The biggest sporting event of the season – Super Bowl XLVIII – may also be the biggest marketing event of the non-holiday season. The 30-second ad spot during the game now costs $4 million, a price that has nearly doubled over the last ten years according to Kantar Media.
During that span, advertising time has increased to accommodate the demand, with 51 minutes and 40 seconds open for advertisers in Super Bowl XLVIII (up over 10 minutes from the total ad time allotted in 2004). Mix in the rising audience engaged via mobile digital platforms and one might expect top-shelf offerings from the NFL and Super Bowl sponsors via the mobile app.
Finding review of mobile’s influence for this year’s Super Bowl isn’t terribly difficult. The fine folks at Bleacher Report (namely New York local Patricia Traina) put forth a great list of mobile apps for the uninitiated Big Apple visitor in need of assistance. CNET Associate Editor Dan Graziano has your how-to checklist for those utilizing mobile tech to watch the game. Fox Sports is live streaming the Super Bowl for the first time ever with a newly-developed mobile app to do so, covered by Steve Lepore at Awful Announcing.
The tech world has worked to earn your trust via mobile portals on the biggest Sunday of the year. This week, we are looking to determine if the Super Bowl has done the same, by each day leading up to the Big Game offering a review of an NFL mobile app specifically developed and/or updated for Super Bowl XLVIII.
One quick note of clarification: there are three particular apps removed from our review, including NFL Mobile (the official league app, a known commodity and source of news for football fans updated accordingly), NFL Pick ‘Em (a traditional game of choice sports fans during the regular season, leaving one more game to pick), and the NY/NJ Super Bowl Host Committee Volunteers app (a special application designed by enterprise superfirm SAP AG in support of the league’s volunteers working the event… though we’re betting, based on SAP’s reputation, its outstanding).
Super Bowl XLVII NFL Official Program
Developer: NFL Enterprises LLC
Function: Sports
iOS: Available (iPad only)
Android: Not Available
Until this season, mobile users haven’t seen a league-stamped app designed by anyone but the in-house dev team. Unfortunately, this year’s “flagship” offering for the tablet loyalists may serve as the perfect argument for this year’s reach for help (more on that in a moment).
To be fair, there is a traditional mode of operation behind the Super Bowl program, tabbed as the definitive keepsake for the event and held on high by traditional sports fans as the true sign of proof you were there. As such, the league is, in all probability, defensive in retaining the premium access to the official program and manipulating the access to that content to insure the programs sold at the Super Bowl are available only to those who have tickets (or those who want to pay an additional premium to order it and get it late).
That said, this attempt to leverage the most recognized collection of content designed specifically for this event is an excellent example in strategy more likely to do harm via digital offering than good. There are some fantastic visuals backed by established content creators, and in some ways, the app works to introduce an interactive experience to enhance the offering (including streaming videos and animations).
However, a bevvy of in-app purchases pushes much of this content back, and that emphasis on navigation away from the app continues to hound users throughout the guide. Links back to NFL.com, a heavy and persistent effort to traffic users towards the NFL Shop, and a tragically thorough dedication to charge for those interactive features leave the user feeling unappreciated.
Add the lack of availability for Android enthusiasts and we might have an acceptable explanation for the lack of support this app has received, in 2014 and seasons past.