DawgBowl XV Smart Merch Extends Off-Ice Impact

DawgBowl XV marked the 15th anniversary of Dawg Nation Hockey Foundation’s flagship event — a five-day adult hockey tournament hosted in Littleton, Colorado. More than just a competition, DawgBowl brings together players, families, survivors, and supporters to rally around a powerful cause: helping individuals facing medical crises and life-altering challenges.

The 2025 event centered its mission on honoring traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivors — featuring over 900 players, 52 teams across 8 divisions, and an NHL-packed exhibition game. The tournament has grown into a cornerstone of the Colorado hockey community — known as much for its heart as for its talent.

Objectives

Dawg Nation’s goal wasn’t just to host another successful tournament. They wanted to:

• Celebrate championship teams in a way that connected them to the mission
• Extend the emotional impact of the event beyond the rink
• Keep the DawgBowl story alive after players left the building

Traditional swag could mark the win. But Dawg Nation saw an opportunity to turn a shirt into something more — a digital handshake that kept people connected to the cause.

That’s where RockCandy came in.

Despite only 150 smart shirts in circulation, the DawgBowl XV activation drove engagement well beyond expectations — both in volume and reach.

Here’s what Dawg Nation unlocked with RockCandy:

• 230 total scans across all devices
• 185 unique sessions — over 120% activation rate
• 45+ repeat visits, with users returning post-event
• 110 media plays, averaging 14.3 seconds of content engagement
• Reach across 31 cities in 14 distinct regions — from Bozeman to West Palm, Los Angeles to New York

Even weeks after the event, new scans continued to come in — proving that the right merch doesn’t stop working once it’s handed out.

Dawg Nation doesn’t just host tournaments — they rally a community around healing, resilience, and real human support. DawgBowl XV wasn’t just about goals and wins. It was about TBI survivors, about families navigating medical challenges, and about the hockey world showing up for its own.

The championship shirts weren’t a gimmick. They were a reminder of what the event stood for — and thanks to RockCandy, they carried that message well beyond the rink.

Each scan was a touchpoint. A player reliving the moment. A friend tapping in out of curiosity. A sponsor seeing their support activated weeks later. And all of it happened quietly, without extra lift from Dawg Nation’s team.

For an organization built on showing up when it matters, this was just one more way the mission kept moving — long after the skates came off.

The DawgBowl XV activation was powered end-to-end by the RockCandy platform, built to deliver seamless smart merch experiences — from trigger to tap to track.

Here’s what enabled the results behind the scenes:

• Embedded NFC + QR triggers: Fully passive, pre-encoded, and merch-agnostic
• No app required: Fans could scan or tap with any smartphone
• Custom landing experience: Mobile-first content, styled for the event
• Engagement tracking: Session-based analytics showing total scans, unique visitors, repeat interactions, and media plays
• Geographic reach mapping: Automatic city/region detection and scan clustering
• Low-lift for organizers: No dev time, no marketing ops, no learning curve

The entire campaign was configured in minutes — and is still delivering value weeks later without additional input.