A new fan experience platform for PRO14 Rugby
Delete partnered with Pro14 Rugby to lead a digital strategy and transformation programme, with a mission to create a market-leading digital presence to increase brand reach for this ambitious and visionary organisation. The new platform re-defines the digital fan experience of a rugby competition, and provides the business with new commercial opportunities to increase revenues through a more engaged fanbase. As part of the programme we worked in close collaboration with InCrowd & Stream AMG to deliver a seamless experience across the Website, App and Video OTT channel via a single customer view. The result is a powerful digital ecosystem that will unlock the potential of rugby’s most diverse competition.
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The solution
PRO14 Rugby had two key audience groups in mind; the fan looking for the best digital experience of their competition; and the PRO14 team who needed an effective way to drive and maintain fan interest and commercialise this with broadcasters, sponsors and partners.
Delivering for the fan
Owning the competition
The site is the best place to follow the league competition with all the key content and features designed to build narrative around the competitive battle of the teams at play.
Round by round
The site refreshes each week with a focus on the next round, building interest and drama around the weekly cycle of the competition.
Second screen matchday experience
The best online destination to follow PRO14 games throughout the week and live games themselves, featuring live stats, commentary and video clips.
Enhanced news and media
An engaging presentation layer for all articles using a smart taxonomy to ensure the right content appears in the most relevant places across the site.
An integrated video experience
Video content is a key driver for attracting and keeping fans regularly engaged. Video is integrated throughout the site as well via a dedicated PRO14 TV video hub. For live matches, the site is directly connected to the OTT platform and broadcaster partner pages.
Bringing stats to life
Performance stats are used to rank all players and teams and are delivered as a narrative feature to support the concept of the competition.
Team & Players
Team and Player profiles serve as dynamic content hubs surfacing relevant news, video, results, fixtures and performance stats.
A personalised experience
Through fan membership we allow users to customise the site with a selected team focus for featured matches, content and access to PRO14 TV.
Delivering for the PRO14 team
An ownable audience
A focus on database growth with an integrated and simplified journey to become a registered member of PRO14 Rugby.
Controllable banner estate
Allows the marketing team to control an estate of ad units to drive promo into the site for sponsors and PRO14 promotions.
Commercial partner support
Creating more value for sponsors via native advertising and sponsorable components.
Membership Proposition
A clearer member proposition driven by freemium content access.
Personalisation
Powered by cross domain tracking and single customer view data stored in the data lake
A central content publishing platform
To seamlessly power the Website and App.
A media centre
To activate media coverage of the competition.
Technology
Delete partnered with InCrowd and StreamAMG to deliver a flexible and scalable publishing platform by implementing headless technologies designed specifically for the needs of the sports industry.
Central to the solution is InCrowd’s Bridge platform which incorporates a headless CMS, a DAM, Single-Sign On solution and Data Lake as well as a Scoring API that is integrated with live Opta data and historic data from Stuart Farmer Media Services.
Rich content population
The sites video feeds are configured in StreamAMG’s “Cloud Matrix” system and are used to populate PRO14TV as well as dynamic video carousels across the site that update automatically as new videos are added to the system.
Live match publishing
We built a Live Blogging engine that allows content editors to publish different types of updates throughout the game in a matter of seconds.
A true digital eco-system
All content is managed centrally but served to the Website and App using the same API’s providing data integrity between systems and ensuring that content editors only need to create content once.
User activity is tracked using Snowplow and the data fed into the data lake. This data is then used by Bridge to serve personalised content to the user.
We commissioned Delete with an ambition to develop a flagship website that would position the PRO14 as the elite and diverse competition that it is and provide a platform that effortlessly brings to life the stories of the tournament across video, written and audio content. The Delete team quickly embraced this, distilling the complexities of our brief and leading us through a comprehensive strategy & design process.
The Delete team have everything that we wanted in a digital partner – the ability to blend innovative design thinking with leading technical know-how, and an ambition to push boundaries with commercial pragmatism.
Tom Lister
PRO14 Rugby Marketing Director