1. Introduction

bet365 is the world’s favourite online sports betting brand, and official partner of the FIFA World Cup 2022. UK media agency, Immediate Media partnered with ECAL, to help deliver an exciting new advertising campaign, that would connect with football fans across the globe, for the duration of the FIFA World Cup 2022 tournament in Qatar.

2. Objectives

• Design: Produce compelling ‘don’t miss the action’ creative for bet365 to their brand;
• Distribute: Develop functional ad displays in a range of test formats for desktop and mobile, supported by editorial;
• Connect: Create a live and dynamic connection to the user calendar, to deliver the latest fixture information, and relevant betting promotions;
• Acquire: Capture high value consumer data.

3. Solution

Ad Displays: Functional ad displays were created in various formats incl. skins, MPU and mobile banners;

Distribution: The ad campaign was run across the RadioTimes.com network, supported by editorial links;

Sync to Calendar: Football fans could click to ‘sync’, choosing their preferred tournament fixtures;

Engaging Content: Match details included local TV broadcast details, relevant promos, and direct access to ‘Join Now’, ‘WC Odds’ and ‘Bet Boosts’;

Global Languages: The ECAL pop-up display was available in 30+ languages, with language auto-detection;

Fast, Dynamic Updates: Match updates were instantly delivered into calendar as the tournament progressed, including final scores!

4. First of its kind

This exciting new ‘Sync to Calendar’ premium ad display is media first, and proved successful in reaching expected industry standard benchmarks, with the added value of a continuous engagement with fans across the FIFA World Cup campaign. This type of campaign lends itself to many varied use cases including major events, festivals, movie releases, game releases, retail offers, TV and streaming programming, and lots more. Stay tuned!

5. Outcomes

• Clicks on the bet365 adverts averaged 0.25% across a wide suite of test formats, hitting the industry display benchmark;
• 16% of all users who clicked on the advert successfully proceeded to complete the ‘sync to calendar’ journey to add content to their personal calendar;
• Direct action links in the calendar entries achieved a CTR benchmark of 1.0%

1. Introduction

Tigo Sports is a Latin American sports subscription television channel which has rapidly established itself as a major team and events broadcaster and sponsor in football at national, regional, and international level. Tigo Sports is also the champion television channel for a huge number of other sporting fixtures all year round. These sports include rugby, futsal, handball, tennis, table tennis, polo, athletics, mixed martial arts and fitness.

2. Objectives

• Remind subscribers when all matches are showing on their Tigo Sports channels and give them the option to watch the matches in either standard or HD quality.
• Increase awareness of Tigo Sports news, exclusives, videos, and live matches across all their channels.

3. Future Strategy

The plan is for ECALs service to play an integral part in the communications strategy and be a permanent feature for fans going forward. There are additional plans to bring in sponsors and promotional deals from huge clients and brands in association with Tigo Sports’ new calendar marketing service.

4. Solution

These plans will ensure that fans of the sports channel receive the best fan-engagement services in Latin America and further improve how Tigo Sports communicate with their huge audience.

5. Outcomes

• Exceeding Expectations: Surpassed the original forecast of 5,000 subscribers before first match;
• Data Driven Insights: Highly profiled user data acquired will shape Tigo Sports future marketing & advertising strategies.

1. Introduction

The EFL (English Football League) was formed in 1888 and is widely known as the world’s original league football competition. As such, the EFL has often been considered the first template for football leagues all over the world.

The EFL is the largest single body of professional clubs in European football and is responsible for administering and regulating the EFL, the Carabao Cup, the Papa John’s Trophy, and the reserve and youth football.

2. Objectives

• Deliver valuable new content outside of match times
• Satisfy strong fan desire to engage with video content
• Make it timely, relevant and compelling for fans
• Make it easy to manage (automated)

3. Strategy

Deliver an automated service for final match scores and video highlights post-match, delivered at the right time, in the right place, direct to fans with one-click access to watch highlights.

4. Solution

Subscribers will receive an ICYMI (in case you missed it!) entry in their calendar the morning after a match, with the final scores and direct access to highlights, whenever their favourite team wins or draws. The match scores are contained in the event title, with a brief match description and a strong ‘Watch Now!’ ‘call to action’ link, with direct access to the relevant match highlights.

• Entries only placed in calendar when their favourite team wins or draws
• Entries appear in the calendar the 24 hours after kickoff, with an alert at 5 minutes prior to prompt response.

5. Outcomes

• 400% increase in click-through rate;
• 651% increase in clicks from the calendar;
• 2052% increase in total engagement when compared to the same period one year prior;
• ‘Watch Now’ (highlights) is the most clicked link across the EFL Digital Platform (73% of total clicks).

* Two month sample size. 1/8/2021 – 1/10/2021 and  1/8/2022 – 1/10/2022

1. Introduction

The Premier League is the top level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football League (EFL). The Premier League is also the most watched football league in the world.

Premier League releases it’s fixtures for the new season in June every year. In 2022, Fixture Release Day was on 16th of June and millions of fans worldwide tuned in to see who their favourite team is going to be pitted against and in what order.

2. Objectives

• Pre-promote Fixture Release Day by directing fans toward their digital calendar, powered by ECAL. This helps to build excitement ahead of the new season and drive new subscribers throughout the week.
• Launch Premier League’s new season football fixtures using the digital calendar, powered by ECAL, to connect and engage with football lovers and sports fans worldwide.
• Drive fan engagement and tune-in by delivering localised broadcast details into a user’s calendar within Premier League game entries. This helps to support major broadcasters across 200 countries and lets fans know where they can watch the games.
• Deliver important event information, including broadcast details, social media platforms, and club’s online stores. This drives sales, tune-in, attendance, and engagement.
• Aquire highly-valuable customer data and behavioural insights from their huge, worldwide fanbase.

3. Strategy

The project would target a cohort of bank customers who were prone to payment default and prone to entering ‘collections’. For the sake of the test, customers would receive an SMS with a feature link to sync payment reminders to their mobile calendar.

NB: In a full integrated rollout, the feature is integrated into the mobile banking app, and online banking portal.

4. Solutions

Pre-Release

• Created multiple ECAL button and ad displays. Alongside this, Premier League also produced a number of high-impact creative assets across multiple platforms including website, mobile, social media, app and email.
• Pre-promotion of Sync to Calendar feature in the week prior to Fixture Release Day via the aforementioned creatives, displays and a website splash page. This helped to build excitement among the fans and increase the window of opportunity for new acquisitions
• Informed all existing subscribers that their calendar will automatically populate with the new seasons fixtures and so therefore, there was no need to complete the sign-up process again.

Fixture Release Day

• Connect – their multi-platform marketing approach led to a huge number of new subscribers connecting to Premier League’s various schedules, including all 20 teams’ fixtures, Fantasy Premier League, and the ePL. The PL2 and u18s schedules were also added in this year.
• Activate – with a huge, connected audience, Premier League can now deliver important information directly to their highly engaged fans to stimulate sales, social engagement, tune-in, and attendance.
• On the day promotion – Premier League hit all platforms on the day, marketing their digital calendar via social media posts, a dedicated eDM, and push notifications. They also did a website takeover including splash page on site entry, homepage banners, button displays and an article. This all resulted in a huge new subscriptions figure. Additionally, Premier League continued their promotion in the days following to ensure that they continued to grow their subscriber-base.

5. Outcomes

• 153,000+ new subscribers within the 10-day campaign period
• 60,000 new subscribers on fixture release date alone, all seamlessly connected without incident
• 14,000+ in-calendar clicks illustrating a highly engaged audience, with fans visiting the Premier League website, checking out TV scheduling and visiting team and league social media platforms and online stores.
• Most popular links included ‘Visit Premier League website’ (10,752), ‘Match Centre’ (1,449), ‘TV Schedule’ (555), club’s online shops (345) and clubs’ Twitter platforms (173).
• 57% opt-in to receive further communications from the Premier League. This subscriber data automatically syncing to the Premier League’s CRM on a weekly basis for targeted marketing purposes.
• Worldwide engagement – The two maps highlight the worldwide audience Premier League commands.
• Data acquisition – ECAL’s Data Delivery Service provides Premier League with direct and frequent access to their customer data so that they can segment audiences and use a targeted approach in all their marketing efforts.

1. Introduction

England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is the governing body of cricket in England and Wales.

The Hundred is a new professional franchise tournament run by the ECB, scheduled to start in July 2020. It plays a new 100-ball game format, in a round-robin tournament with eight city-based franchise teams. Each franchise will field a men’s and women’s team. 

2. Objectives

1. Launch England’s new season cricket fixtures using ECAL, to connect and engage cricket lovers, general sports fans and social groups.
2. Use ECAL to schedule the competition and team fixtures directly into the calendar of users.
3. Leverage the connected calendar audience to deliver important ticket release details for The Hundred, to drive early sales and stimulate demand.

3. Strategy

A. Create

• Multiple ECAL button displays were created for all cricket competitions, incl. The Hundred, International Men’s / Women’s, County Championship, Vitality Blast, and Royal London Cup.
• These buttons were integrated into the ECB website and a link on their mobile app. 

B. Connect

• ECB executed an integrated launch campaign around the release of The Hundred fixtures, to drive strong user adoption.
• Promotion included web ad (home page), site article, social campaign and email. 

C. Activate

• With a large, connected audience, ECB can then deliver important ticket release dates directly to an engaged audience, to stimulate sales and interest.

4. Results (at end of Feb)

Timeline

• 15 Nov: ECAL Launch
• 26 Nov (7am): The Hundred Fixture Release

International user subscriptions

With very strong local adoption

Timeline

• 12 Feb (10am): Priority Ticket Window Open
• Next: 17 July (6:30pm): First Game

Definitive response to ticket release

Drives significant purchase intent

1. Introduction

The sporting world has come to a complete stop due to the COVID-19 global crisis. With no end in sight, live sports organisations are forced to rethink how they can keep fans engaged with digital content.

With only five races completed for the season in the ABB Formula E Championship, organisers were forced to place the remainder of the season on-hold.

Faced with the need to engage their fans, and with a desire to make a difference, the ABB Formula E Race at Home Challenge came to life – in a fundraising partnership with UNICEF. This nine-week eSports competition sees the world’s greatest Formula E drivers mix it with some of the world’s fastest simulator drivers and influencers.

Drivers compete using rFactor 2 simulator software in a number of online events each week, with the main race weekly on Saturday, all from the safety of their own homes. It was a significant challenge to source and supply drivers in all parts of the world with their simulator set-up.

The Formula E Race at Home Challenge is available to view globally on Formula E’s YouTube channel, Facebook Page, Facebook gaming site, Twitch and via @FiaFormulaE on Twitter.

“Special thanks to you for the initial suggestion to put this together and helping us drive this initiative forward in the first place – it’s been a huge part of our launch today”
– Emily Hirth, Digital Product Manager

2. Objectives

• Drive tune-in via the ‘Ways to watch’ page
• Drive awareness and participation in donations
• Deliver fast, responsive updates to calendar, incl. last-minute grid changes, qualification etc.

3. Strategy

The strategy balanced on informing the existing Formula E fan base, with the desire to appeal and attract a new ‘gamer’ audience and general sports enthusiasts to the sport. This would involve adding Race at Home Challenge events to existing user calendars, adding a new schedule to the existing button display, and creating new displays for dedicated promotion of the series.

4. Solution

Formula E promoted the digital calendar service in conjunction with the official media release, and alongside promotional initiatives via email, social media, banner displays on the Formula E website, and via their partner network.
The events data was connected via API, with the Formula E team able to easily update content as they need via a connected online form.

Fans receive race event notifications at key times, with standout emojis, including the day before, an hour prior and an alert 5 minutes before the start of the race, to drive tune-in. Each entry details the race conditions, grid positions and with direct access to the ‘Where to Watch’ page, to the various live stream options, and donation pages.

5. Outcomes

Engagement exceeded expectations, with the first round of the “Race at Home” series recording a 12-month high for online fan engagement. There was a high degree of tune-in from existing fans, and an influx of new fans subscribing to Formula E events for the first time. Click through rate exceeded 3% on and around the virtual racedays, with 76% of all clicks shared between “Ways to Watch” and “Donate”.

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%.