Snapchat is courting teens by expanding its live sports geofilters to include high school football games.
The new filters are similar to the real-time score graphics that are available at NBA arenas during basketball matches. The feature tends to display the logos, names, and respective scores of the competing teams, alongside the match time.
Snapchat hasn’t confirmed how many high schools will get the geofilters, but it predicts that they will show up at more than 5,000 games per week, starting on September 2. As you can see in the image below, the filters are sponsored by Gatorade.
The move marks a new partnership between the popular visual app and Southern California startup ScoreStream, the makers of a high-school football updates app. ScoreStream will provide Snapchat with the data to power the virtual scoreboard, reports Mashable.
“Dynamic Geofilters are a visual and timely way for sports fans to express the here and now of the game in their Snaps,” Ben Schwerin, Snapchat’s director of partnerships, said in a statement. “ScoreStream’s crowd-sourced content is far more local and personal than any other sports content currently available, and will fuel the high school spirit of our Snapchatters like never before.”
Snapchat overtook Instagram to become the most popular social network among teens this year, according to a study by investment firm Piper Jaffray. Marketing its constantly updating geo-specific feature to a demographic that is extremely active on social media is a clever move on Snapchat’s part.
The expansion of the geofilters to high school football games could also be a sign that Snapchat wants to bring its real-time graphics to other sports — although the company has not confirmed any such plans. For now, it will be teens (and possibly their parents) that get to have all the fun.
