Watch the Game with Like-Minded Sports Fans with FanWide
FanWide has developed an exciting way for people to find and connect with other sports fans to watch their favorite teams. The company’s flagship app is a social media platform that organizes watch parties at local bars and restaurants for fans of major college, professional and international sports teams. The FanWide platform benefits both local establishments and sports fans, providing restaurants and bars the opportunity to host events that can supplement their traditional customer traffic and broaden their local brand recognition, while giving fans a place that is guaranteed to feature their team’s game.
Partnering with local bars and restaurants enables FanWide to ensure that every viewing party features exclusive deals on food and drinks, team-centric decorations and displays, and an optimally-staffed establishment. Fans use the app or mobile website to check-in when they arrive to redeem the promo at each venue.
Whether you’ve moved to a new city, are traveling on business, or simply support a non-local team, FanWide will help you find a fun environment to watch your team’s games.
Although there are other social organizing platforms on the market today, only FanWide has taken the care to implement analytical capabilities that provide fans with the most exciting viewing experience, while also maximizing the profits of participating businesses. The app is also free for fans and exceedingly simple to use: simply download the app, specify your favorite teams or sports, and FanWide quickly directs you to viewing events in your area. Furthermore, FanWide’s focus is to use technology to build communities of sports fans nationwide and bring them together at an event, instead of solely focusing on social interaction via an app or website.
According to FanWide President & Founder Symon Perriman, his company’s application was developed to reflect the growing geographic disconnect between many sports fans and the teams they cheer for.
“A lot of people in today’s digital age are work transplants, students, military, or travelers who want to connect with their fan-base and find shared experiences in a positive atmosphere. Research shows that about half of sports fans currently live out of market from the teams they watch and root for. And with national networks, it can often be difficult to find a channel that is featuring your team. If you add the rising number of “cord cutters” who are eliminating traditional television packages altogether due to the high costs, there is large segment of consumers that can benefit from our app and website. We developed FanWide as a free, simple, and intuitive service to make sure that every sports fan can find a community, no matter where they happen to live or travel.”
FanWide event - Patriot fans cheering on their team!
The technology underlying FanWide was developed by a talented team that brings years of developer experience to a fledgling startup. This extensive experience, along with prior experience with Microsoft technologies, led the team to build their website and services exclusively using Azure and the Microsoft stack. FanWide leverages Azure to host and power their distributed, tri-tiered architecture. The app’s front-end website was developed by several former Microsoft employees, using .NET MVC alongside Visual Studio and TFS online. While FanWide’s backend infrastructure leverages Azure Cloud Services and Virtual Machines that are connected with the Service Fabric.
In addition to utilizing Azure for their solution’s underlying infrastructure, FanWide also relies on a wide variety of Azure services to fully power their platform including: SQL Azure, Azure Web Sites, Web Apps, and Azure Search. The FanWide team has been very pleased with their decision to build using Azure, particularly for the flexibility and convenience the stack has provided, Perriman says. “We use dozens of Azure features, and love the convenience of a fully-integrated cloud platform. It enables our developers, designers, architects, and data analysts to use the same suite of tools, including Visual Studio Team Services and Azure Active Directory.”
After spending six months developing and designing their app and service, the FanWide team officially went live with their product in September 2016 -just in time for the kickoff of football season. Perriman believes that FanWide’s decision to leverage their app on Azure facilitated a quicker time to market, while affording more flexibility to evolve their solution over time. “Azure provides the most integrated suite of tools that any new business needs to get started - covering design, development, productivity and operations. Thanks to Microsoft, we could affordably launch our business, seamlessly communicate across our remote team, and build FanWide from an idea to a nationwide brand in just one year. We are looking forward to incorporating additional Azure features as FanWide continues to evolve and we expand operations into new markets.”
Check out FanWide or download the app (available for iOS and Android) and start watching your team win today!
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About BizSpark: Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps startups succeed by giving free access to Microsoft Azure cloud services, software and support. BizSpark members receive up to $750 per month of free Microsoft Azure cloud services for 3 years: that’s $150 per month each for up to 5 developers. Azure works with Linux and open-source technologies such as Ruby, Python, Java and PHP. BizSpark is available to startups that are privately held, less than 5-years-old and earn less than $1M in annual revenue.