Vision Critical Launches Sports Fan Council – Transforming Fan Intelligence for the Age of the Empowered Customer

Built on Vision Critical’s customer intelligence platform, the Sports Fan Council solution revolutionizes how sports teams engage today’s digitally-savvy fans for insight

Now sports teams can harness the collective wisdom of their fans to tackle key business challenges

Recognized professional sports organizations like the New York Knicks, Toronto Maple Leafs, NASCAR and the Australian Football League use Vision Critical’s platform to engage their fans for actionable insight

Demo Sports Fan Council log-in page for fans (Graphic: Business Wire)

VANCOUVER, British Columbia--()--Vision Critical, the leading customer intelligence platform provider, today launched Sports Fan Council, transforming fan intelligence for the age of the empowered customer. As fans continue to consume sports entertainment across a variety of digital platforms, traditional revenue models are breaking down. The Sports Fan Council solution is designed to help sports organizations address the key business challenges affecting teams today, including declining ticket sales, decreased fan engagement and loyalty, fragmented corporate and media partnerships, and stagnant merchandise sales. Recognized teams and leagues have turned to Vision Critical’s platform to help them harness the collective wisdom of their fans, including the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, NASCAR and the Australian Football League (AFL).

Comments on the News:

  • “The global sports market is being affected by the convergence of new audiences, mobile and digital technologies, and the economic environment,” said Andrew Reid, president, founder and chief product officer of Vision Critical. “More than ever, teams need to better understand their fans to strengthen fan engagement and enhance media partnerships. Sports Fan Council is the first solution in the customer intelligence space that allows teams to foster ongoing engagement with fans for actionable insight.”
  • “Sports teams face very different business challenges than other industries,” said Kobi Ofir, chief technology officer of Vision Critical. “We designed Sports Fan Council so that teams can strengthen fan engagement, optimize ticketing offers, increase the value of corporate and media partnerships and leverage fan creativity to generate new merchandise opportunities—all by asking precise questions and performing valuable analysis that will drive better business decisions and results.”
  • “For the New York Knicks, fan engagement and satisfaction are critically important, which is why we turned to the Vision Critical customer intelligence platform,” said Steve Sherman, vice president, consumer insights at the Madison Square Garden company. “Through our online insight community, we’re able to capture feedback from thousands of fans to help us deliver a world-class experience. In this fast-paced and competitive industry, we’ve been able to exceed in all areas when it comes to the fan experience by turning to our New York Knicks and newly launched New York Rangers online fan communities for input and insight. In the past year, the Knicks Fan Panel has been used to better understand everything from our fans' music preferences and the types of entertainment that drive in-game engagement, to the kinds of food and beverages they want served at games."

The Sports Fan Council Solution Transforms Fan Engagement for the Digital Age

The North American sports market is expected to grow to $70.7 billion in 2018, according to PwC. Sports organizations are increasingly under pressure to deliver the ultimate fan experience in a new and challenging media landscape. Unlike in previous decades, sports fans now have many local and global entertainment options available to them through a variety of media outlets. Today’s empowered customers are also extremely mobile, demanding on-the-go viewing selections.

Built on the Vision Critical customer intelligence platform, Sports Fan Council enables sports teams to better understand fan behaviors and preferences in order to help them overcome common obstacles facing today’s sports market. The Sports Fan Council solution is an online community made up of thousands of fans and used by teams to capture feedback over time in order to make improvements and enrich the fan experience. The solution is programmed with fan engagement activities and analysis in order to help teams increase fan satisfaction and loyalty, improve ticket sales, maintain and secure corporate and media partnerships, and leverage fan creativity to improve existing products and effectively release new ones.

With Sports Fan Council teams can now:

  • Understand what motivates fans to buy, how much they are willing to spend, and how they feel about the experience pre and post game
  • Learn why fans make the purchasing decisions they do over time, increase fan engagement and loyalty, foster offseason engagement and discover what creates loyalty among fans
  • Identify ways to strengthen existing media and corporate partnerships, expand community outreach and ensure partner messages resonate with fans
  • Generate and enhance ideas around ticketing, merchandise development, stadium and brand design, communications and more

Vision Critical’s Sports Fan Council Helps Teams Understand What Fans Want so They Can Deliver What They Need

Sports Fan Council is available as an add-on solution to existing Vision Critical Insight Community customers and as part of a Vision Critical Insight Community product offer for new customers. Sports teams using the Sports Fan Council solution will experience the benefits of having a two-way dialogue with their fans for insight used to influence impactful decisions. The solution allows teams to build member profiles for fans as they evolve, deploy regular fan engagement projects, leverage the sports fan intelligence library pre-programmed with fan activities created to address the key challenge areas for sports teams, analyze member feedback and share actionable insight with key stakeholders to drive better business outcomes.

Additional Information:

- The Sports Fan Council is currently available. To learn more about how the solution can help your team, please contact chris.bondarenko@visioncritical.com

- Learn more about the Sports Fan Council: http://link.visioncritical.com/sportsfancouncil

- See the Sports Fan Council in action: http://link.visioncritical.com/fancouncildemo

About Vision Critical

Vision Critical provides a cloud-based customer intelligence platform that allows companies to build engaged, secure communities of customers they can use continuously, across the enterprise, for ongoing, real-time feedback and insight. Designed for today’s always-on, social and mobile savvy customer, Vision Critical’s technology helps large, customer-centric enterprises discover what their customers want so they can deliver what they need. Unlike traditional customer research, which is slow, expensive and gathers dust on a shelf, Vision Critical’s customer intelligence platform replaces static data and cumbersome reports with real-time actionable customer intelligence that companies need to build better products, deliver better services and achieve better business outcomes.

Hundreds of high-performance organizations use Vision Critical’s technology, including Banana Republic, Yahoo and Discovery Communications. Learn more at www.visioncritical.com or follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/visioncritical.

Contacts

Vision Critical
Jenny Smelyanets, 212-402-8238
Jenny.smelyanets@visioncritical.com
media@visioncritical.com

Release Summary

Vision Critical launches Sports Fan Council, revolutionizing how sports teams engage today’s digitally-savvy fans for insight.

Contacts

Vision Critical
Jenny Smelyanets, 212-402-8238
Jenny.smelyanets@visioncritical.com
media@visioncritical.com