Real Sociedad’s digital scarf rewards football fans for buying authentic
La Liga’s Real Sociedad has teamed up with SOLOS on a digital scarf. The garment is designed to reward loyal fans with perks and discounts for buying authentic merchandise.
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Many football clubs are faced with a problem of knock off, copy-cat merchandise that is sold cheaply in front of stadiums. The Basque club may have found a novel way to deal with this nuisance.
As part of their stadium redevelopment, they are trialing what they refer to as smart guernsey technology. This essentially consists of an electronic tag that is embedded in a traditional football scarf via SOLOS Smart Wearable technology. The garment is priced at 20 Euros, which is five times more than the non-digital version.
The idea is to more than make up for difference in price by savings fans can achieve on exclusive offers and rewards such as food and drink vouchers. The scarf is also designed to enhance the match experience by linking up with a smartphone app to provide access to exclusive videos and content, and chances to win prizes.
“This is an opportunity for us to create the best possible experience for our fans, rewarding them for their loyalty to the club and to transform Anoeta into a world-leading smart stadium,” said Real Sociedad head of digital Juan Iraola.
“Athletic Bilbao have just built a new stadium as well so there’s a lot of investment around and because of this the club has to think about new ways to make revenue. The technology can activate quite fast but we have to upgrade the stadium at the same time and those things take a bit longer.
Plans are afoot to expand on this functionality. Once Sociedad’s Anoeta Stadium redevelopment is complete, the intelligent scarf will allow fans to enter the ground completely ticketless. It will also be used as a contactless payment tool.
At the moment 500 scarves are being trialled, with more to be rolled out in the near future. The official launch is timed for the start of next season.
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