{"id":72565,"date":"2019-11-07T03:07:52","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T10:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/niantic-will-soon-let-small-businesses-pay-to-have-a-pokemon-go-pokestop\/"},"modified":"2019-11-07T03:07:52","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T10:07:52","slug":"niantic-will-soon-let-small-businesses-pay-to-have-a-pokemon-go-pokestop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/niantic-will-soon-let-small-businesses-pay-to-have-a-pokemon-go-pokestop\/","title":{"rendered":"Niantic will soon let small businesses pay to have a Pok\u00e9mon GO Pok\u00e9stop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sponsored locations aren\u2019t new to Niantic <\/span><\/a> games. Companies like Sprint, McDonald\u2019s and AT&T have had sponsored locations in games like Pok\u00e9mon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite for a long while now<\/a>. The idea: by turning your business into a big in-game beacon and giving players some reason to stop by, you increase foot traffic.<\/p>\n

So far, though, the sponsorship system has really only been open to these mega chains. Starbucks got to turn all of its stores<\/a> into sponsored Pok\u00e9stops at the height of the Pok\u00e9mon GO craze, but the little mom-and-pop coffee shop down the street? No such luck.<\/p>\n

That\u2019ll change later this year, as the company opens a self-serve platform for small to medium-sized businesses looking to light up sponsored locations in-game.<\/p>\n

Details are still somewhat light, but Niantic says that they\u2019ll start accepting applications tomorrow and roll out an \u201cearly access\u201d beta program later this year. As with pretty much everything Niantic does, they\u2019re rolling it out on a region-by-region basis; in this case, it\u2019ll only be open to U.S. businesses at first. The first new sponsored locations should start showing up in December.<\/p>\n

\u201cSponsored\u201d locations tend to have slight perks over their non-sponsored counterparts. Sponsored gyms in Pok\u00e9mon GO, for example, are almost always \u201cEX Raid\u201d locations \u2014 which in GO-speak just means that battling there might<\/em> get you a ticket to a bigger, badder, invite-only boss battle in the weeks that follow. Sponsored fortresses in Harry Potter: Wizards Unite give out more XP and more of the spell energy required to play.<\/p>\n

Beyond being able to pay to have a sponsored in-game location, these businesses will also be able to pay to schedule things like Pok\u00e9mon GO raids (read: bigger, co-operative boss battles that often require 5-10 players working together to win) during time slots when foot traffic might be slow. And because getting foot traffic is only part<\/em> of the equation, sponsored businesses will also be able to offer up deals and promotions in-game to (hopefully) turn those passing by into paying customers.<\/p>\n

Niantic also says that businesses will be able to host other on-site \u201cmini-games\u201d beyond GO raids in the future, but didn\u2019t elaborate on what those might be.<\/p>\n

According to this page<\/a>, Niantic will offer two plans:<\/p>\n