For those of you that have visited this blog before, you might have already read about several football clubs in Europe that have already installed Bluetooth Marketing Systems in their stadiums. Real Sporting, was apparently one of the first clubs, Bayern Munich also ran a bluetooth marketing campaign in the Allianz Arena (article in German) and Real Madrid also reportedly had a bluetooth proximity marketing system installed, however I could not really find a lot of details on this..

The latest episode involves a number of football clubs (8) in the U.K. and Scottish Premier Leagues. More details from this article:

Fans at Blackburn Rovers, Birmingham City, West Ham, Portsmouth, Wigan Athletic, Wolves, and Celtic will be able to opt in to receive transmissions, which will come in the form of video and audio as well as text messages, and include information about club fixtures and club profiles along with advertising.

Bluepod reckons that fans hanging around on the terraces are an ideal target for entertaining advertisements, and cite a recent trial at Portsmouth that saw over 6,000 fans downloading a movie trailer from a crowd of about 20,000.

Stadiums are ideal locations for running bluetooth marketing campaigns, as they involve:

Content itself and value-added services are the two most important reasons why users would willingly participate in a mobile marketing campaign. When the users are given something of value to them for free(i.e. no monetary cost involved), experience shows that they go to great lengths and can even endure failures in order to reach their goal. Not only do they not overlook prompts and call-to-action messages, but they look out for them and they themselves initiate the process of interaction. And this fact can, on its own, drastically affect the outcome of a proximity marketing campaign.

Just imagine a few examples:

• see the match schedule on your mobile phone,
  
• order drinks and snacks from your seat,
  
• see the team lineups,
  
• watch replays of goals and highlights,
  
• have live score updates from other league / cup matches,
  
• vote for the most valuable player (mvp),
  
• upcoming matches for the club,
  
• and the ability to book tickets for these matches.

The list is pretty much endless. All of these really offer a new, more interactive experience in the stadium, and I just can't wait to see some of these in real life!