Perth startup QuizJam is targeting the sports market with its gaming platform

Perth-based startup QuizJam is solving the problem of the static campaigning used by sporting organisations.

Sitting at the corners of fan engagement, content and gamification, QuizJam gives clubs and organisations another channel to integrate a sponsor’s message into game-based campaigns. Its web-based platform helps clubs engage and connect masses of fans through gaming whilst helping brands to generate leads, do market research, and offer discounts back to fans.

Though the company is in no way restricted to sports, QuizJam has built an array of partnerships within the sporting vertical with elite clubs, governing bodies and sporting properties.

QuizJam cofounder Joel Steel took time out from his investor roadshow to talk about the business and why sport is a strong industry to target with their platform.

What makes sport an attractive vertical for QuizJam to target?

QuizJam is a platform that activates people’s passions and some of the most passionate people in the world are sports fans. There’s no better way for a diehard fan to prove their fandom than by showing you’re the most knowledgeable supporter of the club’s history and becoming the ‘club’s biggest fan.’

We provide a gamified engagement tool that brands and sporting organisations can use to engage fans while at the same time driving real revenue for the club. Fans love it because they to climb leaderboards, take on other fans or friends and even their favourite players, while at the same time being rewarded with special offers and competitions.

Our platform works well with sporting organisations because there is a lack of digital fan engagement tools out there. We have worked with AFL clubs and other large sporting bodies, and one of the biggest problems they are trying to solve is how to engage fans in-between game days. Right now they are stuck with sending eDM’s and standard social media posts, but our platform allows them to achieve that increased engagement they’ve been looking for.

Your business pivoted in October 2017, what did you pivot from?

QuizJam was originally an app designed to be a customer, employee and fan engagement tool. What we were finding with the app, which we started four years ago, was that as technology advanced we found that everything we needed to do in a native application we could now do on a web-based application. This immediately improved the user experience by making the time to value instant. By that I mean people these days don’t want to have to download an app to engage with a piece of content. We know we need to provide value instantly, and that’s what we have now built with our web based platform.

With the app we had worked with some big brands and organisations such as the Commonwealth Bank, Car Sales, Ernst and Young, West Coast Eagles, Fremantle Dockers and the PGA of Australia and although everyone loved the concept and the UX once they were in the QuizJam ecosystem, it just wasn’t getting the traction and engagement we were looking for. So we bit the bullet and pivoted to a web based platform with a laser focus on customer and fan engagement and we haven’t looked back since.

It’s certainly a poor user experience that created a drop-off.

The pivot came after some deep dives with our big agency partners, Havas Worldwide being one of them, as well as some key customers and advisors. We needed to work out what outcomes and features the brands and sports organisations wanted but most importantly what experience does the user want. We found that we needed to provide real upfront value to the user, build trust between the user and the brand and only then could the brand get what they were looking for.

I want to focus in on QuizJam’s partnership with Sportsmate, how has that been going?

We’ve embedded QuizJam into Sportsmate mobile who have just hit 1.5 million monthly active users. Our main goal for Sportmate is drive engagement for their users and ultimately keep them coming back to their apps more often and to stay longer.

The QuizJam Engagement Hubs allows the user to join a community of likeminded passionate fans, they can select their favourite team to join, work their way up multi layered leaderboards, earn points, enter competitions, play against experts or their favourite players and be sent special offers and digital coupons as rewards.

Hit the logo above to take you to a sample of the AFL Coleman Medal Quiz powered by QuizJam.

Through a lot of fan engagement apps gamification is a big driver to harness a community, especially on mobile. How does QuizJam position itself as an ideal partner to help usher in a new frontier of fan engagement before and during sporting events, either during broadcast or in-stadium?

The biggest difference with QuizJam and other fan engagement apps is that QuizJam can pay for itself and drive real revenue for the clubs and any publisher for that matter. Our campaign manager which has been built from the ground up allows the clubs to insert its sponsors brand assets, advertising, CX gamified survey questions, digital coupons and special offers and then distribute them instantly across their Hubs ecosystem. Adding to the multiple gamified lead generation capabilities we create a platform that can seriously enhance any clubs digital sales offering.

Considering the amount of investment you have taken on so far and you are looking at raising another 700,000 dollars. What are you planning on using additional capital for?

The funds will be used to scale. Since we pivoted we’ve built a seven-figure sales pipeline and we need to expand our account management and service delivery team to ensure that we can keep up with pipeline demand.

You’ve built an array of partnerships, worked with sponsors and are in a lot of verticals, what kind of growth opportunities lie ahead?

Sports fits well, so our aim is to sew up the sports vertical here in Australia.

QuizJam is a one of a kind MarTech offering that can deliver reach, engagement, acquisition, advertising, market research, and sales from the one gamified platform. No other MarTech platform can tick all the boxes like we do.

We’ve got close relationships with big agency partners and publishing partners and these businesses have global footprints. Our plan is to own the Australian space over the next 12 months and then work with our global partners to scale into new markets.

This article first appeared on Bullpen, a site that focuses on the Australian sports business, sportstech and the sports startup ecosystem.