Sunday, February 24, 2013

Sporting End Membership Program in Current Design

Sporting Kansas City announced today that they are ending their Sporting Membership program in it's current design. The program had originally been set up with a website for fans to sign up as a social media area as well as a location to get the free away tickets that the team offered and the free members stand tickets that the team offered in the first season.  The team also set up a coin system where people could get "coins" for their purchases at the stadium that would eventually be used for something.  There were also plans to use the points that fans earned playing the Sporting explorer app.  The system to redeem those coins and points though never panned out.  So fans have been left wondering what if anything these things would be good for.

Those that have been participating in the program already will be rewarded for their process in the old system.  They'll be given a prize depending on what level they have reached.

The team though doesn't plan on the system going away entirely, instead they plan to change the system.  Hopefully this time the team gets all their ducks lined up before releasing the system.  The lack of a reward system ended up becoming a bit of a joke among fans as they continually asked what using the membership card was good for. 

The system as a whole was something I made the same jokes about, but I had faith in at the end because the team has prided itself on being "innovative" and getting things done.  At this point the team is admitting that the system as it is right now is broken and is not working. They say that admitting you have a problem or made a mistake is the first step to correcting it.  If that's true, then Sporting is taking a step in the right direction to make a reward system that will reward their existing members.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Never felt like a finished product. I remember when they rolled it out the promise was "lots more will be coming soon", and then nothing ever did.

Plus it never made any sense to me to play the trivia game while I was watching the actual game.

I wondered if they took people whose expertise was developing software and tasked them with developing a marketing campaign. Something didn't work.

At least they recognized nobody was getting it and knew when cut bait.