STACK SPORTS (SPORTSTG) PARTNER WITH ECAL
Sports fixtures delivered, straight to the digital calendar 

Stack Sports (SportsTG), the leading provider of digital solutions to national, state, grassroots and professional sporting organisations across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom has today announced an exciting partnership with ECAL, the leading calendar communications and marketing software business.

ECAL’s dynamic ‘sync to calendar’ functionality will deliver the latest sports fixture information, straight to the personal digital calendar of users, to keep them up-to-date and connected. This solution will become a standard feature on the Stack Sports competition management platform.

Anthony Richardson, Director of Digital for Stack Sports), said: “ECAL’s offering compliments the existing features of our products and solutions. Stack Sports continues to evolve our business and product set and we are excited to have partnered with ECAL whose offering will now benefit Stacks customers.”

Patrick Barrett, CEO/Founder of ECAL said: “We are thrilled to partner with Stack Sports, and bring ECAL’s smart calendar technology to the lives of its extensive user community. During these unprecedented times, as competitions begin to reschedule fixtures, accurate and dynamic communications will play an important role in successful competition management. The Stack user community, with the help of ECAL, will be well placed to know exactly what’s on, when and where, so they can better manage life.”

Stack Sports have been providing high quality technology solutions in the Australian market since 2001 along with working in other key markets including the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Stack partners with a large number of National Sporting Organisations including the AFL, Basketball Australia, Touch Football Australia, Hockey Australia, Basketball New Zealand, New Zealand Rugby League, Rugby Football League, and Basketball England.

The technology Stack Sports provides assists in administering everything from national programme registrations to school holiday programs, week to week competitions to digital website solutions, and club sales and revenue-generating eCommerce platforms. Stack Sports will continue to partner with sporting organisations and other bodies to be the leading provider of sports digital ecosystems across the world.

ECAL is a world-leading calendar communications and marketing software business. It’s smart, dynamic ‘Sync to Calendar’ technology is used by 300+ major sports, ticketing, media organisations incl. Premier League, NBA, ICC, LaLiga, Formula E, AFL, NRL, Ticketek, Fox Sports and others, servicing 8M+ users. With over 70% of adults relying on their digital calendar to manage life, effective calendar communications are an essential weapon in the marketing toolkit for events-based business.

For more information and interviews, please contact:

Cameron O’Riordan
Director of Sales & Marketing
Stack Sports – APAC/EMEA
Phone: +61 (0) 475 415 801
cameron.oriordan@stacksports.com

Patrick Barrett
Founder / CEO
ECAL
Phone: +61 (0)411 650 445
patrick@ecal.com

Aston Villa is inviting fans to tune in to the inaugural ePremier League Invitational tournament.

Premier League players from all 20 clubs will put their FIFA skills to the test as they face off against each other, representing their club in a knockout eSports tournament.

With the help of ECAL, Villa fans won’t miss a moment of the action. In Round 1, watch midfielder John McGinn go head-to-head against Brighton & Hove Albion’s French striker Neal Maupay.

Enjoy up-to-date details of the match-ups throughout the knockout phases, with handy alerts, details and direct access to watch live, all from the convenience of your personal calendar.

Villa fan? Sync the ePL Invitational schedule here.

Formula E, the greatest electric street racing series on Earth has gone virtual! In the face of the COVID-19 crisis, the ABB Formula E Race at Home Challenge has been launched – in a fundraising partnership with UNICEF.

This nine week eSports competition will see the world’s greatest Formula E drivers mix it with some of the world’s fastest gamers and influencers. The top gamer wins a real-life track session on a Formula E circuit on a real race weekend.

Donations from the competition will be directed towards UNICEF for urgent PPE gear for health workers, and to help set-up home learning schemes for children out of school.

it’s an exciting and super-engaging format, with each raceday set for Saturday over nine straight weeks. In the lead-up to raceday, the fastest 18 drivers over the course will qualify. They will be joined by top gamers, renowned motorsports players and influencers to battle it out. A ‘Race Royale’ format will see the last placed driver eliminated each lap, until there are just 10 drivers who remain, leaving a single lap sprint to the finish.

The Race at Home Challenge will be available to view live globally on Formula E’s YouTube channel, Facebook page, Facebook Gaming site, Twitch and via @FIAFormulaE on Twitter.

Love your racing, gaming or just keen to follow the action, you can sync the AAB Formula E Race at Home Challenge Series to your digital calendar, thanks to ECAL here.

Notre Dame is inviting fans to relive the famous 1992 Snow Ball victory against Penn State in the first instalment of the College’s ‘Watch Parties’.

With all Winter and Spring sporting championships on hold across America for the foreseeable future, Notre Dame will broadcast its classic matches every Saturday night to its sport-starved fans.

With the help of ECAL, fans can sync ‘Watch Party’ events, with match-up details, social engagement activities (incl. online chat, trivia & fan polls), timely reminders and one-click access to watch on the Fighting Irish YouTube channel, all from the convenience of the calendar.

Join Notre Dame fans this Saturday and every Saturday night here.

The NBL, Australia and New Zealand’s professional men’s basketball league is keeping fans connected with a suite of new (and old) digital content.

Video editors at League Headquarters have been busy cutting tape, putting together a host of online content to engage fans each week. From Monday to Friday, fans can get their daily fix of basketball classics.

With the help of ECAL, fans can relive the excitement of the 2020 NBL Competition and seasons past with ‘NBL Top 10’ and ‘NBL Rewind’, catch the latest off-season news with ‘NBL Overtime’ and listen to Adam Gibson’s ‘One on One’ podcast, all from the comfort of their couch.

ECAL subscribers receive notifications when the broadcast begins, with ‘Watch Now’ links providing one-click access to watch or listen on their preferred platform.

ECAL’s state-of-the-art digital calendar service delivers the NBL with a tremendous platform to ‘connect’, ‘engage’ and ‘activate’ its audience around the sport they love, during this unfortunate time of lockdown and social distancing.

Choose your NBL team here and keep up-to-date thanks to ECAL.

The Australian Ballet has launched a special ‘At Home with Ballet TV’ digital season to engage ballet lovers, during these unprecedented times of COVID-19 lockdown and social distancing.

With performances cancelled across the country, this internationally acclaimed ballet company will stream its most beloved and inspiring ballet productions to fans at home.

With the help of ECAL, fans can experience the magic of seasons past with cinema-quality recordings of full-length performances, such as ‘The Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Cinderella’, ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and more, beamed right to the comfort of their couch.

The Australian Ballet launched their new ‘digital season’ across various channels, including web, email, social and via owned and partner networks. With a strong drive to ‘Sync to Calendar’ and “be the first to know” fans were instantly connected, and receive advance warning of the latest performance releases – straight to their digital calendar.

ECAL subscribers receive notifications when new ballets are released on the platform with ‘Stream Now’ links providing one-click access to watch. With each performance available for a limited period of 2 weeks, timely ‘Last Chance to Watch’ events and reminders in calendar ensure fans never miss the opportiunity to view the performance!

On launch, the ‘digital season’ campaign saw a 25% increase in their ECAL subscriber audience alone. In addition, The Australian Ballet were able to leverage it’s large existing connected calendar audience to drive engagement and tune-in.

The Australian Ballet’s Digital Specialist, Maeve Ashby, was thrilled with the ‘digital season’ launch and with the engagement across all platforms, saying “It’s been a fantastic success – smashing our engagement stats out of the water – across email, web, social and calendar!”

The Australian Ballet are building on the initial success of their ‘digital season’ with other interesting video content pieces, and special collaborations designed to recreate a luxe cinematic experience at home – they have collaborated with Piccoliina Gelateria to create a bespoke ‘Sleeping Beauty’ inspired ice-cream flavour available for delivery via Uber Eats, complete with all the trimmings!

You can subscribe to The Australian Ballet’s 2020 Digital Calendar here and don’t forget the gelato!

ECAL event-based clients are on the front foot in keeping fans engaged with event disruptions, and creating new ways to engage.

ECAL’s dynamic ‘Sync to Calendar’ technology is a hugely beneficial tool for keeping fans engaged during this period of great uncertainty.

Major sports, ticketing and entertainment clients who have been forced to postpone or cancel their events have quickly updated entries in calendar, with the relevant status changes.

As the situation develops, and decisions are made about further delays or the recommencement of events, ECAL will be a quick and effective tool for publishers to reschedule their events in the daily lives of fans.

Opportunity knocks 
Given the uncertainty, and the rapidly changing situation, publishers are now encouraging fans to connect to their ECAL feature, to be the first to know when updates to their event scheduling is made.

Major conference clients are also recommending ECAL to their clients, to use ECAL ‘Sync to Calendar’ to help take their conferences and exhibitions online. By subscribing to the show agenda, keynote addresses and even your preferred conference ‘tracks’, virtual attendees know exactly when to tune-in, with a direct link to the web stream.

Above: Tottenham Hotspur FC splash page on site entry provides a solution for fans to stay up-to-date with the changing schedule of events.

At ECAL, we’re working closely with major sports around the world, to help manage important communications around event postponements, cancellations and announcements due to Coronavirus Disease.

Given ECAL’s rich and dynamic capabilities, and ease of management, event owners and publishers are able to deliver important announcements, and event status updates to their audience, at the right time with access to the right information.

What’s the best way to manage these event disruptions? We make the following suggestions and recommendations, to help our publishers manage these important communications in the right way.

Postponing events 
If you are postponing events, we recommend updating (not deleting!) the event as follows:

• Edit the event name to insert “(Postponed)” prominently at the beginning of the event name;
• Insert an emoji ⚠️ in the event name, bringing attention to the changed status of the event;
• Update the event details with your official statement regarding the postponement;
• Add a link in the event details, where users can go to read the complete official statement, and another link to view the latest updates and announcements as they happen;
• Add / retain other useful links to keep users engaged, such as ‘Latest News’, ‘Latest Video’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Online Store’ and so on.

Cancelling events
If you are cancelling events, we recommend updating (not deleting!) the event as follows:

• Edit the event name to insert “(Cancelled)” prominently at the beginning of the event name;
• Insert an emoji ❗️in the event name, bringing attention to the changed status of the event;
• Update the event details with your official statement regarding the cancellation;
• Add a link in the event details, where users can go to read the complete official statement, and another link to view the latest updates and announcements as they happen;
• Add / retain other useful links to keep users engaged, such as ‘Latest News’, ‘Latest Video’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’, ‘Online Store’ and so on.

Official Announcement as a new event
If you have made the decision to postpone or cancel events, we recommend the following:

• Create a new event in the user calendar, specifically for the “Official Announcement” itself. This is an important event, and your audience needs to know;
• Insert an emoji ⚠️or ❗️in the event name, that mirrors the one you will use for the postponed or cancelled events;
• Add a short term alert, such as 15 mins prior, to bring this event front of screen on the user’s mobile or desktop;
• In the event details, include a brief summary of your official statement;
• Add a link in the event details, where users can go to read the complete official statement, and another link to view the latest updates and announcements as they happen;
• Add other useful links to keep users engaged, such as ‘Latest News’, ‘Latest Video’, ‘Facebook’, ‘Twitter’ and so on.

The ECB’s much anticipated Hundred competition is clearly viewed as an unmissable summer event, with initial sales for the Hundred having ‘surpassed expectations’.

Part of the ECB’s ticketing strategy was to build strong early interest and trigger advanced sales via a Priority Ticket Release window. Fans could register their interest in the tournament via the website, and received access to the priority ticket window.

The ECB also used the official fixture release as a major promotional event, and using ECAL’s dynamic ‘Sync to Calendar’ service, fans were instantly connected – they would receive the fixture straight to calendar, along with important ticket release dates.

Levering it’s large connected calendar audience, as part of a truly integrated marketing approach, the ECB were able to deliver advance notice to fans of the upcoming Priority Ticket Release window, with details on pricing and direct access to purchase. This was a wonderful way to stimulate consumer demand and early sales amongst a high value, qualified, passionate fan base.

Within the first 24 hours of availability, ECB sales had surpassed the six-figure barrier.

ECAL’s state-of-the-art digital calendar service delivers the ECB with a tremendous platform to ‘connect’, ‘engage’ and ‘activate’ its audience around the events they love.

ECAL is proud to be the official calendar marketing service provider of The ECB. Choose your team in The Hundred, and follow your favourite international and domestic cricket here, proudly powered by ECAL.

ECAL’s Sync to Calendar technology is allowing Formula E fans to stay informed and up-to-date with the latest season information via the calendar amid the escalating threat of the COVID-19 epidemic.

ECAL’s ‘digital calendar’ solution ensures fans across the globe enjoy a live and dynamic feed of race events.  Events dynamically update in the calendar, so if there are race events postponed, rescheduled or cancelled, they’ll be the first to know.

ECAL Founder and CEO Patrick Barrett said: “ECAL is the perfect platform to engage fans, particularly with event (date and time) driven information. Events can change for any number of reasons, ECAL provides real-time updates in the calendar and provides publishers with another medium to communicate with their fans.  

The technology also allows publishers to update the content and redirect the focus to align with other key objectives of the business.  Take the case of a closed race-circuit or stadium for instance, calendar entries, reminders and links can drive tune-in via live stream, provide localised broadcast information or engage in fan related activities like Formula E’s fanboost“.  

With future scheduled races under threat of cancellation, ECAL’s sync to calendar solution provides Formula E with a timely and reliable solution to keep fans informed.

You can sync the Formula E season here, and stay up-to-date and connected thanks to ECAL.