Why Spanish soccer league La Liga is relaunching its app as part of a DTC play
July 3, 2023 • 3 min read • By Seb Joseph
Ivy Liu
On the total disregarded in the media realm is a paradox: sports leagues thrive on passionate fandom, yet they retain an distant relationship with their fans. Nevertheless, Spain’s premier soccer league La Liga is made up our minds to diminish free from this irony by revamping its app and organising a grunt relationship with its fans.
The app will are attempting to remain being outcomes-centered to alter into extra of an leisure hub. Fans will own the chance to pass looking out match highlights, delve into archive footage and access statistics about their accepted groups and players. Additionally, the app will supply competitions and new sigh material from the league’s sponsors. It’s all free once fans register their valuable aspects. Because it stands there are no longer any plans to introduce commercials to the app.
“This is able to well relief us to know football fans better,” stated Alfredo Bermejo, director of digital strategy at La Liga. “On the stay of the day, fans be pleased football in a variety of various systems, from sports news websites to social media, and the groups and leagues regularly know nothing about them.”
Imagine hundreds of passionate football fans logging into the app generally, each and every interplay providing the league with truly helpful insights into their preferences. This wealth of files empowers the sports group’s media aspirations.
“By having that files from our fans we’re ready to gain a correct working out of how they behave, which products they delight in and the sigh material they look,” stated Bermejo. “This is able to well relief us to give a enhance to our proposals for our sponsorships or to make scream sponsorship applications for La Liga.”
Whereas it might maybe maybe well seem delight in a huge uncover for a single app, it has change real into a necessity for up to date sports organizations. An app, alongside digital media in identical outdated, opens up additional earnings streams. Famend soccer golf equipment delight in FC Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Chelsea own already exemplified how sports franchises are rapid reworking into media brands themselves.
“If at some level we originate notify to make our own OTT provider then the app capacity we don’t need to originate up from scratch,” stated Bermejo. “We are able to own an target audience that’s associated, who’re engaged with La Liga and might maybe well well composed be attracted to having a provider delight in that.”
Nevertheless, earlier than La Liga’s increased ambitions can lift form, the app’s overhaul need to show a tangible influence on the league’s target audience. Closing season, the app boasted approximately 1.6 million filled with life month-to-month users, in step with La Liga.
Match highlight videos are expected to play a pivotal feature in increasing this target audience. If truth be told, La Liga has enlisted the skills of video specialist WSC Sports to automate the creation and distribution of match highlights using AI technology. The tech indexes various highlights in strategy staunch time to make automatic highlight videos, which might maybe well furthermore be shared on the app, social media platforms and even an OTT provider. Severely, the videos are listed in the identical outdated 9:16 vertical video structure.
“One of potentially the most efficient systems to make an ecosystem is to generate that files within La Liga,” stated Bermejo. We don’t need to be reliant on social media [for that sort of data]. It’s valuable to us however what we’re doing [via the app] is expounded much extra to how we gain a community for ourselves.“
The app will relaunch sooner than the 2023/24 football season later this summer season.
“Historically, a league digital providing used to be focussed on providing fans files akin to match schedules and statistics,” stated James English, accomplice at sports and leisure company Fuse. “This has been changing vastly as leagues search to capitalise on audiences, severely global fans, who apply the sport total vs a given team.”
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