Fantasy Leagues, a hybrid between online gaming and social media, is emerging as a powerful marketing tool, as interaction between consumers and brands can last for days and even months. It is a great tool to spread brand awareness and get consumers interacting with the brand for a prolonged period.
Realm Digital MD Wesley Lynch says players form teams and compete against each other by forecasting or predicting the performance of real-life sportsmen in actual sports tournaments. “Players organised in teams would log onto a Fantasy Sport League (FSL) website usually a few days before the actual sport event, and log their predictions. Points are assigned after the real-life outcome of a game, and Fantasy Sport League players with the best forecasts win prizes.
“The simulation gaming aspects are there, but the real fun is derived from competing against friends and colleagues. Sites are very sticky, and players come back for more, resulting in an intense frequency of visits to a site, which translates into a brand's association with a certain sport, and an opportunity to build and capture details for marketing databases,” he says.
Fantasy Sport Leagues are a marketing tool gaining much appreciation momentum from companies especially sports brands and corporate that sponsor sport events in South Africa and abroad.
“Fantasy Sport Leagues are effective tools for brand awareness, promotion and customer acquisition. Overseas, well-known brands sponsoring major sporting events, such as AOL, Ford, Land Rover and Fox, would often run these leagues.” says Lynch. Realm Digital conceptualises games, then designs and builds the Fantasy Sport League sites, and provides software for collecting and processing data and statistics to determine scores. It acts as a league commissioner for companies such as IOL, Vodacom, Brandhouse and SA Rugby in major and international tournaments.
Industry regulator Fantasy Sports Trade Association last year estimated fantasy sports leagues have annual revenues of US$ 1 billion in the USA, and that the universe size of avid players has a head count of 27 million Americans.
Many creative agencies remain conservative and aren't willing to take risks - this is a key brand tool, he points out. “Extending campaigns by simply digitising magazine, print or TV ads seriously undermines the opulence of the web, which is the new creative frontier. Here, rules are meant to be broken, as the web is an “evolving artist's canvas,” says Lynch.
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