The Big Apple. New York City, the home of the Yankees and Mets baseball franchises, also happens to be the home of hundreds of new startups. Not traditionally known as a tech hub, the city is sprawling with young companies looking to make a name for themselves. And what better way to do that then team up with the local baseball franchises?
Here are three startups the Mets and Yankees should use to improve fan experience at, getting to, and following games.
1. SeatGeek/TickPick
Based on their names it is probably easy to guess the service SeatGeek and Tickpick offer. Both are second hand ticket purchasing sites based out of New York City that allow fans to buy and sell tickets for games. Ticket exchange sites have been popular for years, but the newest push is for tickets to be available via mobile devices. If someone has a PDF of the ticket on their phone, they can get into a game. Although Yankee stadium discourages paperless second-market tickets, the demand for paperless tickets is growing along with the desire to purchase tickets close to game time.
SeatGeek.com director of communications Will Flaberty says that their customers have had few problems with using digital PDFs on their phones to enter games. The best part about this technology for fans is that they can now wait until the last minute to purchase tickets when the prices make dramatic drops in value. Brett Goldberg and Chris O’brien founded Tickpick. This offers the same services as SeatGeek with one little extra feature. The site allows sellers to set prices as well as allow bidders to voice their price range desires. The Yanks and Mets are better off welcoming the future of ticket purchasing sooner rather than later.
2. FanBridge
Major League Baseball more than any other professional league has gone to great lengths to embrace fan interaction through social media. But what if there was a platform to take this interaction a step further and gather data to increase fan outreach. FanBridge does that and more.
Another startup from New York, FanBridge is a great platform for growing fan bases. The site starts with growing, followed by engaging, and finally monetizing. Along with mobile apps, teams can use the website to grow their following and find their most loyal fans. Then FanBridge can “crunch the numbers” to show teams what is working and what is not. The Yankees are already a prominent force on social media. The Mets lag far behind in this area and FanBridge presents a great opportunity for the team to catch up.
3. Keepskor
The next Big Apple startup the Yankees and Mets could utilize to continuously engage fans is Keepskor. This is another platform for engaging with fans but in a very different way. Founder Tristan Louis says that the objective is to take big data like information from iBeacons, Tweets and Instagram pictures and turn it into games to keep fan interest. The company recently released an app where users can take analytical information and build games. So a Mets or Yankees fan could use the app to build games from the Instagram or Twitter account of their team. Louis says that the market for mobile advertising is wide open and while Keepskor is currently reviewing its strategic options it hopes to take charge of the industry. This is a great place for the Mets and Yankees to reach out to a younger fan base.