Essendon Football Club showcased Australia’s first augmented reality gesture based projection at the MCG on Saturday night.
 
View this exciting innovation on BomberTV here ?

 

The groundbreaking new technology allowed fans to interact with augmented reality footballs being projected onto the famous MCG.

 

This exciting new initiative continues the Club’s strong commitment to fan engagement and digital innovation.

 

Essendon leads the way in the AFL’s digital arms race surpassing all other clubs with its online statistics.

 

In season 2011, Essendon’s website averages 2,184,017 monthly page impressions compared to the next best Collingwood with 1,430,812.

 

The club’s website averages 260,199 unique browsers per month compared to Collingwood’s 210,249 and the average time on site of three minutes per user is the highest in the AFL.

 

Essendon chief commercial officer Richard Burnet said the figures reflected the club’s strong emphasis on its digital strategy.

 

“Essendon has forged a long standing culture of digital engagement with our fans and this sets us apart from other AFL clubs,” Burnet said.

 

“We are unashamedly proud of our ability to produce quality, compelling and innovative content across all of our digital assets.”

 

The importance of social media engagement has resulted in a rapid increase in Essendon’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube following.

 

As a part of the club’s digital marketing strategy, Essendon now has over 134,000 Facebook fans, over 73,690 Twitter followers across four club accounts @Essendon_FC, @EssendonLive, @Bomber_TV, @EFC_Membership and 16 player accounts 
 
Click here to view player accounts. 
 
In another AFL first, Essendon Football Club and True Value Solar gave fans the opportunity to find themselves in the crowd at the MCG on ANZAC Day.
 

Using a 20 GigaPixel, 360-degree high resolution photo, fans were able to zoom-in and find themselves in amongst the almost 90,000 strong crowd.

 

Burnet said the ability for fans to tag themselves in the photo and share it with friends via Facebook, Twitter and email was significant.

 

“We have invested heavily in fan engagement across our digital channels and recognise the importance of integration and cross platform opportunities from a commercial perspective.”

 

“Focusing on innovation and providing content of choice on a platform of choice has been critical in our approach to our digital and social marketing strategy.”

 

The club’s online video channel BomberTV has significantly increased its viewership in season 2011 after making the transition to a new free model.

 

In an effort to reach as many fans as possible, the club also launched its official YouTube channel in 2011 and now has 1,395 YouTube subscribers with over 230,000 video views.