EDMONTON – An Edmonton company has been selected, out of hundreds across North America, to make Sunday’s Super Bowl the most socially interactive one to date.
“There’s 22 people in the field playing. But there’s thousands of people in the audience and they can become part of the game. They can become part of the show itself,” said FireText Director Raoul Bhatt.
Organizers of Super Bowl XLVIII are encouraging all of the fans at MetLife Stadium to become involved in the game through social media. That’s where FireText comes in.
FireText has designed a software which will gather messages, pictures and graphics from the 82,000 fans’ social media sites and broadcast the information on over 60 TV screens in the stadium.
“There are certain hashtags that are programmed into the software and it’ll come up on the TV feed,” Bhatt said. “While they’re interacting on TV screens they’re also broadcasting to their own social media networks, making it the most socially interactive Super Bowl in history.
“I think the days of fans just sitting back and watching a show are over.”
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As social media continues to grow and become a larger part of people’s lives, experts say it’s a great way to get people engaged in live events, making them feel like they’re a part of the excitement.
“The opportunity is for the fans to create a whole new level of entertainment just through putting a lot of hashtags together, maybe some really interesting statements, some really interesting pictures and images and comments,” said Ray Bilodeau, a Marketing Instructor at NAIT.
“All those armchair quarterbacks can jump in on the game and say ‘I told you that wasn’t the play to make.'”
Bilodeau says it’s also a great way for users to grow their social media networks.
“It’s not just about me watching that event. But it’s my 1,000 followers now watching me watch that event going ‘wow, I wish I was there.'”
“The more they interact on the screens, the more followers you get, the more likes you get,” Bhatt added.
FireText has been a part of other large events like the World Cup and WrestleMania. And Bhatt says he’s incredibly honoured his Edmonton-based company was chosen for the Super Bowl.
“You can’t get bigger than the Super Bowl, right?’ he said. “It’s just such a satisfying feeling knowing they didn’t pick anyone at Silicon Valley. They didn’t pick anyone out of Toronto or Vancouver or New York… They picked us.”
With files from Cheryl Oates, Global News.
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