Customer Stories - Premier League ePL Players Invitational

Case Studies, Sports May 26, 2020

Customer Stories - Premier League

Challenge

To engage and entertain football fans in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.

Solution

ECAL 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 could not be happier with the ECAL product. ECAL makes it easy to implement and even easier for our fans to download our calendars where they want them most!”

Matt Rochinski

Vice President of Digital Media @ Hornets Sports & Entertainment

"The ECAL platform ensures that fans can easily find out where to tune in and watch Formula E live in their territory, providing us with the ability to deliver targeted messages to users, based on location and behaviour. ECAL is our highest performing digital marketing channel, contributing approximately one-third of new user data acquired. The team at ECAL are a great bunch and I would have no hesitation in recommending them."

Tecwyn Davies

Senior Digital Project Manager @ Formula E

“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”.

Tariq Gangari

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.”

Chris Archer

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.”

Matt Hudspeth-Lamb

Senior Data, Research and Insight Manager