The maturity of an organization’s existing technology stack and how it’s serving the entity’s unique business objectives will vary across the sports industry. It’s easy to imagine that a sports property which already owns a diverse digital inventory – be it a club, league, or federation – will automatically demonstrate a strong business acumen, including a high level of fan engagement, operational efficiency, and a wide variety of sponsorship activations.
On the contrary, high levels of technology adoption can prove problematic for properties that don’t know how it should co-exist, particularly when it comes to the management of siloed data caused by disconnected infrastructure. This is evident in the sports industry’s pursuit of new digital fan experiences and the integration of web and mobile applications that collect first-party fan data.
While data ownership may be the north star for many organizations, digitalization isn’t simply a process of product accumulation. Some of the most digitally mature and data-rich sports organizations include those that take a considered approach to choosing the consumer touchpoints they adopt within their digital growth strategy and, importantly, understand how digital adoption bridges their fan-marketing funnel to serve their commercial goals.
Digitalization is far-reaching, meaning it can serve a multitude of purposes depending on the state of an organization’s current frameworks. For example, mobile app ownership has proven to be a valuable step for consolidating a portfolio of direct-to-consumer (D2C) products into an omnichannel experience and presents a platform for sports entities to expand their existing digital portfolios.
Nevertheless, while mobile-product development provides a viable solution for navigating the next steps to one’s digital transformation journey, its vital that an organization also has the infrastructure in place to ingest, store, and distribute customer data without causing disparities within the organization’s data management. This can be supported by integrating a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that gives its workforce and leadership a 360° view of the digital-fan community.
For some industry benchmarks, the introduction of a universal web login is also a natural progression, designed to streamline the fan experience by allowing fans to access all of their digital products via a single sign-on (SSO). This is demonstrated by a high percentage of professional English football clubs which have incorporated a web login into their fan ecosystem and is more popular among clubs in the Premier League top-flight compared to other UK-based club competitions.
At the time of publication, 90 percent of Premier League clubs use a web login to centralize the fan experience – of which, 88.9 percent utilize an SSO compared to 70 percent of all Premier League clubs. According to research for our upcoming Digital Transformation Regional Market Report | UK, which spans nine elite sports leagues in the region, including the Premier League, as few as 36.4 percent of UK clubs analyzed have made their data touchpoints accessible via a web login – of which, 60 percent utilize an SSO.
Furthermore, among the 133 elite UK-based clubs assessed, overall, only 24.8 percent allow fans to access all their data touchpoints via an SSO. Notably, every club which offers an SSO also owns a web login. This demonstrates the importance of a web login for enhancing the fan experience, as well as ample opportunity for professional sports properties in the UK to optimize their fan-data strategy and vastly improve their business acumen by adopting an SSO into their current digital framework.
WEB LOGINS HELP PROFESSIONAL SPORTS CLUBS COMMERCIALIZE THE FAN JOURNEY
Fan loyalty programs are well established among the UK’s elite club leagues. For example, the majority of clubs across the first-class County Championship cricket competition (100 percent), the Premier League (100 percent), tier-two EFL Championship football (79.2 percent), as well as the Premiership Rugby (70 percent) and the Super League (83.3 percent) rugby union and rugby league codes all incorporate loyalty benefits and sponsorship perks within their dedicated membership packages.
This indicates an intention among professional UK sports clubs to monetize their digital portfolios and, in many cases, integrate their sponsors and commercial stakeholders into the digital fan ecosystem. Albeit owning their own dedicated loyalty programs, as few as 36.4 percent activate membership products within a universal web login, and only 25.5 percent are accessible via an SSO, meaning that the majority of professional clubs in the UK have yet to optimize their commercial assets and sponsored fan experiences across their entire digital portfolio.
In order to customize the fan experience, sports clubs, leagues, and federations must first be able to define their different types of fans within their channel matrix, which is used to outline the types of content and fan experiences they should be providing across each of their digital assets. This helps executives to customize their organization’s fan funnel, including: (1) the development of a digital strategy designed to convert peripheral fans into loyal subscribers; (2) opportunities for personalizing the fan experience based on user data; and (3) a clear plan for monetizing its digital, subscription-supported products at different stages of the funnel.
“One of the key steps to aligning fan intelligence with the sports organization’s business objectives is to implement a CRM function that makes it easy to manage the fan journey and meet each individual customer’s needs,” explains Motasem El Bawab, N3XT Sports’ Chief Information Officer (CIO). “However, in order to understand your customer personally, it isn’t enough to simply integrate a new system without first leveraging the means to ingest and analyze fan data.
“It’s safe to say that a certain level of data maturity or sophistication is required for a CRM function to be truly impactful. In order to convert fans into loyal customers within your CRM system, it becomes more challenging without other digital touchpoints such as an owned and operated over-the-top (OTT) streaming platform or a dedicated mobile app to engage fans.
“Therefore, sports properties are advised to adopt a subscription model which consolidates user interaction via an SSO rather than to sign up to each individual platform separately and to centralize its fan data with minimal effort,” Mota adds.
WHAT’S N3XT?
Among our diverse client base, N3XT Sports is helping sports organizations to centralize their information and data, while also aligning their digital and data transformation strategies. For example, our team is spearheading the implementation of the Union Cycliste Internationale’s (UCI) mobile-supported Information Management System (IMS) as part of the global cycling federation’s digital transformation. N3XT Sports has also recently been appointed by the International Federation of SAMBO (FIAS) to develop and implement a comprehensive content strategy, establish the federation’s own CRM system, and revamp its OTT streaming platform.
Elsewhere, N3XT Sports continues to support United World Wrestling (UWW), the governing body of Olympic wrestling, on a multi-phase digital development strategy which has covered the implementation of the International Federation’s (IF) mobile app, the web- and mobile-supported UWW+ streaming service, as well as a redesign of the UWW website, which now features a dedicated user web login, as part of an SSO, and underpins UWW’s first-ever CRM function.
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement data and digital transformation strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To find out more about how N3XT Sports can serve your organization, fill out the form below, and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of the sports industry and our clients.