ImagineAR Inc. (CSE: IP, OTCQB: IPNFF, Forum) is a developer of augmented reality, (AR), platforms that are proving to be transformative for how we engage – and experience – immersive digital marketing campaigns.
This Canadian AR Company recently signed a five-year partnership with the National Football League’s AlumniAcademy to create a custom platform for the Academy to engage and activate players, coaches, and sponsors to connect with football fans around the globe. Adding to this news, the Company just signed a two-year partnership agreement with Valencia CF of Spain’s La Liga league, one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world with seven million social media followers. There is a lot to digest here, and we are joined by Imagine AR CEO Allen Paul Silverrstieen to find out more ….
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SH: Thank you for joining us. The Imagine AR platform has immense applications for any business or a sports organization to instantly create their own AR mobile campaigns. So, in general terms, can you just run us through how this works?
APS: Absolutely. We we’ve invested over the years into a self-service AR platform, this AR platform, augmented reality, as you mentioned, allows any company, any business, any person to create an immersive experience on a digital phone targeting either consumers or we specialize also in sports to their fans. So this platform allows companies or teams to utilize their existing content, whether it be movies, images, coupons, whatever, and engage consumers directly in their handset and with today’s environment, a COVID-19, it’s a safe and healthy way with social distancing to excite people, get them involved, build a community and ultimately drive revenue.
SH: So many sports experiences are now virtual. Like you said, a given social distancing guidelines, this could soon become the new norm, correct?
APS: Oh, absolutely. And as you can see from our recent deals, including LA Liga’s team Valencia, they have over 7 million fans worldwide and COVID is certainly impacted them in terms of having any fans in stadium. So, they were looking for an engagement tool to build a community, drive sponsorship revenue, and to keep building out their reputation, their brand. So, Franco Segarra, who is their CIO, we met through, uh, the GSSC, which is a Microsoft sport organization in Spain. He understood AR ready. So, what we did with our platform and immediately saw the opportunity similar to that, you said, it’s going to be the norm. So that is something we’re implementing with him, our AR SDK, which is a software development kit. So our entire augmented reality platform immediately integrates with their existing platform to allow their fans, to share these experiences in social and fully integrating building rewards and other kind of re uh, I guess, programs, custom programs within the RAF and their fans. And it is something we’re pursuing here in North America, which we just announced, as you mentioned, the NFL alumni, starting with the Academy, but also work with a number of other teams as well.
SH: The Academy has a huge task to fill hundreds of vacant spots over a season, all due from injuries. Uh, this really seems to streamline the process.
APS: Yes, we, we do two things with the NFL alumni. It’s a five-year revenue partnership deal. Initially they have the Academy, which they want to be like the minor leagues of NFL. So really between the division one and top colleges and their talent and the NFL to have players who may not be on the roster, but are NFL ready? The Academy just started up and running this week. They’ve got a full camp they’re hand selected. I think it’s somewhere around the mid twenties and players, and we’re providing activations in the locale for them, for the coaches, and then taking it as they continue forward into the NFL. So, it’s a way to really provide a communication platform for these players, as well as most importantly, for the NFL Academy to engage fans as well as the community, as they continue forward. Additionally, imagine you are built a custom platform for the Academy that allows all 32 NFL teams to access. So, when they are looking for a player, whether it’s offense or defense, they can access our platform. We custom built for the Academy, see the videos of players, see the reviews, the comments, and then select players based on what they see. So it’s really an entire religion of that. Initially is going to start with the alumni in the Academy, but we see it growing further with all the chapters they have over 30 plus chapters throughout the United States with players and build out new AR activations with very famous and former players throughout the United States.
SH: Imagine AR also recently appointed a former Portland Trailblazers, CIO, Chris dill, as an advisor to bring your platform to professional sports teams like this. Uh, can we expect more partnerships like this? Like the one with the NFL in the future?
APS: Oh, absolutely. And that’s a good question. So, Chris dill, having him join was a big step for us crystal. I met him about a year and a half at a conference. We were both speaking at, he actually was a moderator. He is really considered one of the top sports tech people in North America. And we’ve been speaking over a year and a half into him. Finally, come in, join our team as an advisor and work with us is a real vote of confidence and validation of our augmented reality platform for the sports industry. We expect to continue to grow with him and his relationships and have partnerships like the NFL alumni like we have with Valencia and through 2020 and beyond to build out sports. But we will be going into other areas. Our platform has the ability to apply, whether it be retail, whether it be property owners, whether it be publishing any type of environment. So, we do expect partnerships similar to the ones we did to date that we’ve announced, which are revenue sharing partnerships over long-term as well as into new vertical markets.
SH: Like we spoke about at the top. Uh, you just signed a two-year agreement with Valencia CF to become an innovation partner and provide your AR platform for a fan activation and engagement. So, being such a popular soccer club, uh, what opportunities could this create for your company?
APS: Well, having them involved, Valencia was a big win for us. A it brought us into Europe, certainly into Spain as well. Obviously, the LA Liga, the league of which Valencia is a part of is significant, has lots of teams and millions and millions and hundreds of millions of fans everywhere. And I think Valencia will become our premier client like the first reference accounts. So we expect it to grow from getting them up and running successful as our proven case to really go into other soccer organizations, not only in Spain, but throughout Europe and the rest of the way,
SH: Bringing sports clubs closer to their fans and introduce these unique experiences, could potentially be applied to just about any sports club.
APS: It’s all about engagement and community. And when you look at sports and certainly, with COVID, a tremendous health issue that we’re going to be facing for certainly the next year, if not longer. And bringing fans back in a stadium teams, got to engage. These fans, keep them excited about the team, keep them updated, build a community. And ultimately at the end of the day, it’s drive revenue. Our augmented reality platform imagine they are. And the SDK allows the teams to engage their fans and sell merchandise, offer discounts and offer unique experiences that can be brought right into the home as well. So we’re excited for starting with sports, but we think sports is going to bring us, the brands is going to bring us other opportunities and other vertical markets, again, not only here in North America, but around the world. And augmented reality is expected to grow significantly. There’s a lot of analysts out there. We follow one analyst in particular, Digi Capitalist. They said, despite COVID 19, they expect the existing market of AR, which is $4 billion to grow to 48 billion in four years. So, we do see a lot of major growth for our platform that we’ve invested in, built in here with sports, but also into entertainment and other areas.
SH: I wanted to ask you about that. When you envision the future of augmented reality and marketing, just as an industry in general, what do you picture?
APS: I think as we go further, mobile AR will continue to grow and expand. You’ve got major companies like Snapchat snap that does a tremendous amount of AR Facebook has gotten in Instagram, has gotten in. So the education hurdles being overcome, there’s a lot of uses and they are, that are starting to grow and out there. This is a big market opportunity in a couple of years, as we’ve heard, and maybe even sooner, uh, Apple’s going to come out with Apple AR glasses. Facebook is committed to Facebook AR glasses. That’s going to be the paradigm shift when people start putting on glasses, which will be tied to their phones through Bluetooth and have AR activations visually wherever they go, whether they’re walking through the middle of a city, they see advertisements, they could see movie trailers have the opportunity to purchase tickets while they’re doing that as well.
That’s going to be the, the real future. And Tim cook, CEO of Apple has been quoted multiple times and conferences. And even most recently, I believe in Ireland, uh, early the Sierra that he believes AR will be the next big thing, just like the mobile phone. So, our expectations are extremely big. We see exponential growth out there. We have a really tight and big sales pipeline and is growing as we speak. And we’re pretty optimistic for our future as the only pure play augmented reality tech company in the market for investors today in North America and around the
SH: Thank you for joining us today, to talk about all things AR in the NFL. It’s really exciting to hear about what you’ve accomplished and what you have coming.
APS: Thank you very much. We appreciate you taking the time. And, uh, we look forward to having the opportunity maybe to speak in a while and discuss some more of the deals and opportunities that we’re bringing to market. Thank you and be safe.
Source: https://stockhouse.com/opinion/interviews/2020/10/05/augmented-reality-takes-sports-engagement-to-next-level
