Digital Seat Media co-founder Cameron Fowler said the only good thing the pandemic did for his business was that potential customers and investors no longer ask how his company plans to educate people on using a QR code.
“(The pandemic is) scary enough for established businesses, it’s doubly as scary for startups, and it’s triple scary when your business is built on live events,” Fowler said.
Instead, they ask about potential new use cases for the Fort Worth-based company’s technology as it looks to install more of its QR code tags in sports and entertainment venues across the country. And renewed interest in live events has poised the company for expansive growth in 2021.
“What you’re seeing a lot now is our partners are really embracing using Digital Seat for a lot more than just sponsorship,” Fowler said.
The company’s technology would likely be familiar to many who have gone to a restaurant last year. It affixes a QR tag onto a seat at a venue, and with a scan of the phone, users are connected to things like digital programs, on-demand food delivery and promotional material. The latter of which helps advertisers target and track their ad campaigns during the event. Fowler said in one instance, a Cheez-It promotion campaign that ran on the platform resulted in a nearly 10 percent sales increase in that area.
“We’re trying to prove that… people will add things to their digital wallet with one tap,” Fowler said. “That’s the way we look at it. We want everyone to get where they’re going in three taps or less.”
While events were shut down, the Digital Seat pivoted to using its platform to help other businesses contact tracing efforts. However, the slowdown in business resulted in a salary cut for its 18-person team, split between Fort Worth and Austin, where co-founder Matt Sullivan lives.
But the company is used to biding its time. Fowler and Sullivan came up with the idea for Digital Seat while working on a project involving near-field communication chips, which allow for secure data transactions between mobile phones, about seven years ago. At the time, the technology was in its infancy, so the pair waited.
“We had to… sit back and wait for the market to get right,” Fowler said. “Back then, NFC technology wasn’t unlocked in mobile devices, QR code still wasn’t native… so we sat back, and we continued in our day jobs.”
In 2018, it was time to launch the company. It spent much of that year developing the technology platform. Its big break came in 2019 when it inked an exclusive, multi-year partnership with Plano’s Learfield IMG College, a collegiate athletics-focused media and technology company. That allowed Digital Seat access to all of Learfield’s clients, and the company launched in its first venue at the 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship.
“It locks up a lot of the collegiate venues. That’s great for growth potential,” Fowler said.
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, the company has now installed its tags in about 20 stadiums, including ones at SMU, Baylor and Oklahoma State University. And Fowler said there are about 12 more venues Digital Seat is looking to bring online soon. He added that partnerships with professional sports venues and music venues are in the works.
Initially, Fowler said he expected to see Digital Seat tags installed in a total of 35 venues by the end of 2021. It’s now expecting to be closer to 50, translating into more than 1 million deployed tags. The accelerated adoption has driven something he said by fans and clients now seeing potential new uses for the tech, like placing tags in restrooms to alert staff when it needs to be cleaned. Fowler said the company saw 55 percent of attendees use the tag at its first event, adding that number is much higher at events now.
“Everybody knows how to use (QR codes) now. That made our life a lot easier,” Fowler said.
Because of the increased interest, Digital Seat is exploring other verticals for its tag, including uses in dorm rooms to help students connect with campus resources. It’s also looking to incorporate AR capabilities. Looking ahead, Fowler said the next step for Digital Seat would be looking to expand its presence internationally, pointing to things like the popularity of baseball in Japan and the global interest in soccer. That international expansion will be aided by a new funding round for the company that is expected to close soon.
“Sports is our low-hanging fruit,” Fowler said. We’re really looking at the system as a piece of technology that can work in a lot of different verticals.”
