Mobile-only Snapchat wants to grow with a little help from TV and sports stadiums

Get ready to start seeing Snapchat in the real world and on TV.

The youth-oriented app is working with Tagboard to push Snaps beyond the mobile phone and onto bigger screens. It's a move that could help Snapchat boost its overall footprint and attract new users, something that's sorely needed.

Snap Inc is now a public company, and so far it's not doing much to impress. Getting out into the real world is a big opportunity to reach new people. That's where Tagboard comes in.

Getting a Snap up on a jumbotron isn't as easy as it may seem. Software provider Tagboard revealed for the first time on Tuesday that it has worked intimately with Snap Inc. over the past year to help single snaps, Snapchat Stories, and Snapcodes appear on TV and in sports stadiums.

Tagboard, a five-year-old software company, works with all the major social platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube — but had never before been able to speak about their work with the youngest social app, Snapchat. But now that Snap is maturing and under the scrutiny of Wall Street, the lips of its partners apparently have been loosened. Snap did not comment for this story.

If you've seen a Snap outside of the app, it it very likely its thanks to Tagboard. The company put snaps on television for the first time as part of its partnership with Snap during the 2016 Billboard Latin Music Awards.

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Tagboard has worked with major sports teams like the Seattle Mariners and the Minnesota Vikings and major TV networks like Telemundo and NBC's Golf Channels. The team has also partnered with concerts like Capital One Jamfest.

"Everything that we do, everything is relationship-based," said Josh Decker, CEO of Tagboard. "A lot of that has to do with trust. The people that we work with at Snap are some of the best people that we work with, and they’re looking for ways to support us."

Why can't Snapchat and the TV networks or the sports leagues just do this by themselves? Formatting and distributing the snaps just isn't that easy, for one, and Tagboard specializes in these types of relationships, Decker said.

Such a partnership is good for Snapchat's reach is vastly expanded with Tagboard. "We help Snapchat grow and maintain that audience and helps increase the size of the community," Decker said.

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Tagboard would not share any numbers but said clients were often happy with the results of a Snapchat display. The New Orleans Pelicans doubled its Snapchat follower base within the first month of displaying a Snapcode on the screens of the stadium by using Tagboard.

"It's creating FOMO when you see it up on the screen. It's super easy for people to pull out their phones and snap, follow the team, connect with them," Decker said.

While Snapchat doesn't have hashtags or easily embeddable content — unlike Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube — Decker said partners still see a lot of usage and benefit outside of seeing the display primarily due to the "Snap to Follow" or the "Snap to Unlock" features.

Fans "take the experience home with them through the Snapchat app. Every time you use [the code with Tagboard] you get more users. Every time," Decker said.

There's potentially a lot of opportunity for Snapchat to grow, as well, as long as companies still see the value. Decker said only a small portion of its more than 1,000 clients uses Snapchat and the current software and display offering has operated like a limited beta program for the last year.

But is there a bright future for Snapchat? Facebook continues to copy its best features. Earlier Tuesday, Facebook-owned Instagram released its latest copycat.

Decker and Tagboard are bullish on Snapchat. "It's a very unique perspective, culture even," Decker said. "When I’m seeing Snapchat content on the news or in broadcast, it’s adding such a unique perspective, unique content that I really enjoy."