One of the keys to success at any age is to never stop learning and innovating, and a great example of that never stop attitude is ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen. Last week he and award-winning technologist Hutton Pulitzer launched FEVR Tech, a new company with proprietary technology which significantly improves and enhances the fan experience at live sports events in venues of all sizes.
FEVR Tech (the name derives from an acronym for Fans Engage Vote Respond) combines the entrepreneurial vision, business acumen and sports enthusiasm of Rasmussen, the man who created a new industry of 24-hour cable television with the launch of his brainchild, ESPN, on September 7, 1979, with the technology and patent prowess of Pulitzer, who has created previous intellectual property and a patent portfolio that is present in over 11.9 billion mobile devices (smart phones, cell phones, tablets, etc.) around the world. The company plans to partner with college and professional sports leagues, teams and TV networks to provide its engagement system in venues around the globe. Sports teams and league partners will use FEVR Tech to make fans happy, make sponsors happy and improve the overall live event experience.
How is it different and more importantly how does he decide what is a smart business decision in a crowded and crazed sports business environment? We asked the founder himself for some thoughts.
How do you decide what is a good time investment for you at this time in your career?
“At this stage of my career, I can’t play golf anymore, but I always try to keep my brain active. Something comes along like FEVR Tech and it piques my interest. I find it very exciting and I want to spend my time with it. I’ve been an active entrepreneur for over half a century, and this is an exciting project, and I’m really looking forward to the events unfolding over the next days, weeks and months.”
What makes a company like FEVR TECH appealing and how does it break through the clutter?
“It’s appealing because there is no clutter – people will learn about what we are doing at FEVR Tech and understand it’s not part of the clutter but above the clutter because it enables fan engagement in a way that has never been done before, in the venue directly with the fans. It’s appealing to me is the whole learning process of this, finding ways to get the teams, leagues, conferences, venues in a direct conversation with the fans. I had never sat in on a patent approval meeting before. When you sit up in the press box, sometimes you don’t really think about the fans, just the game in front of you. The first meeting we had they talked about meeting fans in every city. I mentioned that when we started ESPN, we met with the top 10 cable systems in the country at that time, and also met with the top leagues and conferences to get to the fans. My contribution in this early stage of FEVR Tech is, right now, instead of going directly to the fans in each media market, we can do it “top down” by meeting with the top teams, the leagues, the five major college conferences, the stadium and arena management people. It’s the same problem we faced with ESPN in 1978 and 1979, and we are after the same audience today – sports fans. I believed the sports fans would be interested in ESPN in 1978 and 1979, and I believe the sports fans will be interested in FEVR Tech today, but the fastest and best way to get to them is through the teams, the leagues, the conferences and the venues. Back in 1978 and 1979, I had to fly from city to city to get people interested in ESPN – today I can do that with a phone call, a Skype chat, and set up meetings before I ever have to get on a plane.”
You were there at the start with ESPN; did you ever think fan engagement would be as vital to media success as it is today?
“Fan engagement hadn’t been invented yet. We didn’t talk about media success. We didn’t even have Fax machines yet, let alone e-mail, the Internet, and multiple media channels. If we had used the words ‘fan engagement’ back then, it would mean, ‘Are you going to the game tonight?’ or ‘Did you buy a ticket?’ People forget that not all the games were televised; many weren’t even on the radio consistently. If you missed the game, you read about it in the morning paper the next day, checked the box score. The concept of fan engagement meant just showing up. Sports marketing executives think of fan engagement as posting a photo on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter and getting it re-Tweeted or re-posted by the fans. In the venue, it’s what’s on the scoreboards or the signage, or what the PA announcer is saying, or watching a mascot or cheerleaders perform – silly stuff. Everybody thinks having Wi-Fi in the stadium is the ultimate, but it’s really just a firehose of information and I think they are missing the boat. They are just firing stuff at the fans instead of having a true dialogue with the fans. There is no way today that the clubs, the leagues, the venues get direct feedback from the fans, short of texting and e-mailing, and we’ve just eliminated that with a more direct form of fan response and verified views of the message. We always thought ESPN would be a success – not many people believed in it in 1978, 1979, and 1980. But not a person in the world saw the future, HD TV, the Internet, and other things.”
Is there ever such a thing as too much in-arena engagement today?
“There is no authentic in-arena engagement right now. Fans are looking at their smartphone, their I-phone or their tablets and watching YouTube, sending text messages to friends, reading e-mail, while the game is in progress. You have no guarantee that fans in the stands are getting ‘engaged’ in the game in front of them. I don’t think in-arena engagement actually exists yet. I think FEVR Tech will be the first time teams, etc. will get definitively direct with the fans. My feeling is that the most sophisticated ‘smart’ technology is our brains, using our eyes and our ears.”
What is the one thing that sets the company apart from others in the space?
“We are apart from them because we’ve just created our own space. We will not be talking AT the fans, but talking WITH the fans. We will ask them a question. If they respond with an answer, we will respond to them, and create a dialogue with the fans. We are the first to do this one-on-one, creating a dialogue with the fans, and creating our own space. We will have verified views of our questions and their responses, we don’t ask anyone for their e-mail address, we don’t ask them for their credit card information, we don’t ask them for the home address, we’re just talking to the fans in the stands. Everyone else is going to have to adjust.”
Is there a sport or a venue or a league where you see this working better than elsewhere?
“It will be up to the individual sports, venues, leagues to see how it will work for them, we’re going to be providing them with a tool, and showing them the numerous ways they can use it. It’s up to them to determine what they like – giveaways, special sales, surveys. Our point of view is, it doesn’t make a difference how you use it, but use it. I’ve been a baseball fan all my life, going back to my childhood on the South Side of Chicago and the White Sox. My natural belief is that the pace of baseball allows more time for the fans to relax, and engage. If a team is clever, thoughtful, aggressive, if they see what we see, that this enables them to do more things for their fans, or gives them a way to give special treatment to certain advertisers, then they will come to us. We will provide them with every conceivable idea for them to use FEVR Tech, and it’s up to them to decide how they want to employ it. It’s not a static system, it’s ever-growing and evolving. We’ll collect information, results, in a venue matrix system that goes back directly to the team, league, or the arena. Right now we’re talking to individual teams, we’re talking to leagues, we’re talking to major conferences, the NCAA, and TV networks. You can guess who one of them is. We are ready to go. We have been up and running officially for one week, and we already have meetings scheduled for the rest of this month. We’ve already had one major conversation with one major network, and again, you can guess who that might be.”
What will be the next step with the company and when do you think that will be?
I would like FEVR Tech to be in the position where we have one of the major college conferences ready to launch in the fall for college football season. Back in the day when we started ESPN, the then PAC 10 didn’t want to talk to with us, but I arranged a meeting, we were in the room for 15 minutes and they said it’s not going to work. I think in six months we will see FEVR Tech already in use by some teams in Major League Baseball, obviously because they have the longer season. We could be in the NBA and the NHL in time for the playoffs. My prediction is that as soon as one team picks up on FEVR Tech and it works for them, as I know it will, we’ll have other teams coming to us asking for more. It’s going to grow rapidly, like wildfire. So I think by June everybody will see how it can help them engage and give back directly to the fans.”
