New Technology Helping Sports Fans Have Better Game Day Experience

Thanks to some new technology University of Oklahoma baseball and softball fans may get to enjoy all the ballpark has to offer without missing a pitch.

Fans will just have to keep an eye out for a little sticker on their seats. College football and basketball fans at some Oklahoma school stadiums are enjoying the game in a whole new way.

Fans can scan the QR code and everything from concessions to merchandise will be at their fingertips.

"We got tired of going to venues to have them tell us hey download an app on your phone and we would download it and it wouldn't work," said Cameron Fowler, CEO of Digital Seat Media.

Fowler created Digital Seat Media as a direct response to those frustrations. The technology assigns each seat in a venue a sticker that lets fans order food and participate in other game day activities right from their seats. 

The company began in 2018, but Fowler found the convenience helps with COVID safety mitigations too.

"The schools love it because it means people aren't standing right next to one another,” Fowler said. “The fans love it because I'm not missing 20 minutes of my game because I'm standing in line waiting to get a hotdog."

Venues can also use the codes to keep fans in the loop with cleaning services.

"We spun off what we call a safety scan which allows people to scan tags and see when the last time an area was sanitized," Fowler said.

Both Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University jumped on the bandwagon back in September for their football and basketball arenas.

"Every single one (sticker) has to go in a particular place. It's like a very big puzzle," Fowler said.

The sticker scanning system isn't only handy for fans -- through incident reporting, it gives staff an exact location where they're needed anywhere in the stadium.

"If you're sitting in a stadium and your arm rest breaks off; instead of having to text 'help' to 555 or whatever it is, you can just scan your digital seat tag so now we know instantly where you are," Fowler said. 

Right now, Digital Seat Media's seat scanners are only in collegiate venues, with OU adding the service to its baseball and softball fields later this week.

Fowler said they are looking to make the jump into the pros and even concert venues in future.