Robb Heineman wants you to feel you're part of the team, whether you're in the cheap seats or with him in the executive suite at LiveStrong Sporting Park. To do this, the CEO of Sporting Kansas City has seamlessly merged sports and technology to engage fans like no other team.
Few teams have so thoroughly integrated apps and social media into the fan experience. The Major League Soccer club's effort goes beyond wi-fi robust enough to handle 20,000 fans. Every seat has a QR code, so fans can check in, broadcast their location and collect points. Tweets with the #sportingKC hashtag are broadcast on the stadium JumboTron. The Sporting Explore app lets fans predict the action, compete in trivia contests and watch individual replays. It's all designed to keep fans engaged even if the game's a snoozer.
"Every person is valuable whether they're sitting in a suite or a regular seat," Heineman said. "They're equally as hard to sell. And we want to make you feel special."
Tying it all together is FAN360, a "sports operating system" that integrates data from ticketing systems, concession sales, purchases at stadium stores and social media activity. The stadium features one of the first deployments of Cisco's Connected Stadium wi-fi system, with 200 routers and 30 miles of fiber optic cable. Cisco also supplied the StadiumVision platform, a network of 350 video screens throughout the park.
Fans have embraced all the tech. Heineman said more than 90 percent of smartphone-toting fans tap into the network during the game — usually to access Twitter, Facebook and the team's app — and online sessions average about 80 minutes per person. Impressive, given that a game is only 90 minutes long.
The amenities are good for fans, and the bottom line. Advertisers can target ads to video screens in specific sections, allowing, say, Ford to pitch the Ford Fiesta to those in the field seats and the Lincoln MKZ to those in the luxury suites. And all those phones generate a lot of valuable data. For example, the team can track cell phone signals to follow fan movement through the stadium — info it can sell to stadium designers.
The stadium, which cost more than $200 million, has earned rave reviews in the year since it opened. Sporting Kansas City swept top honors at the Stadium Business Awards last month, winning venue of the year, beating the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida, which hosted this year's NBA All-Star Game, as well as stadiums in China, New Zealand and the UK. Heineman was named executive of the year, FAN360 won the product innovation award, and LiveStrong Sporting Park also won the community award. The stadium also was just selected to host the final World Cup qualifying match between the US and Guatemala in October.
Heineman is happy to get the attention, but says the focus remains on providing the best possible experience for fans.
"We've worked very hard over the course of the last couple of years to try to think about sports differently and not necessarily take any aspect for granted," Heineman said. "We really focus on experience. That's the word that we talk about most around here."
