Catamount fans can now be rewarded for their team loyalty when attending UVM games.

Fans who download the Cat Pride Club app, available in the App Store and Google play, can accumulate points when attending games that enable them to win prizes from UVM athletics, said Nora King, director of marketing and fan engagement.  

Members can then enter raffles for prizes including scarves, season passes and day tickets to Smuggler’s Notch and gift cards to Nectar’s and Domino’s, said senior Sean Bruso, an intern in the UVM athletics marketing department.

“It’s a way to try to engage our fans to come to games as well as reward them for their loyal support,” King said. “It engages our fans.”

The purpose of this app is to encourage higher attendance at games and to get more likes on UVM athletics’ social media posts, Bruso said.

“As students become upperclassmen, it seems like they go less and less to sports games,” Bruso said. “So we are trying to find ways to incentivize the younger class that is coming in, as well as the upperclassmen.”

Raffling prizes that will appeal to a wider audience should help increase overall game attendance.

“I think that this app is a good incentive to get people to games by offering prizes,” junior Caroline Sullivan said.

One of his responsibilities as an intern is running the operations of the app and configuring it so people know where to pick up their prizes, Bruso said.

After the app is downloaded, fans can check into the game and earn a certain amount of points depending on the game, King said.

Some games have a higher attendance rate than others, Bruso said, so point allocations are tiered differently.

Going to a women’s hockey game could earn a Cat Pride Club app member 4,000 points, since those games historically have lower attendance, he said.

“One thing we are continuously trying to improve is our prizes and making it rewarding for fans to come to games,” King said.

The Cat Pride Club has been around for 10 years.

Before the transition to the app, fans checked in on a log, which was kept in a binder, she said.

The app was created five years ago, King said.

“[Getting people to know] that the app exists is the biggest challenge right now,” Bruso said.

With the app, the only technology issues mentioned were location services being turned off on phones and a few glitches, King said.

For the most part, fans that are using the app seem to enjoy it, she said.