Live local sports video company ScoreStream finds value in collaborating with DOOH networks

A DPAA-sponsored feature. ScoreStream, the first and only crowd-sourcing platform for live local sports, joined the DPAA this past spring. Mel Stott recently chatted with John Smelzer, President & COO of ScoreStream, about the company.

You bill yourself as the first and only crowd-sourcing platform for live local sports. Please tell us a bit about how your crowd-sourcing platform works.

The ScoreStream mobile app allows fans in the stands to input scores, upload photos and videos, chat, cheer and post to social media. We then use machine learning and several other proprietary techniques to structure, validate and publish this user generated content in real time.

In addition to having a sizable mobile audience, you syndicate real-time content to 500 local media partners nationwide. Who are some of these partners, and please tell us more about the syndication aspect of your business.

We’re now up to 750 local media partners, including TV stations, radio stations, newspapers and cable sports nets representing Sinclair, Tribune, Nexstar, Gannett, Hearst, FSN, CSN, iHeart Radio, ESPN Radio and many others. These partners publish geo-located ScoreStream web widgets covering all their local teams.

We also power on-air tickers for approximately 100 TV stations nationwide and even provide real time “geo-filters” to Snapchat. We’re about to announce one of our most strategic partnerships to date, which will essentially make ScoreStream “the wire” for live, local sports.

How do you see digital out-of-home fitting into your business model?

Once folks realize they can see up-to-the-second coverage of their local high schools, they are thrilled and delighted by that content whenever and wherever they happen to be. Digital out-of-home represents to us countless incremental points of distribution for our highly unique, highly desirable content.

How do you integrate advertising and/or sponsorships into your content? Do you sell national brands or local advertisers… or both?

We’ve just begun to explore sponsorship of our mobile app and are open to any and all business models for monetizing our DOOH content. One likely model would be for our partners to sell locally – something we could never do – as we sell nationally, all subject to mutually agreed-upon rev shares.

High school football must be a big time of year for you. What can users expect to see from ScoreStream during the 2017-18 season?

Recap of the “Digital Signage – No Alternative!” Conference in Moscow

The 7th international conference “Digital Signage – no alternative!” was held in Moscow on June 8, 2017 . This year, for the first time, the conference was organized in a new format, as part of the Russian Retail Week.

Most businesses today are already well familiar with digital signage. That’s why this year, unlike previous events which mostly discussed trends,  speakers focused on more pragmatic aspects: how to maximize return on investment from digital signage projects; analysis, statistics, case studies and practical advice on implementation.

The conference was opened by a special guest from marketing association POPAI UK, Phil Day. He said 70% of shoppers still plan to shop in brick-and-mortar stores, despite competition from on-line shopping. However, 76% of customers would like to use interactive digital signage while in stores.

The challenge today is to create digital signage networks that would help achieve tangible business goals. Drawing examples from UK retailers’ networks (Heinz, Unilever, Vodafone, Boots and others), Phil Day gave practical tips on each step of digital signage deployment, such as planning, execution and measurement.