The Magazine

Showtime trades baseballs for checkins to promote The Franchise

17

on June 29th, 2011

Showtime is currently running a very cool foursquare checkin promotion for its new documentary series, The Franchise, that includes an automatic baseball-dispensing window.

Foursquare users who check in to the designated venue at the MLB Fan Cave at 4th and Broadway will receive a free baseball. But this isn’t some baseball that’s handed out by a clerk behind a desk. No, it’s dispensed automatically — dog food-style — from a window facing the street.

To top it off, a few of the baseballs dispensed by the machine will be autographed by Hall of Famer Willie Mays, a legendary player for the San Francisco Giants. The Franchise chronicles an entire season with the Giants, the defending World Series champions.

The dispenser isn’t working quite yet, but should be within the next few days.

Showtime is a long-time partner with foursquare. They’ve offered badges in the past to promote The Real L Word and The Borgias.

The Fan Cave is an interesting experiment in itself. Two baseball fans are living inside, with a living room filled with TVs to enable them to watch every single baseball game all season long. They’re Facebook, tweeting and blogging the experience, of course.

What do you think of the baseball dispenser? If you’re in New York, will you make your way down to check in and get a free baseball?

/Photo by @TheFranchiseSHO on YFrog; spotted via @dhrosen

  • Premier Buckeye

    Another NYC-based Foursquare promotion – boo.

    • http://twitter.com/ptrrrrrck ptrrrrrck

      boo.
      Love it but I wish Europe got some of those foursquare connected stuff

  • http://CIO.com Al Sacco

    Sucks this is only available in NY, but it is a very cool promotion. I want a signed Willie Mays MLB Fan Cave foursquare baseball…

    AS

  • http://twitter.com/oneramjac JR

    I’m taking a trip up to SF this weekend. Would have been nice if they set-up the same promo IN San Fransisco, where the documentary (I assume) would obviously take place.

    • Chris Thompson

      I have to admit I was a little surprised there wasn’t one somewhere in SF. You’d expect SF to be their best audience, given the rabid fan base in town.

  • 5square

    that and uh… isnt Dens & Naveen in SF right now checking out their new west coast operations?!?

  • Mnauj

    The link for “isn’t working” isn’t working (or at least it isn’t working on my android phone). Anybody else having an issue? Fresh link?

    • Chris Thompson

      Still working for me.

  • Nelanka

    I went by there today and checked in, but no ball. There was a guy with a camera pointed at the ball chute who went in and got me one. He said the machine was malfunctioning and only dispensing a ball for every third person to check in.

  • Mnauj

    Ha! That’s exactly what happened to me. I asked for a Mayes ball but he said no.

    • Nelanka

      I thought about that after he went in to get it, so I said “I hope you picked out a Mayes ball for me!”, but apparently they were very secretive about dropping those in the box so nobody saw where they went.

  • http://www.allankintz.com ack154

    If I were in NYC I would totally go check into this just to say I got a baseball from a machine that uses foursquare. :)

  • http://twitter.com/#!/peteramrhein Peter

    so pissed was there 2 weeks ago

    • dennis

      I just checked in and got my free baseball from the machine. Anybody know if you can check in more than once? The machine is in my building so I could load up on baseballs.

  • http://foursquare.com/murphquake murphquake

    FYI: This is only operational from 8AM to 8PM!

    I’m a paramedic and work overnights, happened to end up going from Brooklyn to Manhattan and went by the dispenser at 4AM and saw the hours sign. What’s awesome is another guy came by to check in at the same time, first time I’ve gone to play foursquare and met someone else coming to do the same =-D I should have asked to friend him but he took off.

    I ended up going back at 8 and although my check-ins said I unlocked the special (on a BlackBerry) no ball came out. The security guy was nice enough to get one for me and my partner.

    I’m gonna try again because my uncle’s dog promptly ate the ball when I gave it to him.

    It seems that on some 4sq app variants there’s a button to press to activate the ball drop when you unlock it? Can anyone confirm?

    Either way it’s a great promotion and a lot of fun, but even cooler is a huge “touch screen on the window around the block (like 3′ x 1.5′ probably) that has a webcam and take a pic of you superimposed behind the world series trophy (the pics are ‘negative’ reversed though) and then you can enter your email to have it sent to you and opt-in or out of sharing them on the MLB Fan Cave site (just looked, couldn’t find them). Either way that was a ton of fun and they way they have it set up was pretty cool too. Definitely some clever tech there. (We literally spent 20 minutes playing with it =-)
    -bill

  • Andrew

    Checked in around 7pm today (July 11th, 2011) and got my ball without a problem!

  • Alex

    I went on the first day and was the fan that got the Mays ball! It was awesome! Twitter: @Alexgold5

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