SBJ Tech: FanRally's 'Membership OS' on pace to boost attendance by 4x for MLB teams

To better customize fan member programs, ticket subscription service platform FanRally is launching a full membership operating system for its three MLB clients next month.

After successful pilot programs with the Brewers and Astros last year, FanRally (which also has league-level deals with MLB and MiLB) brought on the Rays and four more minor league teams to its roster of baseball partners. Using FanRally’s connected marketplace, fans pay teams a monthly or annual subscription fee for a custom package of tickets. FanRally sells its technology service to clients but does not take a revenue cut.

“It’s a modern subscription platform completely tailored for live events,” FanRally co-founder and CEO Chris Giles told SBJ Tech.

The new membership OS will be fully automated and operate almost completely independently from a team’s ticketing system, independent of collecting inventory and entry scans.

“What typically ends up happening in Year 1 is we educate our partner on all of the other capabilities on the platform, and they end up building more and more things,” Giles, the former A's COO, said. Think holiday packs, student tickets or packages around last-minute deals.

FanRally is on pace to quadruple MLB seats issued compared to last year, having already fulfilled over 25,000 seats for the Brewers and Rays alone.

While FanRally isn’t looking to add any new MLB clients this season, its goal is to add three to six baseball teams to its client roster each year.

“We don't want to grow too much faster than that, because this is still very early [in] the new modern lifecycle for memberships,” Giles said. “We're still learning and iterating. The more data points we can build on the platform, the better we can get it for the next year.”

Having raised $3 million in June, FanRally won’t look for any more capital in the near term as it focuses on baseball teams and explores how other sports can best benefit from its technology. It also has partners in the NBA, NHL and NCAA.

“We've got plenty of runway, and we've been able to ramp [up] our teams quite quickly,” Giles said.

ESPN is showing off two augmented reality games -- Puck Pong and Puck Pursuit -- in conjunction with its streaming hockey pregame show, “The Drop.” My SBJ Tech colleague Joe Lemire broke the news this morning.

The idea here is that viewers will use their smartphone to interact with digital environments in their homes to either shoot hockey pucks at a target or flick them into red buckets to win prizes from the NHL Shop.

“We've been playing around with the idea of how augmented reality can help extend the experience for our fans,” said ESPN VP/Sports Business Development and Innovation Kevin Lopes, adding the hope that viewers will “potentially have a longer user engagement and might make folks more likely to come back to watch The Drop.”

The AR games were developed by ESPN, Verizon and the NHL and feature Arda Ocal, host of “The Drop,” captured in volumetric video cheering on participants. (And sometimes exhorting them to do better.) To play the games, viewers can use a QR code or go to an ESPN-hosted microsite.

• Fox’s ownership of the USFL gives the spring football league plenty of latitude to experiment, turning tech “toys” into “tools” for broadcasts, reports SBJ’s Tom Friend.

• The Cape Cod League partnered with BaseballCloud to enhance the fan experience at the summer college baseball league's All-Star Game and Home Run Derby, writes SBJ's Joe Lemire.

• FEVO launched an AI beta for its social commerce and ticketing platform that is used by hundreds of teams and properties across the sports industry, reports SBJ's Bret McCormick.

• MLS is undertaking an ambitious, tech-aided endeavor to find overlooked talent through a partnership with ai.io, the makers of mobile phone scouting app aiScout, notes SBJ’s Lemire.