Best Use of Technology in Football
WINNER
English Football League – iFollow
Following the outbreak of COVID-19, overnight the EFL became a full-scale streaming provider with iFollow proving a critical lifeline to both Clubs and Supporters.
Since the start of the pandemic the EFL has streamed over 850 matches, over double the amount it would usually stream, to over 3.5million people. In a short space of time the League has had to upscale its operation, with responsibility for infrastructure, ticketing and marketing resource – in turn protecting Clubs’ Season Ticket revenue, commercial deals and generating much-needed income at financially precarious time.
Without iFollow (or Club equivalent service) there simply would have been no other way to watch every EFL match and supporters would have been left with no access to their Club.
SILVER
Urban Zoo – Gamechanger
Urban Zoo’s unique Gamechanger platform for professional sports clubs is revolutionising the performance of clubs’ digital assets, optimising fan engagement and commercialisation by dramatically increasing user numbers and fans’ discretionary spend Clients include Everton, Stoke City, Fulham, Celtic, Wigan Athletic, Aston Villa, Sheffield United, Spurs, Middlesbrough and AFC Fylde, with Nottingham Forest and Blackburn Rovers currently in the build phase Gamechanger encompasses a website, native app and e-commerce platform, with continuous investment in new features and functionality Clients view us as a technology partner, rather than a supplier We’re footy fans who happen to be very, very good at technology Gamechanger’s success is, in part, because it helps resolve the following challenges: • It’s easy to use and time efficient for client content teams • It understands fan behaviour and enables activity tracking • It’s robust and secure, with infinite scale-up on tap to cope with surges in demand • Innovative and constantly evolving • Commercial certainty via one fixed monthly licence fee • Vastly improved fan user experience Such is the impact of Gamechanger in areas such as user experience, personalisation, design, content presentation and much more, that our clients have found it utterly transformative Across all key metrics
BRONZE
LiveScore
In under six months, LiveScore successfully revolutionised their popular app by launching and integrating a free-to-air football live streaming service that is already forcing the sports industry to sit up and take notice.
Capitalising on its standing as one of the world’s leading real-time sports updates and results providers, LiveScore identified a gap in the market to provide accessible, safe, trusted, reliable and legal live streaming for football fans in the UK and Ireland.
Within two months of launching in June 2020, over 600,000 unique users (60% of LiveScore’s UK and Ireland mobile app users) visited the LiveScore app to view a match, with individual audiences peaking at 147,000 unique viewers. Six months on, 1.4m unique users have watched a match.
LiveScore is streaming over 1,000 matches throughout the 2020-21 season, underpinned by 306 matches from Italy’s Serie A campaign. For the first time, LiveScore is now carrying live streams from the English Premier League, after acquiring rights to simulcast 31 Saturday 3pm kick off fixtures exclusively for LiveScore app users in Nigeria.
The next step of development will see LiveScore acquire new rights and deliver content globally, unlocking their global active monthly audience of 56 million users.
