What is it about stadium sports that makes it the best testing ground for social and second screen apps? Tok.tv is the latest creator of apps that lets fans trash talk (or cheer, of course, I can’t help being from Philadelphia) while they watch the game.
They started with baseball. The app gives you live stats and all of that good stuff, and then you can invite up to four friends to watch the game with you. After working on some World Cup apps this summer and receiving around $1M in seed funding, they’ve moved onto soccer clubs. The Italian founders have partnered with the Juventus FC for a team club app, which already has about half a million users.
But instead of just letting fans communicate with each other, they’re asking fans to take selfies through the app that then show up on the big screens, in the stadium. It’s gameified, so the selfies are voted on and ranked up until February 7th, just before Juve’s match with Milan.
The contest came after the team saw that fans were taking pictures using the app, anyway. About 450,000 to be exact. Why not engage them a little more? All the pictures will be archived on Juve’s website.
The only problem? Tok.tv encourages fans to download the app, gather friends, and then take the selfie. So they aren’t really selfies, right?
The Juve app from Tok.tv is sponsored by the club, and Tok.tv is in talks with other “major teams” to create more apps, more social events, more selfie contests in the stadiums, according to marketing director, Emanuela Zaccone. You can follow them @TOKtvUS for updates.