A Results-Based Gamechanger
Urban Zoo’s Gamechanger® is giving clubs a much needed commercial boost with their digital savvy fanbase that is driving increased spend and engagement results.
With a powerful range of customisable websites and native IOS and Android apps all based on its Gamechanger® platform, Urban Zoo is providing one place for clubs to manage multiple digital channels.
Working with clubs, Urban Zoo’s Gamechanger® Platform allows fans to easily consume the content they want quickly whilst giving clubs the ability to promote key commercial elements such as tickets, store promotions and memberships throughout the experience.
“Urban Zoo have provided something quite special to both the club and the fans. We have seen healthy returns on conversation rates for streaming, ticketing and retail and in addition the platform allows us a clean, forward-thinking impactful way to promote our key partners and sponsors.” Tim Kilpatrick, Head of Commercial at Reading FC
Stability When Required
Through a headless CMS and cloud based infrastructure, the Gamechanger® platform guarantees the ultimate stability ensuring websites do not fail at crucial heavy traffic generating moments like a new player signing announcement or a season ticket renewal offer.
“I can’t speak highly enough about Urban Zoo and the Gamechanger® platform. Over the years, EFL Digital have provided a valuable service enabling clubs with limited resource to deliver a decent digital presence – so there was a degree of nervousness when considering migrating across. However, the much enhanced service to fans is immediate and obvious. Our previous quite fragmented network of micro-sites are now all contained within the one site allowing more consistency of the brand and much improved UX. Feedback from fans has been overwhelmingly positive – navigating to all our sales channels is far more intuitive so conversion rates are up, data capture is much more effective through the Single Sign-On integration and from our perspective, the CMS and technical support has been game-changing!” Greg Coar, Head of Marketing at Blackburn Rovers FC
Digital Ecosystem, Single Sign-On & Multi Language Content
The digital ecosystem of a club is a complex and highly valuable piece of infrastructure and Urban Zoo clients are able to benefit greatly from joining Gamechanger® due to the key integrations that are already in place for key elements such as team data, video streaming and ticketing. These are a critical component in a club’s revenue generating business activities and having a platform that allows each component to function effectively ensures the maximum value is derived from each.
Single Sign-On across all digital channels allows fans to set-up and use one account to access the club website, club app, ticketing, video and the online store. This approach simplifies the journey for the fan across the channels, and optimises the opportunities to make potential transactional sales. Built to integrate if required with a club’s existing CRM platforms, this allows clubs to improve their fan data and build the much desired single fan view.
And to support a growing global fanbase, Urban Zoo can work with a club to identify key fanbases to provide naturalised content in their language. This could be a dedicated section of news built for Arabic speakers, for example, giving clubs the opportunity to tag and curate relevant key content to drive engagement with fans in that location.
“We first started working with Urban Zoo in 2019 to develop a new official club website using their Gamechanger platform. Since launching our new website celticfc.com in November 2020 we have experienced a significant uplift in traffic with supporters spending more time on the site, consuming more content per visit than ever before. The flexibility of Urban Zoo’s Gamechanger® platform has helped us to roll out a Japanese section on our website (www.celticfc.jp) within weeks to help us deliver localised content to an important market for the club following the arrival of Japanese forward Furuhashi Kyogo in the summer. We enjoy a close relationship with the team at Urban Zoo who not only provide digital delivery expertise but also valuable digital strategy input as we look to take the club to the next level in the digital space.” Craig Johnston, Head of Digital Marketing, at Celtic FC
Sponsorship and Advertising
Digital platforms developed by Urban Zoo are able to offer club partners sponsorship opportunities throughout the website using Gamechanger®. Navigation headers, latest news, match centres and player profiles are all sections that can be sponsored by a partner, showcasing their logo and associated link. They are also able to use Gamechanger® to manage the partner logos shown on the site footer or the EFL contractual requirements for advertising, being able to add, delete and order the partners themselves through the platform. For advertising on the website, clubs are able to add overlay banner ads throughout their site. These adverts are tracked in Gamechanger®, allowing clubs to track the impressions and report back to partners.
“During the initial website and app build we placed a strong emphasis on providing our commercial partners with opportunities that allow for seamless integration with our content that is also easily trackable. These additional partner opportunities have increased our commercial inventory and allowed us to place more added value on to our partnership agreements.” Eoin Doyle, Head of Marketing & Content at Sheffield United FC
The Future
Gamechanger® continues to go from strength to strength and will take partner clubs with them through a shared strategic roadmap. Looking at all aspects of digital fan engagement from how to optimise the experience for the matchday going fan through the app to bringing further innovations and interactions across web and app to the armchair or more casual fan, the possibilities are endless.
Hospitality and venue operations can benefit from a new development based on Gamechanger®, ensuring the club can maximise the promotion of events, spaces and packages whilst driving clear user journeys to allow users to find exactly what they want.
Finally, as a Gamechanger® club, you will continually benefit from the evolving nature of the platform, automatically gaining access to new features and updates as they are built to meet the continual challenge of keeping fans entertained and driving club revenues.
“In 2020 we launched our live.sufc.co.uk service which initially provided fans with the opportunity to purchase passes to watch our pre-season friendlies, for the 21/22 season this was expanded and now underpins our newly launched in house TV channel, SUTV Live. SUTV Live has become an important additional revenue stream for the club and due to Urban Zoo’s technology our supporters now have a destination on matchdays to consume extensive live coverage of all our 46 EFL Championship fixtures.” Eoin Doyle, Head of Marketing & Content at Sheffield United FC
If you would like to discuss your digital roadmap and find out how Gamechanger® can help your club, please contact us via: Tel: +44 (0)844 330 1443 Email: gamechanger@urbanzoo.io or visit our website: urbanzoo.io