Buffalo Bills announce Venuetize as creator of seamless fan services in relaunched Team App

Pegula Sports and Entertainment, the management company for the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres, relaunched its Buffalo Bills team mobile app last month, which includes rich fan amenities and game day features, powered by Venuetize.

Pegula Sports and Entertainment selected Venuetize, a mobile-first platform as a service, specialising in deep third party integrations and location-detection for contextual awareness, to revolutionise the in-person and at-home game-day experiences for Bills’ fans.

Last month’s debut is part of Pegula Sports and Entertainment’s larger mobile strategy, which includes an upcoming relaunch for the Buffalo Sabres’ team mobile app and an innovative, turnkey mobile application for its entertainment district in Buffalo, NY, branded My One Buffalo.

Brent Rossi, EVP of Marketing & Brand Strategy for Pegula Sports and Entertainment, said:

We want to create a seamless, integrated mobile loyalty experience for our guests that is synonymous with the One Buffalo brand. We’re serious about continuing to pursue our goal of contributing to the resurgence of Western New York. Our selection of Venuetize for mobility ensures we can deliver a world-class user experience and enable a deeper connection between Buffalo sports teams, fans, and the community.

The move makes Pegula Sports and Entertainment the first of several high-profile mixed-use developments and entertainment districts throughout North America, each of which combine one or more multi-purpose entertainment venues, professional sports teams, retail outlets and hospitality properties, to roll out a ubiquitous mobile platform whereby users can access a multitude of content, features, information, and services for all brands from a single mobile application.

Starting with the Buffalo Bills’ season opener on September 15, visitors to New Era Field, KeyBank Center and HarborCenter, are able to enjoy a personalised experience, enabling them to interact with the Bills, Sabres or other events being held at those venues. Fans can manage and digitally share their mobile tickets, use their mobile wallet for payment at merchandise outlets, avail of real-time traffic, transportation and parking information, dynamically locate their friends at the stadium, and automatically enjoy benefits and rewards earned through their loyalty membership status – all from their smartphones or handheld devices. As a result, Venuetize’s mobile platform is able to provide extensive data and analytics on visitor behaviour.

Jon Romm, CEO of Venuetize, said:

We are very excited to partner with Pegula Sports and Entertainment to power their mobile strategy to enable more engaging, personalised, and rewarding experiences for their sports fans and other visitors. This project is significant for Venuetize in that it provides a showcase for our mobile platform and what it was originally designed for – integrating a multitude of different venues and properties, each with a complex ecosystem of disparate operating systems and services, and integrate all of those in a seamless, interoperable way that creates convenience and value for users, by serving up the right content, service, or feature to the right person at the right time in the right place.

The My One Buffalo project, the technology deployment for which is being managed by Venuetize, involves a complex ecosystem of 13 hardware and software technology and services vendors, including Venuetize (mobile platform with proximity marketing and technical project management oversight), SKIDATA (loyalty rewards portal and stored value), Ticketmaster (ticketing system), Tickets.com (ticketing system), Radius Networks (beacons and geo-fences), TruCa$h, LLC (physical gift cards), Authorize.net (PCI compliant payment processing), Oracle’s Micros (merchandise point of sale system), RetailPro (merchandise point of sale system), Delaware North (hospitality and food service management), Experience, LLC (experiences, upgrades), YinzCam (mobile app developer for the Bills’ and Sabres’ team apps), and LISNR (inaudible audio tones).

The Bills’, Sabres’ and My One Buffalo integrated mobile loyalty platform is available for iPhone, Android and web users, and can be downloaded online at: http://apps.yinzcam.com/nfl/buf

About Pegula Sports and Entertainment

Pegula Sports and Entertainment is the management company for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League (NFL), the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League (NHL), the Buffalo Bandits of the National Lacrosse League, the Rochester Americans of the American Hockey League, Black River Entertainment, an independent record label based in Nashville, TN, and HarborCenter, a mixed-used hockey and entertainment complex located in Buffalo, NY.

HarborCenter includes (716) Food and Sport, a sports-themed restaurant and bar, The Rinks, two NHL-size hockey rinks, the Academy of Hockey, a premier development destination for hockey players and coaches, Tim Hortons Café & Bake Shop, and Buffalo Marriott HarborCenter, a full-service Marriott hotel, a 750-space parking garage, and additional retail space.

For more information, visit www.psentertainment.com

About Venuetize

Venuetize is a mobile-first platform as a service, specialising in deep third party integrations and location-detection for contextual awareness.

Venuetize’s platform leverages an integrated ecosystem that optimises the intersection of personalised data, marketing analytics, relevant/targeted content and interactive technologies in order to acquire, retain and monetise loyal user bases across multiple market verticals. The Company was established in 2014 as a means of filling the market gap created by a highly fragmented technology ecosystem in the venue-based sports and entertainment industry.

For more information, visit www.venuetize.com or follow the Company on Twitter @Venuetize.

Main image (top): Buffalo Bills’ New Era Field

Images courtesy: Pegula Sport and Entertainment / Buffalo Bills

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