Mark McGuinness: Could iBeacons be used to communicate to sports bettors?

SBC Business writer Mark McGuinness of Mainstream Marketing & Communications looks at the potential for the industry to harness one of the latest developments – the iBeacon.

Our industry is encountering momentous change on a daily basis. In fact our digital lives are changing so much. We don’t even know it’s happening as they way in which we connect and communicate with the physical and internet worlds is blurring.

As a marketer in the digital gambling world, I endeavour to at least keep pace with technological advances through personal investigation.  To that end, I was curious when I heard about the tech brand known as iBeacon technology and the mighty Apple getting involved in this new growth area.

My interest was piqued last year, when the US patent office released a patent application filed in June by Apple for an iBeacons Restaurant Ordering & Reservation System.  The said patent is about a unique system whereby a user of an iOS device maybe offered various options / promotions for local restaurants.  The system allows for waiting times and seating availability in real time, and remote and in-restaurant ordering systems that allow customers and restaurant staff to place and change food orders before you get there – so a sort of variant of just-in-time technology but for ordering food to eat.

So what are these ‘beacons’? Like many mobile users when placing a sports bet, we always encounter issues with mobile phones. For example signal coverage problems are still common perhaps due to physical structures like a shopping centre, football stadium or poor Wi-Fi coverage / availability if more than 10 people are connected to the network!

Beacons are low-cost, low powered transmitters that can find and notify other iOS 7 devices of your location using the latest Blue Tooth technology.  The beacons could therefore be used as a means to push messages to the phone device for precision or location based marketing.

Of course we’ve been there before with Blue Tooth technology and it never quite progressed. But now with advancements in the size of tech – the beacons or transmitters – and a smart phone packed with so much computer power, it could just transform how companies communicate with potential customers within an indoor environment, the timing could be now.

So that got me to thinking in such large scale sporting with betting style events for example; the forthcoming World Cup or London Football Derby between Arsenal and Chelsea of which a stadium may hold 50,000 fans.  It’s very plausible to assume a large percentage of those fans, would have iPhones with the beacon compatibility. This may allow gaming operators without the need of having mobile telephone numbers or email addresses in order to communicate in the traditional sense, to push betting information in real-time, based on location via the Beacon tech, at a fraction of the cost. The cost savings could be instead of say having promotional models handing out leaflets or expensive static or digital advertising hoardings which really don’t engage your potential in-stadium customers.  It’s even possible to offer subscription based or premium digital in-play betting content during the match similar to the traditional football program to aid betting decision making and bet placement via the beacon technology.

iBeacons are going to be game changers, even for the fact that an estimated 170-190m iOS devices are currently capable of being iBeacons! So perhaps the next time you see a promotional model for a betting company, she may not have any promotional fliers to hand out but could be a walking mobile beacon pushing gambling notifications as she brushes by you in the stadium.