some of the best moments in the franchise’s history. In a video to accompany the launch, current 49ers players had a go at the AR experience.
And with Zappar, the Vikings were able to have the cover of their gameday magazines include an AR message.
In an interview with Zappar’s Max Dawes, who is Partnerships & Marketing Director at the company, he outlined how these deals with NFL clubs came about.
“With the Vikings it was their awesome Executive Director of Digital Media & Innovation, Scott Kegley who reached out to us. The 49ers we met via Adept who are a really innovative sports focused fan engagement platform and who we now have a great partnership with.”
When asked what the effects of both partnerships had been, Dawes detailed that “they have driven app downloads and truckloads of engagement. They have begun to build up a new media channel for these teams and they have added value to physical products.”
Regarding what differentiates Zappar from its competitors in this increasingly competitive sector, Dawes said that the company’s approach to AR “is a little different” than others.
“Our mission as a business has always been to democratise AR and provide the least friction between a brand and their end user to deliver valuable and value-added experiences to drive affirmative actions.
“Typical AR and VR experiences in sport tend to be for much smaller audiences, VIPs, or experiential marketing stunts which reach a few thousand people. In addition they tend to rely on very expensive hardware which is mostly unattainable for most fans. We have built our platform to work for the least powerful devices up as opposed to the most expensive devices down.
“We’ve taken the approach which says in order for AR to drive fan engagement in a meaningful way for clubs and brands we want to engage with all 60,000 people in a stadium vs three thousand at a VIP event. I like to think we’re helping clubs, brand and companies ‘cross the chasm’ from early adoption to mainstream use.”
The impact from this approach is clear in Dawes’ mind.
“We’re seeing engagement rates from anywhere from 4-20% depending on the experience, audience and the value prop offered by the brand or club.”
He is also forthright in believing that the use of AR and VR isn’t just “a marketing and engagement opportunity.”
“Sports teams should be thinking about how they monetize this technology and reach their fans outside of the stadium also. There’s a role for AR in adding a high perceived value to a low-cost product.”
To illustrate this, he provided the following example: “Imagine I’m a Warriors fan but I live in New York, or London, or Shenzhen, all I want is to feel connected to the club. I’d happily pay ten bucks for a rubber wristband that when scanned with the Warriors app makes an AR Steph Curry appear. This is a product, merchandise and revenue driving opportunity as well as a marketing one.”
The company itself was founded in March 2011 by four founders, Caspar Thykier, Kirk Ewing, Dr. Simon Taylor and Connell Gauld. Their aim, according to Dawes “was simple,” to democratise AR on handheld devices making it available to the mass market and allowing brands and individuals to capture the value through this facilitating technology.
“We’ve been doing that for the last seven years for some of the world’s biggest brands whilst also building a community of the next generation of digital designers and developers through our self-serve ZapWorks content authoring and publishing platform.”
This work hasn’t been actually been fully focused on sports to date either. Instead, the company has worked with brands like the BBC and bands like One Direction, while sports has becoming increasingly important for Zappar.
One critical partnership to date in the area of sports for Zappar has been with the English Premier League soccer team, Manchester City FC. They joined forces to integrate an AR, digital experience into the traditional match-day program, made of paper. Fans who unlocked the AR content could view some of star striker Sergio Augero’s best goals for the club and then, finally, drop Manchester City’s top goal scorer into their selfies.
There were over 5,000 scans made on the day of this experience and more than 2,500 selfies taken, too. Even Manchester City’s co-assistant coach Brian Kidd got in on the action too.
What sets sports fans apart from others, as seen by this example is the level of interest. According to Dawes: “The engagement rates are phenomenal” and the work with Manchester City had “the highest engagement rate of anything we’ve done, after One Direction.”
As we look into 2018, Dawes detailed that more soccer teams, American football clubs and other sports like cricket and rugby, will be partnering with the company next year. The future, it would appear, seems bright for Zappar.
Dawes concluded: “Sports is one of our fastest-growing sectors.”
