Game of Phones

I met my friend Will earlier this week for a catch up over a coffee. I promised I’d not mention it, but cake was taken. I think we were both in need of a caffeine-fuelled calorific boost. 

Will is the founder of Crable, who provide charging solutions for mobile phones, and with whom I’ve collaborated this season as they’ve begun to launch into stadiums. As clubs get ever-more serious about the overall experience, this is something that they should be taking seriously too. 

Crable aim to be the go-to phone charging provider for all sports stadiums, and clubs that care about the fan experience can offer a free (and very fast) charge that becomes ‘all part of the service’. The way supermarkets used to do with electric vehicles in the early days.

It probably apt, therefore, that we met at a new Starbucks in Birmingham (Crable were supplying the phone chargers for an event at the NEC) that was described as ‘EV porn’ in the reviews of its own website. 

The Starbucks was your typically-sized drive-thru type but the car park was at least the size of two football pitches. And there were charging stations for EVs everywhere. Rows of high-powered ones that provided a full charge in literally minutes, and lots of a more modest version that you could plug into while you grabbed a coffee inside. 

Having some time to spare beforehand, I looked at the reviews more closely and noted that customers had made more comments about the EV chargers than they had anything inside the store. A typical bit of feedback was ‘decent coffee but I’ve never seen so many EV chargers in my life’ and I sensed that some of them were being made by people who didn’t even have an electric car. 

I presume that, eventually, they’ll build other things around the Starbucks so that many more drivers will be able to use them. Maybe it’s even part of the NEC’s strategy to make visitors feel more looked after. The clear message to drivers – or those of the growing EV movement anyway – was ‘we’ve got you.’

And that’s important. People need chargers for EVs. Just as they need them for their phones. 

Will and I share the father’s anxiety of a daughter studying and living away from home. Mine, near London, is forever regaling me with stories of what she and her friends are doing and this invariably involves a scrape with disaster because of a mobile phone. 

Or lack thereof.

One night – aka the early hours of morning – four of them had two dead batteries and another two with a tiny percentage left between them. They found themselves miles from ‘home’ and having to book an Uber. As each phone fell, their distress grew and confidence in getting home was diminishing. In the end, the last phone standing just managed to secure the booking before it went off. They stood there, not knowing if it had or not, for twenty minutes until a car thankfully rolled up. They had to ask the driver if they could use a USB point in his car to ‘re-join’ the world. 

This is far from an isolated incident. Nor is it the consequence of poor planning. My daughter and her friends all had fully or almost fully charged phones upon leaving their dorms that evening. But after paying for food and drinks, booking and tracking Ubers, taking countless photos and videos, scrolling all the social media sites they are on and everything else that teenage girls (and boys) do, the batteries had just given out. That’s Nomophobia inducing (check, it’s real).

‘Phone Home’

Just last week, I left the house with just my phone – as I increasingly seem to do - but had neglected to charge it and hadn’t noticed. By the time I got to my destination, it was down to 1% but that thankfully lasted long enough – perhaps sensing my desperation – for me to pay for a coffee before the circle of death kicked in and I found a seat next to a socket. But it also showed me how easy it was to get caught out. Imagine the same scenario with a train ticket.

The reality with mobile phones is that the batteries haven’t changed that much in recent years. They last marginally longer but lose more of their capacity quicker, so the user isn’t any better off. My daughter also recently informed me that her phone – coming up to three years old – now only has a battery capacity of 70%. 

What’s really changed is the amount of power a phone uses. The bigger, brighter screens and the more rapid refresh rates are partly responsible but so are newer features like AI and 5G that all chew up far more juice. Using navigational maps and streaming more and more videos on social channels also contribute to the drain game. 

So even if batteries last longer, they go down faster as what we do with our phones grows all the time. 

I’m, by comparison, a fairly light user of mine, but I’m always surprised how much I have to use it these days even if I’m not assessing a game and simply attending as a fan. 

Obviously there is the website, and all the clubs social apps to consider but I’m also buying a ticket and putting into the wallet. When I arrive, I might use it to pay for parking, and simply to find the stadium if I’ve not been before. If I get any merchandise or refreshments before the game, the phone will be used to pay. Even if I’m not too bothered about taking lots of pictures or videos –I do that enough already for assessments – I might still check results of earlier games, the line-up or choose to have a cheeky bet. At half-time I will use it to get food and drink and check the scores again, something I’ll continue to do throughout the second half and after the game I might need to find the car and possibly reply to a feedback survey from the club to complete if I’m really lucky. 

For many fans, and younger ones especially, they do all this and so much more. And with all this in mind, I can’t believe that charging stations aren’t already in every stadium. 

There are similarities with the way fan zones were initially resisted, particularly before the pandemic. Clubs didn’t want the hassle, or the ‘costs’. Now it’s hard to find a club without one, or who doesn’t want that ‘hassle’. 

Of course the rapid emergence and growth of the fan zone as a must-have at venues is another reason why phones – and charging – are becoming an even more critical part of the overall experience. 

A phone is no longer an accessory. It’s almost as important as a fan’s right arm. If we did a poll as to which a fan would rather give up first, I’m not sure the arm wins that often. ‘I’ve got another arm, but only one phone.’

And smartphones are so expensive these days, we can only afford one. This also means that we make them last longer and can’t simply upgrade every year the way we once did. This makes sense, but as the batteries deteriorate faster after about two years, we lose overall. 

One Giant Leap

Today’s phones are essentially a mini-computer that we carry around and, very occasionally, use to make a call. Much has been made of the comparison between a smartphone and the technology used to get to the moon. It never loses impact. For instance: 

• today’s smartphone would be the world’s biggest supercomputer if it were taken back to 1969.

• one modern smartphone likely exceeds the combined computing power of all computers operating on Earth during the time of the Moon landing.

• the processor performance of the Apollo guidance computer that landed man on the moon had 0.00004% of that of a modern phone. Put another way, your phone could run thousands of Apollo guidance systems simultaneously if you wanted to. (No? You’d rather just go on TikTok instead?)

Hard to get your head around, isn’t it? 

But with great power comes an even greater need to keep it powered up. 

One of the key benefits of letting fans super-charge their phones therefore it that it improves their experience. It might be a lot more subtle than a mascot giving you a high-five or a firework display before the game, but it has the same overall impact. It says to fans ‘we care, and we want you to be happy and feel valued while you are with us.’ 

The cost – like everything – seems to be the thing that trips clubs up. Even though they are remarkably low, clubs don’t – in my experience – want to pay for anything if they can avoid it. But even the costs needn’t be prohibitive.  The equipment is not expensive to buy or rent, and Crable has 2026 calculations that show a typical charge will cost the stadium/club a whopping 0.1p (1/10th of a penny) in electricity.

Sponsors – new or existing - can get involved, which means that in some cases the cost of buying or renting the product can be completely covered in return for brand advertising. And if the sponsor is not only advertising but promoting a service they’ll benefit directly from then it seems to be a no-brainer. Imagine, for example, a caterer who’s sponsorship of the chargers means that fans are buying more of their pies or hot dogs. 

So they can be money makers too. Adding a QR code or similar imagery to the shelf or totem means they can be used for anything from pre-ordering refreshments to making a charitable donation. 

But even if a club can’t get behind improving the fan experience, attracting sponsors, increasing revenue and making fans feel more valued, then at least they should be able to get behind this final thought. 

In a world where we ask fans to pretty much use their phone for everything then providing a means to keep them charged is…the right thing to do. 

And who doesn’t want to do that?