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New iPhone App Rewards Sports Fans For Watching Games

This article is more than 10 years old.

Any baseball fan knows the sort of conversation that accompanies watching a televised game with friends:

"I bet A-Rod strikes out here."

"No way, they won't pitch to him with guys on base."

"Exactly, everything will be out of the zone and he'll chase anyway."

These quick debates are generally followed by an "I told you so" from one fan or the other, only to be followed by another debate when the next batter comes to the plate. But what if you could be rewarded for having made the correct prediction? FanCake, a new free iPhone app, not only offers fans that opportunity, but might also completely change the world of second screen entertainment.

Carlos Diaz, founder and CEO of Kwarter, a San Francisco-based app developer, recognized the by-the-minute involvement of sports fans watching live games, and he wanted to create a product that could actively engage those fans at a play-by-play level. "Second screen engagement can be more than check-ins," he says, alluding to popular apps like Four Square, "You have to bring a new experience...a social experience that rewards users." In FanCake, those rewards range from digital coupons to ballgame tickets to employment, all for just watching sports.

FanCake launched on March 14 after five months of beta testing, just in time for the start of the NCAA tournament. Users were able to make live predictions and compete against other fans for all 67 tournament games. At tournament's end, the user with the most total points walked away with a brand new Xbox Kinect. As Diaz points out, the winning fan was rewarded for simply doing something he was going to do anyway.

The new sports app consists of two main game modes: live predictions and medal grabs. The former prompts users with a multiple choice question regarding an upcoming play, and it gives them ten seconds to respond. During basketball games, predictions include how the next points will be scored and the results of a player's trip to the free throw line. For baseball games, there are five different prediction games, including the results of an at bat, the direction of the next hit and what a runner on base will do.

Medal grabs are a way to ensure that users are actually engaged in the live event. Floating medals appear on the screen after key game events, like slam dunks or home runs, and users are able to "grab" them if they're fast enough. Only those fans who are actively watching the live game will know when medals will appear, and Diaz says that 83% of users actively engage with the game mechanics.

That level of viewer involvement has caught the interest of broadcasters, who see second screen engagement as a way to keep fans parked in front of the TV during live sporting events. Diaz says that broadcasters are willing to pay for that viewer retention, though he has resisted their attempts to license the product. "Our primary goal right now is to build on our own brand," he says. But ongoing conversations with broadcasters have convinced Diaz that they are serious about paying, and Kwarter has begun rebating investors ahead of schedule. Diaz had raised nearly $1 million in seed money to found Kwarter last September, and he expects that all investors will have been repaid within a year of the company's founding.

In addition to keeping fans and viewers involved in live games, FanCake also offers a great way for other brands to reach out directly to potential consumers via rewardable moments. Diaz suggests Tim Lincecum as a possible example. A company can choose to sponsor rewards whenever Lincecum throws a strikeout, and those rewards can consist of free or discounted products. Users need only to supply contact information in order to redeem them. Diaz says that 34% of users redeem those rewards.

Brands will pay for the ability to contact consumers directly, which is a key source of revenue generation for Kwarter. The app developer charges companies between 50 cents and $3 per user redemption, depending on the importance or expected viewership of the game, and Diaz says that about 10% of the app's rewards are currently tied to offers from companies like Amazon, Best Buy, and Zappos. During the NCAA tournament, FanCake offered about 90 rewardable moments per game, which means that Kwarter would make at least $1,500 from a single game with 1,000 active users.

Those rewards are key to increasing the app's popularity: "Every time we put more reward systems into the game, we see a spike in the number of downloads," says Diaz. The developer also plans to implement a system that rewards dedicated users with tickets to games once they accumulate enough points. Diaz sees FanCake as a way for fans to not only become more involved in the game on TV, but to get something more out of their dedication. And for the most dedicated, employment is also an option.

Longtime users are offered the option to join the app as "game masters," paid employees who manage the app's events during each live game. Diaz is hesitant to discuss wages, but he says that game masters can make as much as $200 a month. He knows it's not enough to live on, but Diaz sees it as "a new way for fans to make some money out of sports, and then use it to pay for [their] own engagement." There are currently about 50 game masters, and that number is sure to increase with usership. The company projects FanCake will soon have 1,000 downloads a day, with over 100,000 active users by the end of the summer. Diaz says the long-term goal is to hit 1,000,000 users within the next year.

Thanks to FanCake, sports fans can now get more out of watching games than ever before. So the next time you're on the edge of your seat, arguing with friends about what will happen next in a ballgame, remember that there could be rewards in store. If you're lucky, you might even be watching your next game in person.