Brizicam Lets Fans Control Stadium Cameras On Smartphones

Brizi, a Toronto based company, is looking to pictures to help sports franchises and their corporate partners engage with fans via BriziCam.

According to Ticketmaster research cited by Brizi, 74% of attendees at live sporting events take at least one picture, with about 92% of which being shared on social media. Brizicam is a robotoic in-arena/stadium camera that fans can control via their smartphones.

Attendees enter their seat and section number via a dedicated URL and can instruct one of several cameras located throughout the venue to focus on their location. From there, users will have a live feed of themselves on their phone, and have 30 seconds to control the camera functions – such as panning and zooming – before taking their picture.

It provides sports teams and venues with a solution to which a sponsor is able to apply a simple graphic overlay to all fan photos shared from the game. For example, during the US Open tennis championship, official timekeeper Citizen was among BriziCam sponsors and all photos taken by the camera during Citizen’s one-day sponsorship were framed by the outline of a watch featuring branding.

At the event, attendees took and shared nearly 7,500 photos during the US Open and were urged to post the picture on social media with the promise of an ultra-high resolution photo commemorating their attendance.

Uploading provides Brizi and its partners with information such as which demographics engaged with the camera, as well as valuable social media information such as their purchase preferences and any brand pages they may have ‘liked’ or ‘followed’.

Brizi is two-and-a-half years old, though its current business model has only been in place since October 2015. Prior to that, the company was experimenting with drone-mounted cameras that could be controlled for use in news reporting and live-casting

Brizi’s first partnership was with the Ottawa Redblacks, who invited fans to use the BriziCam to take pictures during the team’s final home game in November. The cameras were accessed approximately 4,400 times in three hours, with 842 photos captured by fans.

The photos, all of which were labelled with “RNation” – the name the team has given to its fanbase – garnered approximately 407,000 impressions through social media shares.

“We now have so much data about you and are able to reach your hundreds or even thousands of friends or followers. That’s where the magic happens,” said Anna Hu, Brizi co-founder.