By Chris Smith, Forbes, June 10, 2016
Next week the Premier League will at long last unveil its 2016-17 league schedule. It’s a much-anticipated occasion, which is perhaps best highlighted by the number of rumored schedule leaks (and the flood of accompanying headlines) that have hit the internet in recent weeks. But what’s truly different this time around is that the English league will be putting a new twist on its schedule reveal: Thanks to a new partnership with ECAL, an interactive calendar marketing platform, fans will now be able to add the fixtures to their calendars with just a few clicks.
“We started to think about the personal calendar space as a new communications channel,” says ECAL founder and CEO Patrick Barrett, “and what we’ve found is it’s an incredibly effective method of communication.”
What does that mean for fans? ECAL’s technology will allow soccer fans to instantly sync the Premier League’s schedule with their personal calendars, no matter whether they use Outlook, Google GOOGL -1.27% or mobile calendars fromApple AAPL -1.06% and Android. In addition to adding game dates to their calendars, fans will also be able to schedule league events, important dates and even buy game tickets. Barrett notes that bypassing the inbox provides “100% delivery,” and the content is totally relevant – “the content choice is in the hands of the consumer.”
Though next week’s schedule reveal will mark the start of ECAL’s league partnership, it won’t be the company’s first step into English soccer. Last season Tottenham Hotspur partnered with the company, and that relationship offers a good idea of what Premier League fans will have in store. Go to the London team’s schedule page and you’ll find the option to sync to your calendar:
Clicking that button offers nine different schedules to add to your calendar, ranging from match days to ticket on-sale dates to even an “On This Day” option. Barrett notes that while game dates are obviously the most subscribed to, those other options are surprisingly popular. Last year ticket on-sale dates were subscribed to by 40% of users, while club events garnered around 30%.
And English soccer fans aren’t the only sports nuts who can benefit from ECAL’s technology. Barrett says the company currently does more business in the US than anywhere else, and it counts the New England Patriots, Washington Redskins, Boston Celtics and Columbus Blue Jackets among its partners (plus major college athletic programs like Duke and Notre Dame). The USGA has joined on, and the NHL has used ECAL for its postseason schedule. Major League Soccer is also a partner, as are all 20 teams – great news for ECAL, which counts each team as an individual account.
“We’re seeing incredible metrics,” says Barrett of measurements like click-throughs and purchases, and a recent test run for this summer’s Copa America backs that claim up. ECAL leveraged its MLS deal to partner with the international soccer tournament, and earlier this year the company ran a single-match test. In the space of a month the tournament picked up 53,000 ECAL subscribers and sold more than $63,000 in tickets for that single match.
Perhaps the best news for teams and leagues is that ECAL’s technology grants direct fan engagement while remaining eminently affordable. ECAL receives a base monthly fee – pro sports teams and leagues fall into the enterprise category of the company’s pricing, which typically means a fee in the range of $400 per month – and then additional fees scale according to usage, essentially at a few pennies per user.
All told, for even a popular team like Tottenham the annual cost comes in at less than $10,000 per year, hardly a tough price to pay for the team with revenues of $310 million. And the payoff? Tremendous. Thanks to thousands of impressions, click-throughs and ticket sales, Barrett says that brands have returned anywhere from 30- to a staggering 300-times their investment.
View the article here: https://ow.ly/apq03018yE7
With the release of the new Apple Watch in-stores, we just had to get one…for R&D of course! The great news is that ECAL events, calendars and alerts sync very well with the Apple Watch.
All your favourite sports schedules, fitness classes, education curriculum, TV programming, powered by ECAL…straight to your wrist, in a really nice display!
The calendar has a range of displays. A ‘month’ view, ‘list’ view and ‘day’ view. Tap into an event to see a detailed ‘event details’ view.
What is noticeable, is that the calendar is very accessible on the watch, and easy to use. Along with the clock (yes, it tells the time!), and the daily activity tracker, the calendar is a real mainstay of the watch experience.
The ‘glances’ feature (a ‘quick view’ dashboard showing a range of important updates) is a quick way to see ‘what’s on’. The first swipe will show you the next event coming up; Tap and you will see events for the next week; Tap again to dive into the event details.
You can also access the full calendar from the Calendar app on the home screen display.
Event alerts are instantly displayed on the screen, with a vibration (more of a mild ‘thump’) to let you know. What’s best, I can’t help thinking about the ‘dynamic bars’ of the ECAL logo when I look at the various events, as they are all nicely colour coded. Very cool.
Unfortunately the quick links in the event details (eg: Buy Tickets, Video, Latest News etc) are not clickable from the watch, as Apple Watch doesn’t have a browser….yet.
Although the Apple Watch is really just a pairing device for your iPhone (your phone has to be within 10m), it is very useful and seems to ‘makes sense’. The calendar is a really nice experience, it ‘chunks’ the calendar down into easy to view event ‘bites’, in order to give me a great view of what’s coming up.
The calendar, once seen as a separate piece of logic, is now so much more integrated than that, and the watch demonstrates this really well. It makes sense right, it’s a watch! The calendar is fast becoming the default tool for which we all manage time, and as such a great conduit for time based alerts, “right-time communications”.
There’s lots to explore on the watch, it’s pretty cool. There are some great apps. Twitter has voice recognition for making tweets, there’s Siri, some cool watch faces, and a camera. You can even be like ‘Dick Tracy’ and make calls. I like it. For mine, the Apple Watch is a winner.
