For football fans across the globe, the release of the new Premier League season fixture is a highly anticipated event. It’s a chance for fans to plan their year ahead, lock in the blockbusters, mark down the rivalries, book weekends away, and reimagine hopes and expectations. After all, the season starts here!

For ECAL, Premier League’s official ‘digital calendar’ provider, the global release to millions of passionate football fans requires a well-crafted and co-ordinated strategy with the League and teams.

The pre-release promotional window is one sure-fire way to build excitement and anticipation for the release, and to cleverly grow your calendar audience. ECAL Founder & CEO, Patrick Barrett explains:

“Premier League does a wonderful job in building the official fixture release to a much-anticipated event, and driving users to ‘sync to calendar’ to receive the fixtures first. It’s a great example for all major sports leagues and competitions.

This year, the Premier League’s ‘Unmissable drama, Made Unmissable’ standout creative was launched with a site takeover campaign beginning on Monday 12th June, ahead of the official fixture release on Thursday. Thousands of fans took the opportunity to connect their calendar ahead of launch day, and tell their friends.”

Creative executions included a dedicated website ‘splash page’ on entry, homepage masthead banner, run of site banners, editorial support, social post campaigns and direct email promotion, with the promise to “get every match delivered to your calendar”.

This resulted in hundreds of thousands of fans subscribing to the official Premier League ‘digital calendar’, with a good proportion connecting to the service in the days prior to the official fixture release, where demand then peaks.

As soon as fixtures are published, they are delivered directly into user calendar. ECAL’s highly advanced technology continues to deliver fans with a rich and dynamic fixture service ongoing. Users receive localised broadcast information across matches, and direct access to tickets, merchandise, video, social media, fantasy and more, to keep them up-to-date, connected and engaged.

The 2023/24 Premier League season kicks off on 11th August, with title holders Manchester City facing promoted Burnley.

Don’t miss a moment of the world’s most popular football league! Follow your favourite team like millions of others, and sync to calendar here.