YinzCam sells equity stake to NBA, gets deal to re-do 22 NBA team apps

Stadium and team app developer YinzCam announced a big deal with the NBA Monday, a partnership that calls for YinzCam to redesign 22 NBA team apps during the 2015-16 season, adding features like location-based awareness, in-seat food ordering and delivery and seat upgrades. According to the company and the league, the NBA will also get an equity stake in the privately held YinzCam, a Pittsburgh-based business that has more than 140 clients, including teams from the NFL, the NHL, the NCAA and the National Rugby League.

Though YinzCam previously listed 23 NBA teams as current clients, including all 22 it will redesign apps for, under the new deal it appears that the team apps will have access to much deeper NBA content, including direct access to watch or listen to live games. Here is one of two very interesting paragraphs from the press release:

The new apps will personalize the home screen experience based on the fan’s location. Core game information, such as stats, play-by-play and box score, will remain accessible, however, the most relevant features, based on a fan’s location and game status, will be delivered to the home screen. Features such as seat upgrades and in-seat delivery will be surfaced within the app for fans at the game, while fans outside of the venue will be exposed to more extensive game coverage, video and news.

Treading on VenueNext’s turf

The most significant part of the above paragraph is the mention of features like seat upgrades and in-seat concession delivery, services that have not been a standard part of the YinzCam stadium/venue app offering, which in the past focused mainly on delivering content, like stats, live video and instant replays. We have an interview scheduled soon with YinzCam CEO Priya Narasimhan to find out whether or not YinzCam is building the software behind these features itself, or whether it is drafting a third party to supply the code.

Either way, having such features puts YinzCam in more direct competition with VenueNext, the company that built the Levi’s Stadium app and is also now building an app for the NBA’s Orlando Magic. Though VenueNext’s offering also includes content, at its core its focus is on supporting fan services like food ordering and digital ticketing.

On the content side, the new NBA team apps will have “watch” and “listen” features that will let fans listen to or watch live games. According to the NBA, the watch/listen features will deep-link fans to either a regional sports network broadcast, or national games via the WatchESPN app or the Watch TNT app, or to the NBA’s League Pass broadcast via the NBA app. To watch the games fans would need a qualifying cable contract for the RSN games, and would need a League Pass subscription ($199.99) for those broadcasts.

The NBA and YinzCam also said that the new apps would include support for Twitter’s mobile development platform, Fabric, which will allow fans who are logged into Twitter on their devices to “tweet, retweet and favorite directly from the team app.” Direct integration of Twitter activity is an interesting twist, since in most cases fans at games spend far more time using apps like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram than team or venue apps.

According to the release YinzCam will redesign team apps for the Atlanta Hawks, Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Hornets, Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies, Milwaukee Bucks, Minnesota Timberwolves, New Orleans Pelicans, New York Knicks, Oklahoma City Thunder, Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs, and Utah Jazz. Though the Washington Wizards are listed as a YinzCam client on YinzCam’s website, they are not included in the new-app redesign list.

Equity for content rights

Though the terms of the NBA’s equity investment in YinzCam aren’t described, our guess is that the deal is similar to the one YinzCam struck with the NFL, where YinzCam provided a slice of equity in exchange for content broadcast rights via its team and venue apps. YinzCam founder Narasimhan, who has historically eschewed venture capital in building her 30-person company, said exchanging equity for access to content was a smart deal especially for a firm that couldn’t afford to pay rights fees like the $1 billion Verizon paid the NFL for the right to show live content via its NFL Mobile app. YinzCam has a great relationship with the NFL, and was the provider of the Super Bowl stadium app at Feburary’s Super Bowl XLIX in Glendale, Ariz.

In an interview with Narasimhan earlier this summer, she spoke of the growing importance of fans using apps both inside and outside the arenas; in the press release with the NBA some of that thinking apparently surfaced, in a description about having automated location-based content surface in each app:

The new apps will personalize the home screen experience based on the fan’s location. Core game information, such as stats, play-by-play and box score, will remain accessible, however, the most relevant features, based on a fan’s location and game status, will be delivered to the home screen. Features such as seat upgrades and in-seat delivery will be surfaced within the app for fans at the game, while fans outside of the venue will be exposed to more extensive game coverage, video and news.

The NBA deal follows YinzCam’s deal last year to become the preferred supplier of mobile apps for Learfield Sports, a partnership that Narasimhan said has already resulted in 30 new clients.

One final YinzCam nugget for now:

— Where did the company name come from? Narasimhan says YinzCam is a mashup of the Pittsburgh term “You ones” (a linguistic equivalent of the Southern “y’all”), which when pronounced quickly in a Pittsburgh accent sounds like “Yinz” and “camera” for the personal video the app supplies.