Teams have to think bigger these days.
The competition for fan attention is everywhere.
This is why a majority of teams are investing in interactive and immersive in-stadium experiences.
One of the companies paving the way for this is MVP Interactive, a creative technology company specializing in producing immersive experiences for the world’s largest brands.
They’ve been in business for over 10 years and so far they’ve worked with several clients including Boston Red Sox, Columbus Blue Jackets, Los Angeles Clippers, NY Rangers, NFL, NBA, and MLB.
In this interview with founder James Giglio, we discuss how he got the company off the ground, how MVP Interactive captures first-party data, and his thoughts on the future of fan engagement.
Who are you and please describe your company.
Hello, my name is James Giglio. I’m the CEO and founder of MVP Interactive.
We are a creative technology company that creates immersive brand experiences for the largest sports teams, brands, and universities throughout the country, as well as agencies as well.
So we develop a full range of immersive experiences, leveraging technology like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality.
What was the process of getting the company off the ground?
Well, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.
The famously told story goes that I had taken a meeting with the Tampa Bay Rays back in 2012 with this exact vision.
I was working for another company at a time and I didn’t have any real MVP collateral or designs. I just had this vision that I wanted to leverage sports properties as a forum for consumer engagement with technology and brands.
So I went into the Ray Stadium, and they took my meeting on a cold call, which was great, and I presented them with this very idea.
Lo and behold, they were having an internal meeting a week before discussing strategies on how they could gain fans to their stadium during Mondays through Wednesdays throughout the season because they struggle to fill the seats given that St. Petersburg is 45 minutes to an hour away from downtown Tampa.
To use their words, they said, “They wanted to create a Disneyfied experience of baseball,” and using these types of techniques and technology was a good way to do that.
They weren’t necessarily buyers. As I mentioned, I was working for another company.
So I left that meeting thinking that I hit the lottery, but there was sort of all of the research I needed to do.
I wouldn’t recommend anyone to start a business just on one meeting, but thankfully we were onto something, and being able to kind of create the vision and then execute on that has been quite the journey.
So it is a story of a bootstrapped experience in that believing in a particular product and service and cold calling the market that we were looking to serve.
From there, I had taken plenty of lead meetings, team meetings, just pitching and pitching and pitching, and then finally, the NBA was our very first client.
They allowed us the opportunity to bring one of our flagship products to market, which was the Morphine Station, an augmented-reality photo kiosk.
That type of technology wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now. From there, that was the jump-off point for our company as we were able to quite literally sign a contract with the then banking partner of the league, which was BBVA Compass and all of that helped build our business.
How is the company doing today and what is the long-term vision?
Well, the company is doing well and we have survived COVID and the post-COVID economic headwinds that we faced during that time frame.
I think comparing our business model to 2012 when we started, the market has adjusted and views not only fan experience technology but experiential marketing as much more of a must-have versus a nice-to-have.
Providing these types of experiences to game day attendees allows the teams to showcase their sponsors, and showcase an experience that fans would not be able to participate in at the luxury of their home.
More properties are now really focused on that game day experience and providing the value add in knowing that people are investing time to attend these games.
The long-term vision of the company is we’re really excited about expanding our advertising network in which we will allow non-endemic or competitive brands to enter the sports facilities and landscape without a traditional sponsorship deal.
So our gaming kiosks will give mid to regional-sized brands or even large brands that didn’t necessarily have sponsorship plans over an extended amount of years an opportunity to underwrite our experiences and provide fans a unique way to connect with their brand leveraging our gaming kiosks.
We definitely see it as a great growth part of the company.
Can you dive into why first-party data is in part important for brands and how you all capture this information?
Well, with any investment, most people want to see some type of return.
When it comes to advertising and marketing, KPIs are extremely important for CMOs and teams to help justify the expense of providing these experiences.
Now, something I do like to say is that we’re all in the experience business and sometimes it’s very tough quantifiably to linearly come up with a straight conversion for a return on investment.
But one of the things that we pride ourselves in is providing all of the competent information that we can to our clients.
Leveraging technology provides frictionless communication between a consumer and a brand.
So when a fan or an attendee at a tent pole event is looking around and looking to engage with different components of the event, seeing a virtual reality experience or some type of immersive experience provides an automatic draw.
It’s an easy exchange of information for that user to supply a brand with their name, their email address, their phone number, etc…, to participate in this experience that breaks down any discomfort or friction into what the call to action is.
It’s not as intrusive as some other forms of advertising because it’s providing a unique experience.
That information is then supplied to the client where they can remarket and retarget that user into selling their products and services or developing a new relationship with the consumer.
Much like the event in terms of creating these experiences, we’ve seen extended dialogue between a user at these activations with the brand to create more of a brand experience that lives beyond the particular event.
So it’s critically important that brands capture some level of first-party data to learn about their consumer base, and their user base, and then above all develop a relationship with that particular consumer.
How do you all decide what experience to when working on a specific sports brand?
We really try to give each of our clients a process-oriented, holistic approach to what their goals and needs are.
Obviously, the first part of that is the discovery phase and really learning about what the goals of the brands are, what the brand messaging is, what sports or what live event they’re targeting, but then also really educating and learning about the appropriate technology to use and time and time again.
We’ve experienced brands thinking that they wanted augmented reality, for example, but what they really wanted was virtual reality.
There needed to be a little bit of an education or discovery process to come to that conclusion. So that’s where it starts then we go into some level of a design phase where we can render out the vision or the creative and make sure that the brand guidelines, the user experience, and the user interface are all in line with the goals.
Then we go into development, which is the software development and sort of making the magic so to speak.
From there we can fully deploy said interactive at the destination and then obviously as we just mentioned about first-party data, provide our clients with each level of first-party data and user information that they require through a dashboard which is called MVP Live.
That’s really the holistic process in the early sales cycle of learning about an opportunity and the goals of the brand.
We walk them through that process to make sure we’re adequately providing the appropriate product and service to them.
Can you dive into how the technology works from a high level?
Simply put, our set of mixed reality experiences allows for a physical engagement that is overlaid with some level of digital component.
That’s probably the broadest definition in all of our experience, whether they’re mobile apps or fully gesture-capable simulated sporting experiences for our gaming kiosks.
Everything that we do provides a real-life and a digital world blend of an experience.
Producers are always going to have that digital element without losing their physical presence, location, and environment of what they’re doing and that makes it seem magical.
What are some predictions you have for the fan engagement space over the next couple of years?
Well, I think, you know, fan engagement space is pretty broad.
I think we need to think in terms of both in-stadium and out-of-stadium.
I do think that when we started in 2012, there was a big concern with the in-home viewing experience and how pleasurable that was becoming because HDTVs were growing in popularity.
They were becoming less in price and so our thesis or value add to our clients was that our experiences can provide a very unique property experience that you cannot get at home.
I think there’s going to be a continued challenge with that for stadiums and properties as we see the advancements of headsets, whether it’s the Vision Pro by Apple or spatial computing.
360 immersive video is going to be intriguing as well as you can get a courtside view of a game with the luxury of being on your couch because of a headset
It hasn’t come as quickly as some have thought, but it’s becoming more and more intriguing and consumer-based, and more people are going to have access to that.
I do think properties are now shifting a lot of their focus and understanding and this is just not a sports stadium. It’s a lifestyle center.
I think a lot of the new developments that are happening, the new buildings that are being built are mixed-using retail and lifestyle and restaurants and maybe even apartments.
So I think it’s critically important that as these stadiums become lifestyle centers, there’s engagement. When it comes to out-of-venue experiences, I think a big growing company right now that’s caught the sports world by fire is a company called Cosm.
They’re dome sports bars where it gives you that sort of sideline 360 immersive view while you are inside a sports bar almost like this miniature Las Vegas Sphere experience.
So I do see technologies like that really refining and improving so that more people at scale can have access to these experiences where in years past they’ve been pretty limited.
Are you currently hiring and or raising capital? If so, where can people find out more?
Absolutely to both. We’re always looking for smart and strategic interns or team members who are looking to join the team.
Raising money has always been tough although we’re a bootstrap company.
I do sometimes fantasize about what it could be like to have a little bit of runway in terms of seeing a real Series A level of investment.
You know, but we’re used to doing it the old-school way, so to speak.
www.mvp-interactive.com is our website.
You can find me personally on LinkedIn, as well as my direct email james@mvp-interactive.com.
Thanks for having me.
