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Sporting Innovations upgrading SMI’s apps

Speedway Motorsports Inc. has signed a five-year deal with Sporting Innovations to upgrade mobile technology at the company’s eight racetracks in 2015.

Those eight SMI properties all play host to NASCAR Sprint Cup events. In all cases, they are plugging the tech vendor’s Fan360 platform into their mobile applications to customize the fan experience on race days and give SMI deeper analysis into customers’ buying habits.

The agreement calls for SMI to pay an annual fee to Sporting Innovations to incorporate the technology, said Mike Burch, SMI’s senior vice president of national sales and marketing. Sporting Innovations is owned by Major League Soccer’s Sporting Kansas City.

The transition starts in October with the integration of Sporting Innovations’ CRM system, called Dimensions. All eight tracks will install it by the end of 2014, and the mobile application will follow with everybody on board by mid-2015, said Asim Pasha, Sporting Innovations’ managing partner.

To this point, SMI’s current mobile platform is largely static, failing to connect the users of mobile devices and the CRM infrastructure supporting the system, Pasha said. The Fan360 program closes the gap through a custom analytics program that sends targeted messages in real time to race fans based on the selections they make on their devices, whether they’re buying tickets, food or merchandise. Mobile ordering of food and drink is part of the new system, Pasha said.

By doing so, Fan360’s intelligence responds to NASCAR fans’ tendency to not be as engaged with mobile technology during the event as fans of other big league sports, Pasha said. Sporting Innovations’ research shows that after the race starts “it’s all about the race and nothing but the race,” he said.

“The in-venue engagement will be a challenge in this massive three-day carnival they call a NASCAR race,” he said.

Fan360 enables SMI to push detailed information into the hands of fans of up to a dozen race teams, whether they’re fans of Jimmie Johnson or Carl Edwards, Burch said. Previously, the tracks could not separate those groups through the old mobile platform. The pit passes, driver experiences, access to victory lane and race shop tours, popular add-ons for NASCAR events, can also be more directly targeted after fans buy tickets, he said.

In turn, by enriching the fan experience, SMI officials think they can increase season-ticket renewals and sell more individual race tickets.

Fan360, when linked to Ticketmaster’s platform across all eight speedways, will track mobile ticket sales and make it easier for SMI to segment purchasers into different groups and communicate with them, Burch said. SMI’s current mobile application does not take those extra steps in real time.

In addition, the new technology should generate more revenue from SMI’s corporate partners by giving them a much better idea of their potential customer base and the brands they’re loyal to through their favorite drivers.

“We’re hearing more from our sponsors that they want more of a targeted audience, and this is the glue around putting together the next level of sponsorships,” Burch said.

SMI selected Sporting Innovations after speaking with several mobile tech firms. The group visited Sporting Park during an MLS game and used the soccer team’s mobile app to get a better sense of how it operates in-venue.

“What set them apart is they are not just a vendor,” Burch said. “They actually use it.”

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