“Scorz” is Transforming In-Home Sports Experiences with Interactive Products that Light Up with Every Score

For sports fans, it’s more than “just a game.” Sports offer a chance to safely share in the living, breathing, age-old battle of man versus man, with all its triumphs and heartbreaks. 

And when fans can support their team in-person at the stadium, the stakes feel so much higher, and the wins so much sweeter. 

Scorz, a young company out of Australia, is pioneering a way to bring that kind of in-person excitement to the home sports watching experience.

What is Scorz Doing to Enhance Live In-Home Experiences?

What is it about the live experience that speaks to the heart of sports fans everywhere?

It’s the roar of the crowd. It’s the big apple popping up with each home run at the Mets Stadium. It’s hugging the stranger next to you after a touchdown. It’s Andre Cantor’s booming yell of “Goalllllll!” during the World Cup. 

For Scorz, the idea was to bring that human-centered engagement to the fan at home. To bring the live experience of a Philadelphia Eagles game to the family eating chicken wings in their den in New Jersey.

And with multi-sensory IoT technology, they can. While those words may sound like complicated hi-tech talk, IoT products are ones that we already use every day. IoT or the “internet of things” describes the tech behind smart devices. Those products that connect to the internet to engage with us in real-time, from Fitbit’s to smart fire alarms. 

With IoT products ranging from interactive smart cups to beer pitchers to decorative footballs and soccer balls, Scorz is amplifying fan moments from home runs to touchdowns. 

How Does Scorz Do It?

Let’s take a look at one of Scorz’s most successful connectable products, the Budweiser Hockey Light. Every time the NHL fan’s hockey team scores, the red light lights up, and the signature hockey goal siren blares. The light, a business partnership with the beer giant Anheuser-Busch, is operated via the Budweiser Sports App.

Sales of the NHL Team Edition red light are up 100% from 2020 to 2021, according to Scorz.

Other sports team-themed “score-synced” drinking cups that light up when “your team” scores have also been a major success for Scorz. Another key sign of success-the product hit secondary markets like eBay within hours. 

Social media has been a major driver in sales like this. The New England Patriots put out a tweet in 2017, writing that Patriots’ themed Scorz cups were available for sale. Forty-eight hours later, 25,000 of them sold out.

It’s a win-win-win for consumers, professional sports teams, and their business partners. With 30.8 million hashtags on social media spotlighting the cups- like #lightupcalgary, the products bring exposure and sales revenue to each brand connected to them.

Now, with the pandemic showing no signs of slowing down, sports fans are looking for ways to stay connected outside of the stadium. In fact, a 2021 study by Hatch Communications showed that just 10% of fans watch sports at the stadium post-covid, compared to 25% in years past. So if a simple light-up cup can bring a sense of collective celebration to the home sports experience, many fans are saying, “Where do I buy?”

Where Do I Buy?

Scorz designs these products not just to light up for fans but to deliver celebratory songs, sounds and information at just the right time.

For Scorz clients, the professional sports teams, and their business partners, the information gathering that these smart products do is as valuable as their sales revenue. Knowledge of how fans consume their “product” in real-time is marketing analytics gold in the modern business world.

Because sports ARE a big business, the global sports market is expected to reach $614 billion by 2022, according to a 2021 study by Deloitte. 

And smart products like those that Scorz markets are likely just the first step in a bigger movement to make the in-home sports-watching experience more interactive.  

Technology, of course, has the ability to alienate us or draw us closer. But when used correctly, the right tech can make us feel less alone in our great big world. So if a bright red hockey light in the den can heighten the thrill of the match, why not? Let’s have some fun.  

Perhaps the late great sports commentator Frank Deford said it best when he remarked, “I think at its best, sport does bring us together.”