Category: Press reviews
Author: Bob Tait, Head of Digital & Marketing Development
From : Digital Sport
OGC Nice team up with Vogo to bring in-game replays to fans at the Allianz Riviera
When you walk into a football stadium these days, you know that you’re going to get a different experience to what most fans are probably used to when they watch sport these days.
Football especially has become something that is consumed as a form of entertainment when you’re sat at home in front of a TV screen. But going to a game is something that provides you with a much different experience.
Different angles of the game, the ability to watch more than just the main action, but the positions of players and even the managers; you can watch out for tactics and quirks or just follow the ball like the TV cameras do. You also, obviously, get the atmosphere.
But you know, too, that your day is probably going to be that bit more inconvenient. Leaving the stadium at the end might be the most obvious one, but missing some of the action is just as likely. That’s something that probably shouldn’t happen when you turn up at a game, but with TV replays, pundit analysis and second-screen abilities to scour social media for stats and comment, there’s a lot you miss out on when you turn up at a stadium.
Working WiFi, though, could be the game changer here. We’ve seen plenty of innovation which has allowed fans to order food to their seats, pay for merchandise or even find their seats using apps. The problem, of course, is with the WiFi – newer stadiums will have it installed, but not every ground is a new one.
At one such new ground, Ligue 1 side OGC Nice’s Allianz Riviera, built for Euro 2016 in France, the club have teamed up with French company Vogo to bring fans in the stadium second screen video solutions to those things they’re missing out on by not having a TV screen to hand. Instant replays and different camera angles for the live action, for example, can run in the background of the spectators’ phones, so they can do other things on their devices at the same time.
Inaugurated for Nice’s home game against Bordeaux on December 17th, the service is now up and running and all fans have to do is connect to the stadium WiFi and download the Allianz Riviera app to get started.
Perhaps when we think of football, and think of the Premier League especially, we don’t think of it as having the problem of declining attendances. But for other leagues that’s something of a problem, and in order to counter that, watching games in-stadium has to be at least equally attractive a proposition as watching them at home on the TV. Stadium WiFi and video solutions for fans in the ground is just one way of making that experience better, but things like stadium apps and novel ways to make the matchday experience very different to what you get on TV are important, too.
Otherwise it’s much harder to answer the question of why a fan shouldn’t just sit at home and watch the game there.
