Summary

• The Problem: Broadcasters face a critical challenge where audience attention and valuable data leak to third-party apps during live events, eroding the ROI on expensive sports rights.
• The Solution: By integrating interactive fan engagement games like predictors and trivia directly into their own platforms, broadcasters can reclaim engagement, turning passive viewers into active participants.
• The Impact: This strategy unlocks new sponsor revenue, provides a goldmine of first-party fan data, and directly boosts viewership by creating a sticky, year-round digital ecosystem.

The Stakes Have Never Been Higher

As a global broadcaster, you operate in a high-stakes environment. You spend enormous sums to secure premium sports rights, knowing they are one of the last bastions of live, appointment viewing. Yet, two silent risks are actively eroding the return on those nine-figure investments: first, that fans don’t show up in sufficient numbers, and second, that even when they do, their attention and data immediately flow to third-party platforms.

This is the modern reality of sports viewership. During a live match, your broadcast may be on the main screen, but the real action is often happening on the second. Viewers are multitasking on social media, debating in WhatsApp groups, and checking fantasy scores on other apps. Every glance down at their phone represents lost watch-time, a weaker ad yield, and a critical gap in understanding who your audience truly is.

The moment to passively accept this fragmentation is over. It’s time to own the second screen—to host the interaction, the energy, and the conversation inside your own digital ecosystem. When you do, you protect ad revenue, cultivate a rich asset of first-party data, and create new sponsor value you can price with confidence.

The Cost of Leaking Attention

What if viewers don’t come? That’s an existential fear after paying for premium rights. But there’s a quieter risk that erodes ROI even when they do: multitasking. Viewers dip into Twitter during VAR, WhatsApp during corners, or a stats app after a big chance. Your commentary continues; their focus doesn’t.

Who owns the data? Traditional ratings tell you “how many.” They don’t tell you “who,” “what they care about,” or “how they behave.” Each tap on a third-party app enriches someone else’s data graph—never yours.

Ad yield depends on time in your ecosystem. Every moment outside your app or site is a moment you can’t monetize, nurture, or learn from. If you don’t host the interaction, you can’t price it, package it, or prove it.

Become the Second Screen—Inside Your Own Platform

The most effective way to combat this fragmentation is not to fight the second screen, but to become it. By integrating compelling games and community features directly into your app and website, you give fans a reason to stay.

• Ad Retention Through Attention: When fans are in your app answering the question, “Will there be a goal in the next 10 minutes?” they aren’t doom-scrolling elsewhere. More focused minutes watched translates directly into more ad impressions served.
• Monetizable Sponsorships that Feel Native: Your commercial inventory can expand beyond static banners. Imagine offering "The Halftime Trivia presented by Mastercard" or "The Live Predictor powered by Adidas." These are sponsored game segments that deliver measurable engagement, creating premium inventory that brands are eager to buy.
• A Real Data Layer, Finally: Every tap, pick, and quiz answer enriches first-party fan profiles. This allows you to segment superfans, personalize notifications, and provide sponsors with audience insights they have never had before.

Consider this illustrative example: ESPN adds a “Live Predictor” widget to its World Cup coverage. While viewers watch the match, they answer questions like, “Will Messi score before halftime?” Correct answers earn them points on leaderboards. Viewers are now glued to ESPN’s ecosystem, directly boosting watch-time and creating immense sponsor value.

Program Design: Pre-Game, In-Game, Post-Game—Repeat

A successful engagement strategy creates a continuous loop that keeps fans coming back.

• Pre-Game: Build anticipation with match predictors (winner, scoreline, first scorer), lineup guesses, and hot-take polls.
• In-Game: Offer short, time-boxed questions tied directly to the live action: next goal window, number of corners, possession shifts. These addictive micro-moments are key to holding in-play attention.
• Post-Game: Close the loop with rapid-fire quizzes, fan-of-the-match votes, and recap challenges that tease the next fixture.

To amplify this, private contests add a powerful viral lift. By giving fans a simple way to create mini-leagues and invite their friends, you empower them to become advocates for your platform. You host the fun—and you own the data.

The Payoff: What Leadership Cares About

1) Engagement that moves ratings

When fans interact, they stay. That time shows up in session duration, stickiness, and—critically—viewership lift. Private contests add virality: fans invite friends to mini-leagues, growing audience organically.

2) Sponsor inventory you can price with confidence

“Halftime Trivia presented by…,” “The Critical-Moment Predictor powered by…,” “Fan Pulse brought to you by….” These aren’t banners; they’re branded segments with attention, participation, and attribution you can prove.

3) First-party insights you’ve never had

Build a living profile of your audience: team affinities, prediction behaviors, response to big moments, preferred rewards. This data fuels personalization, programming choices, and premium sponsorship narratives.

Tie the First Screen to the Second—On Air

Second-screen participation can enrich the broadcast itself:

• Fan Pulse graphics: “78% of fans in our app predict a goal in the next 10 minutes.”
• Leaderboard flashes: “Top 5 Superfans of the Match” (a subtle nudge to join in).
• On-screen CTAs: “Vote now in our app”—turning linear audiences into logged-in users.

This loop turns TV into a gateway, and the app into a destination. The result: more installs, longer sessions, and better monetization surface area.

Year-Round Value: One Platform, Multiple Tournaments

This is not a one-off activation for a single marquee event. The broadcasters who win in the coming months will be those who build a central engagement hub that spans their entire annual calendar—from domestic leagues to continental competitions and international championships.

The formula is simple: Multiple tournaments, one platform. Keep the game formats familiar, simply swapping skins and questions by sport, and you can roll your engaged audience directly from one event into the next. By mixing formats like predictors, fantasy-lite, and quizzes, you maintain freshness without having to re-engineer your entire tech stack.

Reduce Operational Burden with Generative AI

Creating a constant stream of engaging content shouldn’t be a grind for your editorial team. With Generative AI, you can automate and streamline the entire process. Our platform can auto-generate thousands of question banks aligned to fixtures and player stats, vary the difficulty for different game moments, and streamline result resolution—all while localizing content for different regions. The result is a vibrant second-screen program with minimal grunt work.

Why Vinfotech

You bring the rights and the audience. We bring a proven engagement engine—and tailor it specifically to your brand and workflows.

• Built For You: We start with our core building blocks (predictors, fantasy, trivia, leaderboards, private contests) and then craft a bespoke experience that fits your product, design language, and data stack.
• Fast to Market, Safe to Scale: Our platform is designed to integrate cleanly with your existing systems, from login to analytics.
• Day-to-Day Covered: We handle the development, deployment, and ongoing maintenance, freeing your editorial teams to focus on storytelling.
• AI-Assisted Operations: Our Generative AI tools for content and resolution dramatically reduce your manual overhead.

Our goal is simple: to provide you with a central engagement hub for all your tournaments, a data engine that turns activity into insight, and sponsor-ready segments that command a premium.

The Moment to Act

The winners won’t just have the best rights. They’ll have the most engaged community, the richest first-party data, and the clearest value to sponsors. You already own the television screen. Now own the second screen, too—inside your ecosystem, on your terms.

If this resonates, we can stand up a focused pilot, demonstrate watch-time and sponsor lift, and then roll across your calendar. Let’s make every match a fan moment—on your platform.