We live in a world where on-demand is everything to the consumer. This idea has lead to the emergence of mobile platforms for in-seat ordering in sports venues.
Technology now exists that allows fans at any college sports game to order food from their seat and have a concessions professional bring it to them. Soon we will say goodbye to the crowded concourses at halftime that fans so desperately dread.
FanFood, is one company that provides this service, allow fans to order concessions through an app and have them ready for express pickup or delivery. According to a 2017 Des Moines Register article, the mobile concessions platform launched on Monday, June 26th this year.
However, this new technology presents challenges that need to be ironed out. According to a 2017 SportBusiness Daily article, 37% of respondents of a survey conducted by Turnkey Sports & Entertainment, said that mobile ordering does not increase the speed of delivery or pick-up.
Other challenges include increasing the awareness of the technology and convincing fans to download the app. The average consumer believes that downloading an app for an event they rarely go too is just a waste of storage space on their phone.
For college sports, this technology can be used for the more frequent consumers such as the season-ticket holders, the alumni, and the students. And instead of creating an entire new app, why not add the service to a current app.
Every fan of college sports and every student attending a university has the university app on their phone. Adding the mobile platform for in-seat ordering for athletic events would be a perfect way to provide the service without discouraging consumers from using it.
Appetize, a mobile concession platform also specializing in merchandise, shows their orders being 10 to 20 percent higher than normal orders. But that is not the only upside to utilizing this technology. A successful implementation of this platform will increase sales in concessions and merchandise simply because of the on-demand application it provides. In the 2017 SportBusiness Daily article, 80 percent of Appetize’s orders included alcohol, which is one of the highest profit margins for any sports organization.
With this technology, there is also a natural reduction of crowds on concourses of stadiums during halftimes and in between quarters of play. This naturally provides for better security and less inconvenience for fans walking around the stadium.
Because of the on-demand culture of society, Mobile In-seat Ordering will become a necessity in the years to come. It is just a question of how soon can we iron out the wrinkles and properly implement it to the market.