Ekstraklasa’s digital approach to increase fan engagement

As part of ESSMA’s Fan Experience Workshop, Marcin Pelc and Grzegorz Stańczuk shared several projects as part of Ekstraklasa’s digital approach including the Ekstraklasa app and the implementation of an eSports competition.

Ekstraklasa’s digital approach focuses on TV broadcasting (in 4K), fitness data, eSports, social media and the Ekstraklasa app.

App

The Ekstraklasa app is based on three pillars:

• Attracting non-profitable fans e.g. not buying jerseys or tickets
• To build a community
• A database with AI learning

“On average a user spends 74 minutes each month on the Ekstraklasa app.”

Currently, over 180.000 fans have downloaded the application. Fans are able to invite other friends, comment in the match centre, create groups, access behind-the-scene videos, etc. In addition, they created a points systems to enhance fan engagement, with which fans can collect points via predictions, players evaluations, polls, quizzes, etc. Furthermore it’s important to know who their fans are, when they are using the app, where they are using it and what they are doing on it.

eSports

The main goal of the Ekstraklasa eSports competitions is to reach casual players in Poland, which is estimated to be around 1.5 million people.

The competition structure consists of 16 teams (one team per Ekstraklasa club) with games being played on both PS4 and XBOX ONE. In a first phase, players could join the online qualification round with the first phase it was very important (for partners) to reach as many potential fans as possible. When succeeding, they advanced to the league stage with four players per cub. The third and final stage is the great final where the eight best clubs compete against each other. In total, over 500,000 viewers have watched and streamed the qualification rounds.

‘Over 17,000 players registered for the online qualification round.”

Go to our ESSMA Flickr account for more pictures.

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