Denny Hamlin may have won the race, but there was another victor at the Daytona 500 this year, as the 2016 event saw the debut of a new mobile app for the speedway designed by AVAI Mobile of Austin, Texas. According to AVAI the Daytona app was just the first in a series of apps for International Speedway Corp. (ISC) tracks, a deal that may signal another serious entrant into the growing market for stadium and other large-venue mobile apps.

AVAI Mobile CEO Rand Arnold said that ISC approached AVAI looking for a way to combine different parts of a race-day digital fan experience that ISC was already using, including racing content, a beacon/wayfinding infrastructure as well as a loyalty program and push marketing.

“They were looking to completely change the [digital] fan experience, and they needed someone to tie all the things together,” said Arnold in a recent phone interview. Under a NASCAR-fast deadline — Arnold said AVAI completed the app project in 90 days from design to launch — AVAI used its modular architecture to build and launch a new Daytona venue app ahead of this year’s race, one that Arnold said was used by 30 percent of attendees.

Wayfinding an important feature at sprawling Daytona

If there was one feature that was key in getting fans to use the app it was the active wayfinding and maps feature, Arnold said. As an enormous, sprawling venue, a NASCAR track is always a challenge for fans to find their way around; it was especially so at Daytona this year given all the renovated spaces that were part of the track’s “Daytona Rising” refurbishment of grandstands and other fan areas.

“It’s a huge venue,” Arnold said of Daytona. “And if as a fan you wanted to take advantage of technology [to find your way around], that meant you were going to use the app.”

The Daytona app also featured integration with the existing FanVision experience, which provides race fans with in-car camera and scanner content; it also had a fully interactive site map, with the ability to “mark” areas like favored concession stands or where you parked your car; there is also support for a fan loyalty program as well as user-selected push messaging, where fans could be alerted to things like shorter concession lines, or autograph sessions with drivers.

Arnold said AVAI’s overall strategy of having an app platform that was purpose-built to integrate easily with third-party features enabled the quick turnaround on the Daytona app. He said that “making it easy to integrate APIs and SDKs” from existing services like analytics, content or other services may make sense to more venues, as they seek to integrate tools they are already using into a single mobile-app platform.

Concert deals now, more stadiums later?

Though AVAI Mobile has more than a few big-event customers — the company just announced a deal to provide mobile technology for C3 Events, which runs the Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza festivals, among others — the Daytona/ISC deal is probably the company’s biggest stadium “name” deal so far.

And unlike VenueNext, the app developer for the San Francisco 49ers that has made a name for itself by providing cutting-edge services like in-seat food and beverage delivery, AVAI Mobile will more likely seek customers who are looking for a more pragmatic approach, Arnold said.

“Some things deliver less return for a lot more money,” said Arnold, talking about possible features a stadium app could provide. “I think sometimes you can offer services that are in the end, just not that much better. You need to ask how far you want to go, and figure out what’s best.”