Foursquare rolls out event support

Today foursquare continued their week of big launches by rolling out event support. Users will now be able to check in to events as they check in to venues on foursquare. The first round includes support for concerts, sporting events and movies.

Using the new events feature, you’ll no longer need to shout the name of the concert or movie when you check in. Foursquare will prompt you to do so automatically when you’re checking in to a venue with events. You’ll have the option to check in to the venue by itself or to any of the movies, concerts or sporting events occurring there within the next few hours. The event you’re attending will be shown to your friends anywhere your checkin shows up.

They’ve partnered with three companies to provide the data to begin with:

• ESPN: Sporting events will be powered by ESPN. They’ll provide facts, stats and up-to-the-minute game information on the venue screen about the game and offer a post-event recap you’ll be able to access from your history in the future. They’ll cover major sporting events including NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, college football and basketball, soccer, tennis, golf, racing and more.
• MovieTickets.com: When you visit a movie theater, you’ll be able to not only check in to each movie currently playing, but you’ll be able to read more about it and even find tickets directly from the foursquare app.
• SongKick: Concert details will be provided by SongKick.

Overall, the data covers more than 50,000 venues and hundreds of thousands of events. The move adds an incredible amount of extra context to checkins. Your friends will now know exactly which movie you’re checking in to, for instance, giving them more reason to comment or to possibly even join you. You’ll also be able to look through your history — which now includes event names — and see exactly who was playing the night you went to the stadium.

In addition to the new context, it opens up the posibility for foursquare to offer more targeted badges, much like the ones you’d typically find from GetGlue. The 30 Minutes or Less badge, for example, could require actually checking in to the movie instead of just visiting a related venue category.

In fact, one of the partners is already offering a badge through the new events platform. When you follow ESPN (on their new profile page) and check in at sporting events or the places ESPN has left tips, you’ll become eligible to earn the ESPN Foam Finger badge.

Foursquare has been testing event checkins for a while. They’ve previously offered similar functionality at SXSW, where the checkins included the name of the event. Jonathan Crowley, foursquare’s Director of Business Development, hinted that the feature would be expanded in an interview earlier this year.

Simply adding event support would have made foursquare even more valuable for users, but by partnering with the content providers they’ve chosen, foursquare has increased the value of the feature exponentially. Learning more about movies or sports events as you’re checking in is just one more step in foursquare’s mission to “make your world easier to use.”

Support is already built in to the iPhone app and will roll out to other platforms soon.

What do you think of event support?