Upholding tradition while administering necessary change is a persistent quandary for professional sports brands. Some of the world’s oldest competition organizers are today leading the industry’s modernization; striking the fine balance between sustaining their event’s heritage, celebrating its origins, and serving the present-day fan with a digitally driven experience.
At the industry’s coalface, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and football’s governing body FIFA are among the global organizing bodies transforming their flagship events. Elsewhere, continental competitions such as the North American major leagues are taking their fixtures to new markets, while the development of their own digital products is helping to attract worldwide audiences and augment the fan-marketing funnel.
This can be translated to local markets too, with regions such as the UK demonstrating a high demand for mobile, data-driven fan experiences while also heaped in sporting heritage. Nevertheless, whereas traditional sports brands are often built on legacy systems and old ways of operating, it can prove more challenging for decades-old organizations and rights holders to evolve their digital and technological capabilities compared to sports events and rights holders born in the digital age.
Albeit rich in sporting history, according to proprietary N3XT Sports research, disparities still exist between UK-based elite sports clubs and competition organizers, particularly around how they collect first-party fan data. Meanwhile, many have already begun to expand their direct-to-consumer (D2C) product portfolios, though have yet to streamline the fan experience, nor have they started weeding out data silos by consolidating fan and stakeholder data within a centralized information system.
Among the UK’s club leagues expanding their digital and data proficiencies, Premiership Rugby, the top tier of English men’s club rugby union, operates closely with the Rugby Football Union (RFU), the sport’s national governing body. Their collaboration forms part of a strategic partnership which focuses on matters involving the domestic game – including fan engagement and the commercial and sponsorship value which can be drawn from rugby union’s digitalization.
Speaking in January last year, the RFU’s Chief Executive (CEO) Bill Sweeney told the Good, Bad, and The Rugby podcast: “The big area is in data and digital. That’s one of the reasons why we are investing as a core part of the private equity deal (between Premiership Rugby and CVC Capital Partners) in data and digital growth.
“Most sponsors now really want to know your consumers, who they are, what they do, how they are split, what their demographic is, what are their interests, and how you then market to them according to the sponsor’s objectives. It really is transforming now, in terms of data and digital content, so we see that as getting away from your normal, ordinary sponsorship.”
The RFU – which governs England’s national teams and works in partnership with English women’s rugby union’s rebranded Premiership Women’s Rugby top-flight – scores highly for its digital and data transformation compared to other national governing bodies, as does Premiership Rugby, which is among the most digitally diverse and data-rich competition organizers based in the UK.
However, across the market’s domestic competitions, according to research for our upcoming Digital Transformation Regional Market Report | UK, Premiership Rugby clubs own a significantly lower score for digital and data ownership (see table above) – highlighting an opportunity to deliver added value to all rugby union clubs, leagues, and stakeholders through digital transformation.
REGIONAL ANALYSIS | PREMIERSHIP RUGBY CLUBS PRIMED FOR DIGITAL & DATA EVOLUTION
Premiership Rugby is among the UK’s top five league bodies for digital and data maturity, providing fans with access to all its data touchpoints via a single sign-on (SSO), including the Premiership Rugby website, mobile app, ticketing portal, PRTV over-the-top (OTT) streaming service and a mobile-supported predictor game.
As the organization continues to enhance its digital fan experience, its representative clubs score comparatively low for their digital and data transformations. Notably, as few as 30 percent of Premiership Rugby clubs collect first-party fan data via a mobile app, whereas no clubs do so via an OTT/streaming or fantasy/gaming product.
Every club owns and collects data via a dedicated website and ticketing portal, while 70 percent do so via an ecommerce platform. Bristol Bears is the only club to utilize an SSO across all the club’s data touchpoints and is among 30 percent of Premiership Rugby clubs that enable fans to access their entire digital product portfolio via a web login.
There is an opportunity for English rugby union clubs to augment their data collection capabilities with the introduction of a mobile app and to maximize customer loyalty via a centralized fan experience. Bristol Bears is one of three Premiership Rugby clubs that owns a dedicated mobile product. By comparison, of the UK’s other elite rugby union clubs competing in the international United Rugby Championship (URC), Ospreys Rugby and Ulster Rugby are the only two non-English entities to collect first-party fan data via mobile and to utilize an SSO.
WHAT’S N3XT?
N3XT Sports research is carried out with the sole purpose of highlighting the opportunities and benchmarks for digital transformation throughout the sports industry. While the UK sports market is heaped in tradition and recognized globally, our findings show that, no matter the popularity of a club, league, or federation among its core audience, there exists disparities between their levels of digital and data maturity throughout the region.
Among our clients, some of the most sophisticated sports organizations are taking a considered approach to their digital growth. For example, this might incorporate the delivery of a three-to-five-year digital growth strategy; from the initial three-month assessment phase through to the periodic development and implementation of items such as a custom-built customer relationship management (CRM) solution, an array of customer-facing digital products, and/or a centralized information system.
This multi-phase approach presents our clients with a clear vision for how their digital transformation aligns its fans and stakeholders, and a detailed roadmap for project completion, on time and to budget. While the UK sports market is appealing to international sponsorship and capital investment, to reach its full potential, organizations must first demonstrate a proficient understanding of how their digital ecosystems are connected, how they serve the individual fans and stakeholders, and their capacity for digital growth.
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.