Fan Engagement in the Snow! HYPE Portfolio Startup Impacting the World of Winter Sports

How does Fan Engagement change in the world of Alpine Skiing?

The HYPE UniTrento Wintersports Hackathon, organized by the I-Star institute of the University of Trento and HYPE Sports Innovation with the partnership of two big players of the Winter Sports industry, Swiss Timing and the European Broadcasting Union took place in a completely virtual environment during the 7th and 8th of June 2021.

10 Teams from around the world were tasked with a mission of extracting from sensors, data, and video sequences useful information, metrics, and comparisons in order to improve/innovate fan engagement systems. Other Hackathon focuses included:

• Fan Engagement Platforms 
• Education using Winter Sports Data
• New Data Visualization Experience (for both onsite and home spectators)

Amongst the hackathon mentors was  Jürg Capol of the International Ski Federation (FIS), and other major wintersports industry leaders such as Sarah Lewis. Amongst the winners was Andrea Lazzaro and his team from OneSporter.

Fast forward a few months and we are privileged to see one of the winning concepts impacting the CORTINA FIS SKI World Cup

From the synergy between ONESporter, FIS, and the Organizing Committee of the FIS World Cup in Cortina D’Ampezzo, FIS Ski Race Genie was born.

For the first time ever in the world, Cortina will put its spectators at the center of attention by giving them the opportunity to play live both from home and from the parterre just as the athletes come down and look for their best performance.

How will it be played? With a live web app to play from home or from the partner, guess the result of the race and win prizes made available by FIS.

Just register on the SKIRACEGENIE.COM website and follow the two stages of the Cortina d’Ampezzo World Cup on 22 and 23 January 2022.

The world premiere of a Fan Engagement app in the world of Alpine Skiing is the result of the intuition of Andrea Lazzaro, CEO of ONESporter who with his team formed by the innovation manager Felice Fanizza, the BDM Luca Cristofoletto, and the developers Tommaso Manzana and Luca Daniele, will be present in Cortina D’Ampezzo to explain and demonstrate the new game that has the ambition to change Fan Engagement in the world of Alpine Skiing. Among the partners of this world premiere also CMA – Creative Management Association, e-sports agency, and more.

Playing will be very simple, explains Andrea Lazzaro: “It will be enough to wait for the athlete to leave and from when the athlete will be in the race you will have 30 seconds to answer <green or red> to the question highlighted in the app and win the challenge with the other users. Everywhere in the world. Speed, ease, and inclusion are the keywords of this exciting new adventure. You can play from a smartphone, pc, tablet, on-site and remotely “.

The Cortina d’Ampezzo World Cup races are considered by the FIS data as the races with the greatest visibility of the whole white circus, both from home and on-site.