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New Jersey Nets Offer Free Tickets to Poor, Unfortunate Gowalla Users

by Caleb Johnson on April 22, 2010 at 04:45 PM

gowalla nets ticketsIn an effort to get fans to come watch an abysmal NBA team, the New Jersey Nets turned to Gowalla, a location-based social network, earlier this month. The Next Web writes that the team deposited 500 virtual tickets at sports-related locations within 75 miles of the Nets' arena, like sports bars, basketball courts, sporting goods stores and so on. Then, Gowalla users visited these locations and checked in using the geolocation service. If they were lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it), they were notified that they had won real tickets to an April 12th game against the Charlotte Bobcats.

According to Vayner Media, about 15-percent of the winners actually redeemed their virtual tickets for a seat at the game. That's about 76 people. It might not sound like a lot, but that's some extra cash being spent at the arena. Plus, who knows? Maybe they'd never seen a Nets game before and were converted into fans. That's unlikely, since the Nets only won 12 games this year while playing some of the worst basketball we've ever seen, but whatever.

The real winner here might be location-based social networks. When an NBA franchise, albeit a terrible one, uses a geolocation service as part of a promotion, people take notice. We're not saying this is the future of marketing, but with other sites like Foursquare forming corporate partnerships, it could be worth watching with a close eye. [From: The Next Web and Vayner Media]

Tags: basketball, gowalla, location-based, marketing, mososo, NBA, NewJerseyNets, SocialNetworking, sports, top, web

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