Customer Stories - Premier League
ChallengeTo engage and entertain football fans in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. |
SolutionECAL leveraged Premier League’s vast, global, connected calendar audience, to help engage fans in the Premier League’s new eSports offering, that smashed all records! |
1. Introduction
In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, the world’s most popular football competition launched the ePremier League Invitational. This EA Sports FIFA20 battle saw each Premier League team represented by a player in a knockout format to decide an overall series champion.
A prize fund was donated to the #PlayersTogether initiative, which was created by the Premier League players as a collective way of generating funds for the National Health Service and distributing them where they are needed most.
2. Objectives
The main objective was to engage and entertain fans. As Premier League Chief Executive, Richard Masters, said “We are aware of the importance of finding new ways to entertain fans at this time and we are excited to bring together a strong line-up of players for the ePremier League Invitational tournament.”
3. Strategy
The strategy focussed on informing and engaging their vast, connected, global calendar audience in this new eSports offering. This would involve targeted messaging to fans, based on their favourite teams, so fans could tune-in to watch their favourite players in action.
As a given, the solution needs to be responsive, as the ePL Invitational is a fast-paced ‘knockout’ format, with daily rounds held over just five consecutive days, with the Semi-Final and Final played on Saturday with just 15 minutes break.
4. Solution
Premier League fans who had nominated a preference for a team received detailed event information for whenever their team played next. General football fans would receive a daily schedule of match-ups in-calendar, so they could choose to follow the games of their choice.
All entries featured a strong call to action to ‘watch live’, with smart alerts and direct links to the various options for live view, including via the Premier League website, YouTube and Facebook.
5. Outcomes
During the five days of the ePremier League Invitational tournament, ECAL delivered nearly 3 million event impressions, over 30,000 clicks at a click-through rate of over 1.2%.
This eSports solution for Premier League acquired many new fans from all over the world, that the League will continue to communicate and engage with on an ongoing basis.
The ePL Invitational was won by Leicester City’s James Maddison, who echoed the sentiments of players, and fans. by saying: “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the whole tournament and am delighted to come out victorious.”
Testimonials
“We welcome around 750,000 visits to our Bins, waste and recycling section on our website annually. Implementing ECAL’s ‘Sync to Calendar’ service, has not only significantly reduced the average website visit, but residents can now receive dynamic bin collection reminders in-calendar. When collection days change, as do the entries and reminders in our users calendar. We are proud to be the first council in the UK to provide this innovative service for our residents and are thrilled to see this as just the start of a great journey and synergy with ECAL”.
Senior UI Designer
Fixture release day is a key moment in the Premier League’s calendar. It signals the start of our new season and provides an opportunity for us to onboard new fans. ECAL’s platform provides a powerful communication channel for us to deliver against our key objectives – driving tune-in and referrals for our clubs and broadcast licensees.”
Head of Digital Operations
“Fixture release day is a highly anticipated event in the EFL calendar. ECAL's excellent support, from technical to strategic, allowed us to focus on maximising reach and delivering a timely and engaged service to our fanbase.”
Senior Data, Research and Insight Manager
“The build up to big days like the fixture release day can sometimes be stressful hoping that everything runs smooth and the fans get the best customer experience. Needless to say, this release day was the smoothest and most successful yet seeing our subscribers increase by over 50%. We are very thankful to have ECAL onboard providing a great service to us and our fans. The simplicity of the platform is extremely easy to use and their team is on hand for any help that is required.
Email Marketing and CRM Executive @ Newcastle United
“We couldn’t be any happier with the help, support, and advice from the team at ECAL, who went above and beyond to ensure that one of the biggest events in our calendar – Fixture Release Day – was as successful as possible. The guidance stretched from technical to marketing, which was of great use to the club, and we look forward to developing our channel on the platform further.”
Director of Strategic Operations & Communications @ Millwall FCCOMMUNICATE EVENTS BETTER
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