Love your AFL? OAMM is now enhancing your experience

For those who love sports and live entertainment, Out and About Media and Marketing (OAMM), is set to enhance consumer engagement across the Australian stadium market with its new free ‘Connected Stadium’ mobile app experience.

By using the app, fans can plan their entire trip to and from the SCG or Allianz Stadium, view the live transport, parking, news and venue information plus pre-purchase tickets.

Once inside the venue, the app will provide detailed venue facility maps assisting fans to locate their seating bay plus facilities such as food and beverage outlets, toilets, ATMs and parent rooms. The app is also set to offer digital food and beverage orders as well as social media functionalities so fans can share their stadium experience.

“It is all about the complete journey of our patron and their experience, starting from the moment when you walk into the precinct on game day until you have left the event,” OAMM CEO, Edward Abott, told CMO. “We want to bring really engaging. rich content to life and bring our patrons into the new era.”

The app is part of a holistic connected ecosystem that integrates TV screens for full game view, a high-density stadium wi-fi connection as well as potentially ordering food and beverages from the app.

“We really see the app as part of an aggregation of the complete experience,” OAMM sales director, Andrew Christopher, said. “Where the power from a fan’s perspective lies, the app is your companion, it is in your pocket and kind of buddy, but combined with the LCD screens and the wi-fi connection, it is the aggregation of those digital media that give it a unique component.”

Christopher said one of the elements of the connected experience is bringing the in-home conveniences, where fans have easy access to food and beverages as well as live streamed action and replays, back into the stadium.

“The prospect of ordering food and drink from your seat is a feature most stadiums are looking at to pick it up from an express area,” he added. “It is all about improving your comfort levels, which is a primary reason people sit on their couch at home - because you can watch the game, have your food and drink at your fingertips and pause and replay at your leisure. We now want to bring that same experience to the stadium.”

The value-add for brand integration

According to Abott, OAMM is passionate about bringing value to both fans and brands.

“There are many ‘brand awareness’ advertising options in sport but none which deliver an integrated, data capable solution such as the Connected Stadium platforms,” he said.

Christopher added there has been a gap in the sports and entertainment market in Australia for a few years now, and assisting brands in taking that next step towards leveraging a return on investment for their sponsorships through the new Connected Stadium experience has been really well received.

“It’s been really well received from brands that either already recognise it as a powerful audience, or brands who had thought they would be locked out from sport from a cost perspective and now they’ve come realise that it’s actually a space they can play in,” he said.

The free high density wi-fi and smartphone app integration further provides brands with the opportunity to display targeted digital advertising, promotions, as well as access behavioural trends data. A variety of brands are already reaping the benefits of the Connected Stadium platform, including TAB and Diners Club.

“Through the Connected Stadium experience, Diners Club found an effective way to connect with their members at the Sydney Cricket Ground,” Abott explained. “Because they’re after quite a niche audience of high earning, white collar male executives, this was a great way to get to those guys via the touchpoints and align themselves with their target market - through something they love.”

Recently, Diners Club promoted their new SCG Diners Club program thorough the Connected Stadium touchpoints and created a whole product line because of this new market.

“They are benefiting from the smart segmentation within our venues,” Abott added. “With the digital screens, the app and wifi, we can zone in on our members area with the Diners campaign, right in the sweet spot where the offers can come to life. As a result, the brand fulfilled a metric they were looking for and we viewed that as smart segmentation, which is what this whole infrastructure allows us to do.”

As the exclusive worldwide media reps for connected stadiums assets across Australia and New Zealand, OAMM have a successful range of interactive media solutions at Etihad Stadium, ANZ Stadium and Allianz Stadium Sydney tailored for specific sports and music events.

Further solutions at Suncorp Stadium, Allphones Arena, Sydney Cricket Ground, AAMI Park, NIB Stadium and Geelong Oval ensure a full national buy, impacting over 6 million fans across the country.

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