Sidearm Sports, the Learfield-owned digital outlet that provides the websites for more than 150 Division I athletic departments, has reached an agreement with Cincinnati-based proximity marketing startup Lisnr to incorporate its technology into the schools’ mobile apps.
Sidearm’s clients will be able to use the software to deploy inaudible sound waves through their existing in-venue speaker systems to send content to fans’ mobile phones.
Like the increasingly popular beacon technology, Lisnr offers the schools the opportunity to reach event attendees on their devices instantly in a variety of formats (with text, video and coupons, among them) to extend sponsored messages and offers as well as things like way-finding information and replays. But unlike beacon technology, the ultrasonic audio technology doesn’t require the schools to install and maintain any additional hardware. Also, fans don’t need to have Bluetooth activated on their devices to receive Lisnr content.
While it’s unclear which individual schools, or how many, might adopt the technology right away, fans who do have a school’s Sidearm-developed app installed on their phones will receive the messages. The company is rolling out a line of upgraded apps for its D-I institutions ahead of the 2016-17 academic year with Lisnr functionality included.
“The college market just doesn’t have the budgets to install hardware-based beacons throughout a facility, or at least the majority don’t,” said Sidearm Sports President and CEO Jeff Rubin. “[Lisnr] becomes a cost-effective solution to be able to do everything being done in the professional leagues with hardware-based beacons, but with more opportunity.”
The key area in which beacons could be more effective than ultrasonic audio technology is the ability to pinpoint specific areas of a venue, according to Unacast co-founder and CEO Thomas Walle Jensen, whose company offers consumer information derived from beacons and other proximity devices to marketers. He said, for example, that beacons would allow teams to send different messages to fans seated in the upper deck than those seated courtside.
The deal is one of Lisnr’s largest deals yet and its first in the college space. The company’s sports portfolio also includes the Indianapolis Colts, Cleveland Cavaliers, Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres. The pricing model for the licensing of the technology in the Sidearm deal is on a per-school basis for those who opt to use the Lisnr technology. Each school will be placed in a pricing tier based on the number of times its app is installed.
Rubin said Sidearm already has an agreement with Learfield to absorb that cost in exchange for the ability to monetize the additional inventory Lisnr provides.
“My gut says a lot of schools never see a bill for this, that it’s just going to be a pass-through through the multimedia rights holders,” Rubin said.
