What we are going to look at this week is a intresting topic of gamification and how it has been used to influence behaviour in consumers and what it means for sport.

So firstly, what is gamification and is their anything that can help our understanding of it?

Gamification can be defined as the practice of making activities more like games in order to make them more interesting or enjoyable (Dictionary.cambridge.org, 2019).  To get more of an idea what gamification actually is some of the common elements of gamification include

• Statuses
• Milestones
• Competitions
• Rankings
• Social connectedness
• Immersion reality (VR/visuals)
• Personalisation

(Lister, 2015)

In Practise gamification is a way sports organisations are looking to exploit and benefit their business. An example of this is within the fitness industry. There’s no denying that fitness is a chore for most people myself included. It is something that requires motivation. Fitness is something that we have to do rather than something that we actually want to do.

From the graph we can see Fitbit users is significantly growing and is becoming a huge popular trend. With differing challenges being available on the app in which you can challenge friends.

Fitness apps target the competative element through using rankings which as mentioned earlier is a core element of gamification. It allows for people to get more motivation into a fitness activity.

What are the Fitbit Challenges that are so popular at the moment?

Fitbit has challenges to put you in competitions with friends to try and create a fun unique way of getting users fit.

Goal Day 

As part of the app you can activate a daily goal which pushes you to trying to do better and boosts extrinsic motivation

Weekend Warrior 

Who can get the most steps over the weekend? Challengers have 48 hours, beginning at midnight on Saturday to beat out their opponents! So much for a lazy Sunday!

Daily Showdown 

Who can get the most steps today? Challenge your friends to a showdown as you race against them and time to finish with the highest step count for the day

Gamification is certainly not to be mixed with a full game or serious game

Gamification represents the fusion of 4 trends (Workman, 2013) The explosion of social media usage, the mobile revolution, the rise of big data, The emergence of wearable computing and the Market is large and only getting larger

Online influence of behaviour (Gatautis et al., 2016)

We have already seen how behaviour can be influenced through gamification and now are going to look into other ways gamification is being exploited.

• Fortnite dancing classes (BBC, 2018)
• Pokemon Go gets more people walking (Haelle, 2017)

So How would businesses use gamification?

• Businesses can use gamification to market their product
• Additional digital sponsorship available
• Ability to segment club fanbase (data important!) – choosing from various programmes or tiers
• Ability to give regionalised reward (knowing the target market. Tickets for fans in Asia without flights, hotel and spending money is useless)

Gamification can be seen to:

• Add value to existing product or relationship
• Samsung role with interactive games at Youth Olympic Games – #DoWhatYouCant (Samsung, 2018)

Betting companies now move beyond just betting on a sport. They add incentives, rewards for loyalty, virtual prizes, money back guarantees all in order to get more app users ultimately growing their business.

Betting

• Showcase betting through unique added value experiences
• Drive fans towards betting websites
• The Free Bet Hunt. Pokemon Go type game to hunt a free-bet outside stadiums (Cooke, 2016)

Lopez-Gonzalez and Tulloch (2015)

• Digitalisation of sports betting = increase in sport media consumption
• Betting has relationship with sponsorship, role of media and influencer promotions
• Danger of economic dominance influencing competitions and integrity of sport

Lopez-Gonzalez and Griffiths(2017)

• Increase in betting prevalence and gambling disorder

References

Cooke, S. (2016) A £5 free bet has appeared – 888Sport Unleashes Pokemon Go-esque betting gameAvailable at: https://www.sbcnews.co.uk/marketing/2016/08/26/5-free-bet-appeared-888sport-unleashes-pokemon-go-esque-game/
[Accessed: 27^th March 2019]

Haelle, T. (2017) Pokemon Go really does get people moving – especially those needing it most [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2017/03/15/pokemon-go-really-does-get-people-moving-especially-those-needing-it-most/#4a5cd6785480

Lopez-Gonzalez, H. and Griffiths, M.D. (2017) Betting, Forex trading, and fantasy gaming sponsorships – a responsible marketing inquiry into the gamification of English football. International Journal Mental Health Addiction, (2018), pp. 404-419

Samsung (2018) Samsung Celebrated the Olympic Spirit Through Innovative Experiences at the Samsung Olympic Showcase During the Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018 Available at: 2019]https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-celebrated-the-olympic-spirit-through-innovative-experiences-at-the-samsung-olympic-showcase-during-the-youth-olympic-games-buenos-aires-2018