Crowdsourcing support during sport events : embedding a crowd inside a smart device

Abstract

This abstract reports abridged findings from the deployment of a technology-mediated real-time crowd-support system that was deployed in a 5-kilometer running event with 5 athletes and 140 online distributed spectators. Spectators were composed of crowdsourced participants that had no social connection with the athletes and of friendsourced participants that were recruited through the athletes’ social networks. The spectators could cheer the athletes remotely as the event unfolded. Through this ad-hoc deployment four key influencing factors in spectator engagement were identified. These need to be taken into consideration when designing synchronous crowd-support systems during sports. The results indicate that synchronous remote crowd-support can be effective and this effectiveness is influenced by the tie strength between the supporter and the supported.