TLDR: The biggest audience opportunity in sports is hard to understand because we didn’t grow up like them.
We often get asked about GreenPark “So are you guys a game? Or a platform? Is this a metaverse play?” 😑 While these questions can sometimes be frustrating, they are valid. Those who “get it” acutely understand the pains for which we are solving 1) Our target audience 12-25 y/o gamers interested in sports 2) the stakeholders trying to engage them more deeply. But back to the questions - how do you categorize something that is category defining? Especially when you are at the intersection of things that have been “hot” and then all of a sudden “not-so-hot”. I often need to tailor what we are doing for my audience to understand it better. Pretty basic stuff, but not when the gap of understanding is so large because the problem is… so large. So we must help them empathize. Who “gets it”? Our community of live sports gamers who simply want more. More games, more community, more skins. To quote one of my favorite commercials “More, more, we want more” 🤩
For decades sports and media have monetized engagement in the form of viewership. I grew up with a brother who loved playing RPG games and hated watching sports - we were the opposite in that regard. Although sometimes our interests would overlap with competitive Battletoads or Final Fantasy X Chocobo racing. But for the most part, our engagement was monetized differently. But something changed with GenZ (born 1997-2012 as a refresher), alongside the introduction of smartphones to everyday life. All of a sudden kids like me were fully embracing an online life - even for sports. But at what cost? Well, kids were less likely to watch Celtics games on NESN with their parents like I did growing up. In-person events (who doesn’t want to escape for a few hours to see superstars in person) had significant staying power for this generation especially with the social credit of sharing your offline experience online. But FOMO of watching events on TV was gone, everyone could catch the highlights on social media alongside a plethora of sports content. Many spent more time gaming, which continued to scale and monetize in an outsized way.
We aren’t the only ones in live sports gaming but we are the only ones investing in an immersive game engine rather than 2D/react native experience, which we feel is critical to fun and monetizing engagement to the fullest.
Maybe what we are doing at GreenPark is this new vertical of next-gen sports media, but simply we are bringing FUN back into the mobile experience. But then again, let’s see how our community defines itself. Ultimately it’s their call. ☝
