Start a movement encouraging more people to put their phones in their pockets and the noise level will increase.
The trick isn’t getting people to put down the phone. This is 2023. That’s not going to happen. The trick is finding a way to incorporate phone usage into the atmosphere of the game as a means of keeping fans focused.
I attended the Sugar Bowl over the weekend. Before the game, an announcement came over the PA system encouraging attendees to use the QR code they put up on every screen in the stadium to download a specially made app. When the app was downloaded, people held up their phones, and the flashlights in all the phones began flickering in coordination with the stadium lights and the fireworks as the teams ran out onto the field in the Superdome. At Bryant-Denny, the cheerleaders have started encouraging fans to hold up their phones with the flashlight on while they do the wave in the stadium with lights dimmed during commercial breaks.
It all comes back to fan engagement. The spirit groups and stadium staffs at the college and professional levels find creative ways to keep the fans fired up and focused on the field. They’ve specifically figured out how to incorporate smartphones into that process, knowing everyone has one and checks it every few minutes these days. They’ve brilliantly turned the fans’ biggest distractions into another means of engaging the fans. Add in a winning team or a good game, and you’ve got a recipe for a very amped up stadium atmosphere.
Now, how do you make phones a part of the experience at Indian Stadium? I doubt PN-G has the resources to design its own app, or that the lights in Indian Stadium have a dimmer switch. But, I bet we can put an announcement up on the jumbotron early in the game encouraging fans to take pictures of themselves and their friends wearing their purple in the stands and post them with a certain hashtag or a certain location tag on Twitter or Facebook. Then, we can have the social media gurus in the pressbox string together collages of the best pictures to be played on the jumbotron during a timeout in the second half of the game. Think of it as the poor man’s version of fans seeing themselves on the jumbotron live thanks to a sideline camera crew in a professional stadium.