How Bally Sports Gamifies Live Sports Streaming
The name of the game in live sports streaming is engagement, and for many fans the most engaging live sports experiences are participatory and interactive rather than just leaning back and watching the game. In this clip from his keynote fireside chat at Streaming Media Connect, Bally’s Media SVP & GM Jon Lin explains to Ring Digital llc Founder Brian Ring how Bally Sports Live brings the game to the fans through an array of innovative gamification strategies that not only create immersive experiences, but also yield a wealth of user data and initiate customer relationships with significant lifetime value.
The User Experience With Bally Sports Live
Ring sets up how Bally Sports Live approaches its streaming ecosystem: Dozens of games are live on the platform each night, and users log in to access a chat, play games, earn points, and engage in other gamification. He notes that other companies may not require registration, but Bally Sports Live does in order to foster a more interactive experience. The friction of that is worth it to the user because they get a lot in return.
“One thing I think is super cool that you guys do is you show your community the concurrent viewership on any given channel. So you might be in this features channel and you’re going to see, hey, there’s 250 people watching this right now,” Ring notes. He points to the metaphor of creating lots of small bonfires: “And yes, some of the big media companies can have a really big bonfire, but I think you have this great visual of a lot of little bonfires can also add up.” Ring asks Lin to discuss how Bally Sports Live measures the value of its data. The company needs to sell ads, but customer loyalty is also important, he notes.
Lin replies that his company “really believe[s] in the interactivity as part of the streaming experience. So you think about sports in general, it’s inherently a shared experience, best enjoyed with others.” He describes his own feelings about preferring not to go to sports games alone, and now, even when watching sports alone at home, “I’m sending messages to my friend chat and being like, ‘Can you see that? Oh, I can’t believe they missed that call. Oh, what a shot.’ Things like that. So I guess for us, just having the game to stream live isn’t enough. We want to create that sort of interactive layer on top,” he explains.
A Connected Ecosystem to Keep Customers Engaged
Lin reminisces about his shared history in the industry with Ring, when sports was “still largely a lean back, very passive experience.” He notes that while Bally Sports Live’s product vision is the interactivity, and it could be a successful streaming business on its own, the vision for the overall Bally’s organization is to drive value via one connected ecosystem of media, sports, and gaming. “It’s very much the future of Bally’s overall, including the casinos and the sportsbook,” Lin clarifies.
“So you think about it, one of the biggest challenges of a gaming company is acquiring customers. It is very, very, very expensive,” he continues. “We saw this a decade ago when daily fantasy was becoming popular, and more recently when online sports betting was coming and becoming legalized, and actually even today with prediction markets. These companies spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on ads, often on TV and on someone else’s network.” Lin says that Bally’s chairman decided, “Hey, instead of spending all that money buying ads on someone else’s network, why don’t I just build my own?” Lin continues, “It’s a low-friction way for users to engage with the brand, watch some of our content, play some of our free-to-play games while they watch, [and] earn virtual currency rewards.”
Bally Live Sports Chasing the Whale
Bally Sports Live draws customers in with a set time for free viewing and gaming, Lin says. “If you want to watch longer periods of time, that’s when we start asking you to register and log in and then start capturing your data to ultimately serve as the top of the funnel. Not everyone’s going to be able to convert down into that, but this is the top of the funnel of our gaming ecosystem—driving new leads, customers, and that’s where the real value adds because you think about the lifetime value of that gaming customer, it is several orders of magnitude higher than a free streaming viewer.” He says that could translate to tens or even hundreds of dollars per customer, so Bally’s is in the business of getting “the tip of the spear” so it can try to catch the “whale” of customer loyalty, Lin says, which means “you’re on a wholly different scale.”
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