Super 6

The gamification of sports takes elements of sports and give to people to either solves problems or have fun this in theory encourages people to participate (Callanan, n.d. a) this can lead to rewards such as prize money or invites to team dinners. This game gives people an opportunity to win £250,000 if they guess the correct scores of selected games. This encourages users to dive deeper into different teams helping them learn about different teams and their season rather than just their own, this then increases fan knowledge about the sport and encourage them to watch more football on Sky. People pick results and compete to earn prizes, with the use of stats get users more invested in the sport this gives people a sense of accomplishment encouraging them to either become club assets or assets of a certain league or federation, this then allows for sky to increase the amount of game packages they buy and once again increases their following. I know this increases fan engagement as I take part in this mode, I look into the previous fixtures and form each club is going through and try to get a winner, so far, I haven’t got close.

Fantasy Premier League

This is a concept used by many sports CBS Fantasy Sport, which deals with varying sports from hockey to American Football, then there are more specific versions such as Sky’s Fantasy Premier League (Anon, 2019). This game mode gives you a total of 100 million to spend on a starting 11 that you use to win points through goals clean sheets and assists, this is another game that encourages fans to invest time into research as this also offers prizes for the top players, not only this but less serious players can create leagues with their friends and compete between themselves either with a jackpot at the end or not, this could increase or decrease fan engagement depending on the type of person that is playing, personally I stick it out because I fancy my chances against my mates. With different game elements added to different apps fans are going to be involved in the actual sport because if there is competition they will want to win (Well I would) (Callanan, n.d. a).

The future of the apps

This form of sports watching, and participation is most likely going to increase in the next 2 years as the projected growth of gamification is set to grow from $4.91 billion in 2016 to $11.94 billion in 2021 (Statista, 2019a).

If participants feel the apps are informational, so knowing that you are higher up on a leader board throughout a season, it can increase feelings of competence and promote performance (Hamari et al., 2014) meaning fans are going to stay engaged so that they can finish higher than even more people.

Bittner and Shipper (2014) state that gamification is an emerging technology that uses digital media to inspire people to act in a different way to what is traditionally a non-gaming environment, in order to influence the importance of online and real-world behaviour and it is believed to be better targeted at younger consumers. However, in the case of super 6 and fantasy football they are breaking the trend and are able to utilise older fans to keep them engaged with the sport this is through the need of being over 18 to take part in these activities.

Workman (2013) strengthens this idea in terms of stating that gamification represents the fusion of 4 trends which are the explosion of social media usage, the mobile revolution, the rise of big data as well as the emergence of wearable computing. This is currently shown in fantasy football, Super 6 and also Sky bet as you can now get all of these apps on your phone, including the statistical data that comes with them.

Sky Sports Score Centre & Official app

With new and different types of digital technology and the expansion of new media markets the sports/media complex has been taken into a new dimension (Lefever, 2012). “Millions of fans and consumers have now transitioned from purely using traditional media to receive their sport content to an integrated approach where they engage through a variety of platforms.” Mitchell (2015) cited in Pedersen et al (2016) this is through different forms of either social media or even downloadable content including the two main apps of Sky Sports. The apps allow for easy access to sport related articles and football scores making it easier than ever to read up on what is going on in sport whenever and wherever you want, I mean if I can do it others should be able (Sky Sports, 2019). This helps with fan engagement due to its easy access and availability but also on match days fans are able to view the statistics, via the score centre app, this includes clear chances created, passing and shooting stats and many other aspects of any game they wish to look at, this therefore engages the fans and keeps them up to date with what is going on.

Soccer Saturday & Super Sunday

Soccer Saturday is a format on sky sports news every Saturday where a host (Jeff Stelling) and a host of pundits talk about the upcoming fixtures of the day and also report on the super six games whilst they are on, finally they will round up and conclude what they have watched and have discussions with one another (Sky Sports, 2019). However, they aren’t just sitting there being serious throughout, their discussions can get quite and heated and then they can turn comical, this allows people to watch the whole show, 12 till 6, and not have a dull moment. With this sort of entertainment, the likelihood of people watching during the day is quite high and it has proven to be successful with BT Sport taking the same concept and calling it BT Score. This form of TV punditry is probably more interesting for the neutral fan whos team is not playing, or if you’re a united fan and don’t fancy watching rubbish again, with this level of entertainment it’s hard not to watch. It keeps fans engaged through the opinions of the pundits and whether or not the viewer thinks their right and in most cases people will not agree, especially with the likes of Paul Merson who tends to be wrong.

Social Media

The rise of Facebook active users hasn’t stopped increasing from around 50 million users in the third quarter of 2008 to over 2.2 billion users in the fourth quarter of 2018, Instagram follows the same pattern starting at 90 million active users as of January 2013 up to 1 billion recorded in June 2018 Twitter however started with 30 million active users in the first quarter of 2010 and peaking at 336 million active users in the first quarter of 2018, this has shown a slight decline to 321 million active users in the fourth quarter of 2018, this however shows how popular and consistently used social media has become with more people expected to follow.

Recent years have witnessed the rise of new media channels such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, and Twitter, which enable customers to take a more active role as market players and reach (and be reached by) almost everyone anywhere and anytime. These new media threaten long established business models and corporate strategies, but also provide ample opportunities for growth through new adaptive strategies (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2010). Sky use social media effectively, through the live option, this allows them to stream anything they like so the broadcaster shares behind the scenes footage that viewers may not have been able to see otherwise, for example Sky has used Live to show exclusive content such as a discussion on the England squad with Soccer AM presenter Adam Smith and international footballer Alex Scott, which generated 150,000 views in an hour. “Facebook Live has brought another dimension to the way we engage with our audience (Gibbs, 2016)”.

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