4 Reasons why you need Live Activations in your Fan Engagement Toolkit

What is a live activation?

Simply put, a live activation is any type of digital activation that engages fans in your venue. This can be anything from fan polls and surveys to gamified engagements. But, why should you care? 

Well, live activations help you:

• Engage fans
• Activate sponsorships 
• Uncover anonymous fans 
• Gather first and zero-party data 

With that in mind, we’ve compiled a brief introduction to live activations and why they're a must-have for any live event.  We even hosted our latest webinar all around live activations, which you can watch on demand at the end of this blog!

Why live activations?

Live activations help you take what were once one-to-many campaigns and make them one-to-one.

What does that mean?
Instead of your stadium of fans screaming at the jumbotron trying to guess the answer to a quiz, live activations give fans a digital outlet they can use to participate and give input. And, because everything digital can be recorded, fans can also see the results of their participation on a live leaderboard. 

Not only is this a way to get the whole stadium involved, but it's also a premium data capture and sponsorship opportunity.  

Beyond gamification, there are so many ways to activate on event day we wrote an entire blog on it 👀
Check it out here!

But, today is all about why live activations are a cornerstone in fan engagement and how you can get the most out of them, no matter how big or small your team. 

1. Engage fans 

Live activations are all about creating meaningful connections with your fans. More than an  RSVP or basic interaction; they provide an opportunity to immerse your audience in your experience.

Often, coming up with a live activation idea that suits your brand is as easy as revisiting your traditional engagements and applying a, "can we make this digital to reach more people" lens to it.

For example, if your sponsor has a special suite in your stadium open to 'members,' you can run a live activation to upgrade a lucky set of fans to that suite for the game. At the heart of live activations is the ability to bring more back to the fan,  whether that's through active participation in the event, or delightful deals and offers from your sponsors.

Other quick live activation ideas ⚡️

• Live trivia during a TV timeout or before an artist hits the stage
• A fan-favourite "be the DJ" campaign
• A 'call-the-coin-toss' prediction before every game

2. Uncover anonymous fans

The majority of fans attending your event are often not present in your database. Live activations provide a strategic way to capture data from these anonymous fans and start building your database for direct outreach. This means that at every event, you're progressively prospecting more 

Having a well-populated database also empowers you to understand your audience better and offer more personalized experiences. By understanding your fans, you can tailor your marketing efforts, promotions, and event experiences to better meet their expectations.

3. Activate strategic sponsorships

There's only so much inventory and only so much time you have during a live event where you can activate sponsors. Luckily, leaning into digital means that your sponsorship team can take advantage of every high-intent moment during a live event to provide value for your sponsors.

With digital activations, you can fully plan your run-of-show with quick engagements between quarters or during any downtime. Your sponsorship team can also curate more active relationships between sponsors and fans by using post-engagement follow-ups that give fans a reason to interact with your sponsor after the game (incentives, offers etc.).

As the cherry on top - digital engagement means digital metrics. You can more easily show the impact of each sponsorship activation with fan engagement metrics (views, entries, new fans reached), and even sales metrics if you're tracking redemption on a specific offer. 

It's a win-win. 

4. Grow your first-party database

Live activations are great for engaging fans, but they're even more powerful as a tool to gather first party and zero party data (phone number, location, age, games attended, etc.) that your fans willingly share with you.

The more you collect, the more you can optimize and activate against your fanbase, the more revenue you see per fan.

Conclusion: 

Live activations don’t have to be complex. The key is to uncover new opportunities to engage with fans and draw tangible data about who’s filling up your venue. Stay curious. Start with a small idea and test it out. You could be surprised by the results. 

Learn more at our Live Activations Webinar.
⬇️ Watch on demand today  ⬇️