Standing out in the sports app crowd

As with much of modern day life, our experience of sport largely happens through the prism of mobile technology. Want to buy match tickets?? There’s an app for that. Want to know the latest scores? There’s an app for that. Want to digitally possess a live player?? Well, as creepy as that sounds…you’ve guessed it … there’s an app for that too. With a global market value of close to $4 billion, mobile apps? are so ubiquitous in the today’s sports landscape that even Apple are at it.

Whether provided by a media company, ticketing provider, betting operator, venue or rights holder, mobile apps are a crucial component of any sports event experience.

Fans expect to use mobile platforms to access tickets, event information and wayfinding details while, for the event organisers, they enable important retail and sponsorship opportunities. Athletes and VIP expect the convenience of personalised accreditation delivered to their mobile devices and the media expect access to event content on the go.

The challenge for rights holders and event organisers is to create an application that can meet the needs of fans or other stakeholders, in the different stages of their event engagement – from initial interest to after the event – whilst also delivering on their different commercial and operational objectives. Events, no matter how big, have a limited window of relevance for the people involved and rights holders will expect a huge drop off in traffic post event so it’s all about capturing interest and driving engagement while it’s there. For example, UEFA ’s combined Euro 2024 and Women’s Euros 2025 App also includes the Nations League, increasing the audience group and extending the relevance of the application.

No matter what goals you set out to achieve with a sports event app – and whatever fancy tech you integrate to realise them - the primary objective, and first hurdle to overcome,?is getting your target audience to download it. Any app strategy must start with the pull before you can move to the different content you want to push. In an event context, tickets or accreditation provide the strongest pull for those attending. If you have to download the app to get your ticket, you’re going to download it!

However, rights holders also need to think about the many passionate fans that don’t have tickets – they need to ensure they can deliver messaging personalised to different audience groups wherever they’re following the action – whether that’s at home or in a fan park. This can be done either by providing different modes for users to select or using personal profiles – key to creating any personalised digital experience – or even locational data.

To capture the attention of those not in possession of a ticket, rights holders need to ensure they combine the core functionality that can be found on other apps, like results and athlete/team profiles – doing so with a speed and user experience that is comparable with competitors – with unique elements such as exclusive interviews and behind the scenes content or official fantasy games and merchandise opportunities. The streaming of event content is another key pull although organisers are restricted by rights around what they can show.?

It’s not just fans rights holders are looking to engage through mobile platforms. Apps are increasingly used to deliver unique content to the athletes involved. FIFA created a dedicated player app for the 2022 world cup that let players access their personal performance data for the tournament and The Olympics Athlete365 Community offers a range of apps provide important competition and Olympic movement information plus tools to help athletes prevent injury and speak up around doping issues.

Whoever you are targeting with your app, two components crucial to an app’s successful adoption are scalability & security. The app needs to be able to cope with the spikes in interest building up to and at event, ensuring that user gets a stable, crash-free experience whether he is one of 10 or one of 10 million using the platform simultaneously. This requires developers to scrutinise factors such as architecture design, load balancing, caching strategies and database optimisation to ensure the app is flexible enough to maintain performance as user levels grow.

Security is another key concern. Apps require an abundance of personal data to meet the levels of personalisation and convenience that users increasingly expect, ranging from profile information to contact details and banking data. Users need to feel safe in providing this data and app providers need to look at factors such as data encryption, storage and user authentication in order to ensure the levels of data security required.

So, with a summer featuring two of sport’s biggest quadrennial events and the usual mix of major annual tournaments, rights holders face a fight for fan attention, hoping to capture eyeballs for their content – and that of their sponsors – in a crowded marketplace. Those that succeed will have put the needs of their audience at the centre of a pull/push strategy centred on getting users to download then delivering content and functionality to keep them there.

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TEC Says…

Something all sports events must consider is what type of mobile experience fits their requirements. Building native mobile applications, optimized for individual operating systems may sound like the obvious approach. It may well be for the larger sporting events but hybrid, cross-platform apps which are quicker and more cost effective to build, or even a good mobile responsive website, may be better options depending on budget and size of the event. For more insight on what sort of mobile application is best for different types of businesses, check out our whitepaper To App or not to App.