As the developer of mobile technology linking fans and teams, the Atlanta-based company Experience has played middleman to all sorts of transactions.
From the practical: upgrading seats at Falcons games or getting your child down on the field after a Braves game to run the bases.
To the exotic: One minor league hockey team last season allowed a small group of fans to sit on the team’s bench during the second-period of a game while offering their strategic two cents’ worth.
“I don’t know if because of liability we’re going to put anyone in at tight end to fill in Tony Gonzalez’s shoes,” Experience chairman Tripp Rackley said, “but we’re really going to make fans remember going to a game.”
On Wednesday the company announced it had struck a deal with the NFL giving it exclusive rights to work with the league’s 32 teams. Last season, Experience independently served three — Super Bowl-champion Seattle, the Falcons and Tampa Bay.
Rackley operates in partnership with the Cox Innovation Fund and serves as a member of the Cox Enterprises board of directors. Cox Enterprises owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Through their Experience app, fans are able to order a wide variety of services at sporting events and entertainment venues. The teams charge for some and offer others as rewards to their premium ticket holders.
As fans have increasingly discovered the joy and comfort of watching games from their couch, teams have sought ways to expand on the virtues of being there. They have reached out to the consumer in an ever-increasing number of ways through Experience.
At the University of Alabama, Rackley said, selected fans are invited into the locker room on the day before the game. Other young fans stand with Mississippi State basketball players during the playing of the National Anthem. Some sit on the bench at Phoenix Suns games during warm-ups. At Falcons games, they slap palms with players on the walk from locker room to tunnel before the game. They roam the sidelines while the players stretch.
Upgrading or moving seats have been among the more popular applications.
“We believe live events are about creating memories,” Rackley said.
“One of our early mantras was, ‘If we can make every parent look like a rock star to their teenager we’ve accomplished something.’”
In all, Experience has agreements with 90 professional teams, Live Nation concert venues and many of the top college programs.
The NFL is by far the 800-pound gorilla of professional sports. “If you talk to any brand or company in the country and said the NFL just did an exclusive deal with you, how much would that matter?” Rackley asked rhetorically. “People work a long time to be able to get that kind of relationship.”
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