Amazon Prime Now has touched down at the San Francisco 49ers Levi’s Stadium.
NFL fans tailgating in the Santa Clara, Calif., stadium before a 49ers home game can make a purchase off of Amazon.com Inc. and have it delivered to their parking spot in an hour or less, the stadium recently announced. The 49ers first game is at home against the Los Angeles Rams on Monday night.
Consumers open the Prime Now app or go to PrimeNow.com and enter the stadium’s ZIP code, 95054, to see tens of thousands of products available for the quick delivery service Prime Now, which is $7.99 for one hour and free for 2-hour delivery. When checking out, consumers enter the stadium’s address, their parking lot number and the nearest parking flag number in the delivery notes. Prime Now includes Amazon’s alcohol delivery service, however its restaurant delivery service is not yet availabe in Santa Clara, an Amazon spokeswoman says. Amazon.com Inc. is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide.
The service is available only to fans in Red Lot 1, Green Lot 1 and Blue Lot 1, which account for the majority of tailgating parking spots, according to Levi’s Stadium. A representative for Levi’s Stadium did not immediately return a request for comment.
Online retailer Fanatics (No. 38 in the Top 500) also is jumping in to on-demand delivery for sports fans during Monday’s game. The sports apparel and gear e-retailer teamed up with UberEats to deliver LA Rams gear and autographed collectibles to fans in the Los Angeles area, including the San Fernando Valley, Westside, Downtown, South Bay and Orange County. Consumers place their Fanatics order within the UberEats tab of the Uber app, and their purchases will be delivered within 30-40 minutes, Fanatics says. Consumers also can order food from the 150 restaurants available in UberEats.
The Bay-area’s Levi’s stadium is no stranger to tech innovation. The stadium deployed 2,000 beacons—small wireless transmitters that can sense a smartphone’s location via Bluetooth low energy—that work with fans who have downloaded the Levi’s Stadium Android or iOS app. 30% of fans use the stadium app during the game, says Jim Bartholomew, the 49ers director of information technology. The stadium seats 68,500 fans.
“When we set out to build a new stadium, we wanted it to stand for sustainability, technological sophistication and unsurpassed guest experience,” Bartholomew says.
The Levi’s Stadium app informs fans of events at the venue during the game. For example, the app will send alerts to the lock screen of a fan’s smartphone, such as “Be in your seat by 6:50 p.m. to enjoy the pre-game show!” It also helps fans navigate the stadium with such tools as a map to locate the nearest bathroom.
Because beacons can sense a fan’s location, the stadium can send app users such messages as, “Lines near you are short to order food and drinks before the quarter ends.”
The beacons and app are valuable to the 49ers as well, as Levi’s Stadium secured a $750,000 in-app advertisement placement and the app processed $1.25 million in revenue from food, beverage, merchandise and parking transactions in 2014. Consumers can make all of those purchase in the stadium app.
Another benefit of the interactive stadium app is the additional data the 49ers obtain from app downloads, Bartholomew says. While the team has some form of contact information, such as an email address or physical address, for its 17,000 season ticket holders, many of those ticket holders have three or four tickets and don’t go to every game. Many ticket holders sell their tickets or give them to family and friends, and the 49ers don’t have data on those fans. Now, many of those fans who are not season ticket holders are downloading and using the stadium app, providing the 49ers with data and a new way to interact.
“Through the Levi’s Stadium app, we were able to expand the information we have on people attending games from 17,000 to 203,000 in just eight home games in 2014,” he says. “This is an important metric for us that enables enhanced customer service.”
The San Francisco 49ers worked with VenueNext to create the platform of the Levi’s Stadium app. The app also uses services from data and storage networking company Brocade and beacon hardware company Aruba Networks, as well as Ticketmaster (for mobile ticketing) and the NFL (for video replays). Bartholomew would not say how much the 49ers invested in the app and its beacon-based mobile marketing.