Sitting in the audience at the Launch36 DemoDay last June, Marc Gallant turned to a friend and said, “I got to get me some of that.”

When the startup accelerator held its most recent DemoDay last week, Gallant was on stage, presenting his company Crossing Mobile, a phone app that allows the less-than-fanatical sports enthusiast to enjoy a sporting event. The excitement he found in the original DemoDay propelled him into going through the process himself.

“We realize there is a large family spend to go to a sporting event and not everyone wants to go,” said Gallant, the company’s CEO. “So we’ve come up with a product that helps out the people who might not want to be at the event. It helps the whole family enjoy it.”

Gallant and his CTO Jody Cairns initially set out to devise an app that would simply bring people together – sort of a solution for the alienation that comes from people texting in the middle of a conversation. As they worked on the business plan and talked to potential customers, they focused on sporting events and the need to help everyone enjoy the show.

What they came up with was a game played on a mobile phone that is based on the sports game people are watching. “You play the game on your phone but it tracks the game on the floor so you pay more attention,” said Gallant, whose day job is director of professional services at a mid-sized consulting company.

Its flagship product is Sports Bingo, played on a smart phone. People attending a game log in and are given an electronic Bingo card, and the numbers on the card match the players’ numbers on the floor, rink or field. Whenever a player scores, his or her number is called out. If you get three numbers in a row, you win a prize.

After the announcer in the arena tells everyone there’s a winner, the system runs three minutes of paid advertising until the Bingo player is issued a new card.  

“You’re playing Bingo on your phone, and three seats away there’s someone who is also playing Bingo, but he’s a total stranger,” said Gallant. “He knows when you’ve won. Now that’s a shared experience.”

Crossing Mobile now has a beta product which it will demo at a Moncton Wildcats game this month. Gallant has already had random individuals test the product at sports events and the feedback has been positive.

“Families 100 percent love it; they think it’s great,” said Gallant. “Real sports fans, they might be interested but they need a decent prize. One thing that surprised me is that young couples love it.”

Gallant and Cairns figure they need about $300,000 in investment to launch the product. They do the coding themselves, and will continue to give the app an extra bit of polish before the launch. They need help on the marketing side of the business.

They’re approaching sports team owners to garner their interest, and hope that the teams will help bring in sponsors that could end up advertising through the app. In the near term, Crossing Mobile will target the teams of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, then move on to other semi-pro and college sports in the region. Gallant hopes to be generating interest in larger markets before the end of the year.

“I want to do cricket, and rugby, and soccer,” he said. “I want this product to give me and the team a chance to travel the world, have a great ride and make a return for my investors.”