Dropit app is an interactive tool that hosts live 60-second auctions on a stadium’s scoreboard, that users bid on from their mobile device. You just need to download the app from app stores be it Google or iTunes for your smartphones and use it for any Dropit auction, regardless of what arena you’re currently in.
Once the auction starts the price begins to drop, and the first player to “swipe up” in real-time wins that item for the price shown. The longer everyone waits the more the price drops, but the odds of someone else in the stadium stealing it from you increases exponentially.
For example – during one live test at a baseball game – the startup held an auction for a Ducati motorcycle, which sold for $3,904 and is worth over $15,000.
Features of Dropit App
These items are typically given away by a sponsor, who takes a loss on the item but essentially considers it an advertising expense just like buying an old-fashioned billboard ad in the stadium. Sponsors also typically pay an advertising fee to the home team for each auction run, as well as Dropit app for powering the tech behind the live auction.
What is Dropit
Essentially, the goal for sponsors is to get everyone in the stadium to concentrate on one thing at once, i.e the item being auctioned off. By turning an advertisement into a fun interactive game, there’s a much better chance fan will actually pay attention and remember a sponsor’s brand and product. Sponsors can also offer every attendee an in-app post-auction offer like a coupon, so everyone walks away with something even if they lost the auction.
Dropit app has taken the model of a traditional auction and gamified it as an immersive, adrenaline-pumping competition in which the price drops over the course of 60 seconds. The first player to swipe up wins the purchase offer.
History of Dropit App
Founded in 2014, Dropit Inc. launched into the U.S. market as a leader in creating an innovative fan immersion experience. Initially tested in the New Zealand market over 388 activations, Dropit app yielded 92.5% returning users and a 55% engagement with millennials.
The startup recently raised a $3.6M USD Series A at a pre-money valuation of $21M, with most of the funding coming from New Zealand investors. They also sold an equity stake to Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini.
Dropit app was the idea of the Mt Maunganui brothers that turned their app into a $30m tech business, disrupting the lucrative United States sports sponsorship market. Brendan Howell, 40, and Peter Howell, 37, founded Dropit app in the Mount in 2015, building on technology from a previous enterprise.
Gaining Lot of Traction
The startup recently raised a $3.6M USD Series A at a pre-money valuation of $21M, with most of the funding coming from New Zealand investors. They also sold an equity stake to Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini. Audiences loved the adrenalin-pumping, bargain-hunting action and sponsors loved seeing people actively engage with their brand instead of checking social media or grabbing a hot dog.
A distribution deal with major electronic scoreboard manufacturer Daktronics followed in 2017 and went live at a couple of new stadiums. They were also eyeing up potential shopping mall applications in, long term.
In a way the ambitious brothers have come full circle, having started their careers building billboards. In 2017 they moved the company to Miami and started expanding. They are trying to raise $5 million in new investment capital – mostly from Kiwi investors – and build up their staff to 50 people, including new hires in New Zealand.
Each brother owned about 20 percent of the company, and their goal was to make it a unicorn, planning to spend the next three to five years “working our you-know-what’s off” to get there.
