I joined the NFL as their Head of Product, overseeing all fan-facing digital experiences across web, mobile & connected tv devices. During this time, the NFL’s digital business was going through a transformational shift, along with the rest of digital media & entertainment. With the rise of direct-to-consumer offerings and streaming services and the decrease in traditional impression-based advertising expenditure, I was tasked with creating a new product strategy to drive growth for the digital home of the NFL. In other words, we needed to get fans to engage deeper with our digital products.
In collaboration with leadership counterparts in the League Office, Business Development, Content Creation and Sales, we established a new set of objectives. Our primary goal was to amplify the Live Game on digital platforms and increase AMA, Average Minute Audience. AMA is how an engaged audience (ratings) is measured, providing a baseline metric to gauge the effectiveness of our initiatives and designate the value of NFL’s live content on alternate platforms.
Our Strategy
My team and I compiled a clear product strategy, based on experiences that elicit emotion. We aimed to ensure we had the capabilities to enable our vision, that our products would be everywhere a fan is going to be, our offerings appealed to their unique interests, our interfaces and interactions exude a refined and polished feel that intuitively opened up options for more consumption and exclusive access.
Our Results
Within 1 season, we achieved and surpassed our targets. Our North Star Metric was to increase AMA, which we did by 110%. Our new design dynamically gave precedence to the live game, hooking in an audience as soon as they open the app. We mimicked the experience on all platforms, giving fans a sense of optionality on how they engage.
During live games, in-game content was driven by AI and personalization, to deliver fast and familiar content, showcasing an increase of 74% in video-on-demand engagement. Our AI video editors were able to generate highlights in real-time using a mix of data elements such as score, game time, crowd noise, camera movement, jersey numbers and more. Combined with deriving the fan’s favorite team and players, the videos presented to a given fan were much more likely to draw an affinity.
Both access to the live game and original content had levels of varying values. We decided to remix our premium content packages and create alternate products that were focused on a specific target market. We deployed a mobile-only version of RedZone and Fantasy RedZone (a live mix of all games that are in scoring position) for fans on the go, refined NFL GamePass on all platforms (a delayed version of all games for international markets) and launched a new product called NFL+ for the avid fan to get their football fill throughout the week at a low-cost-to-entry model of $4.99/week. Each of these efforts culminated in a 67% increase in direct-to-consumer revenue from the previous year.
Our Playbook
Enabling
Like most championship winning teams, a special importance is placed on building a solid offensive line, allowing ample protection for the QB to operate & to create lanes for the run game. We adopted the same mentality when it came to our foundational platform, aka “O-Line”. The platform was rearchitected and modernized, giving way to new & compelling experiences across all of digital channels. A new developer portal was launched in tandem with a simulation environment, allowing for internal and external teams to build and test integrations more effectively.
My team also had the responsibility to support all 32 NFL team sites, which were made up of a variety of solutions. To optimize capabilities consistently, a single CMS was developed in partnership with Deltatre, making the end to end development process a lot more simpler and quicker.
Ubiquitous
Fans use more than one device to keep up with the NFL. At times, it may be on the go and at times it may be a lean-back experience on the big screen. We were able to expand our supported devices and 3rd party platforms (Roku, Xbox, PS, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Google Play, iOS, Android) by the use of modular and reusable UI components, allowing us to build once and publish everywhere.
Personalized
With over 25 million active users, the NFL app is the preferred medium to follow the league & your favorite team. Our redesign of the app had to be mindful not to disrupt “the why” fans engage in the first place. We wanted to ensure we add to the many reasons while improving the existing journey.
Since each fan is surely unique, we prioritized the onboarding journey to collect key data points that would power what fans see and can interact with. Once a fan’s identity, content entitlements and preferences were captured, the NFL app became much more than a utility app. Fans were presented with a scalable personalized feed of stories, highlights, scores, stats and topped off with the relevant live game. And as the fan navigated throughout the sections, the app would dynamically highlight content matching the fan’s identity.
To meet the casual fan’s needs, we focused on the how a fan spends their week, leading up to the upcoming week. We observed an increase in fan activity related to keeping up with the latest news and opinions, which prompted us to create a Plus version of the NFL and Fantasy Apps (NFL+ / Fantasy+). This offering sought to target those that didn’t have an existing cable / linear service. New content franchises were created to provide fans behind the scenes access, live audio to all games and All-22 game replays, filling a void in the current marketplace.
Delightful
Each platform went through a holistic refresh of the fan experience. We especially focused on the NFL Fantasy app, being that it represents one of the most active and engaged type of fans. The redesign efforts resulted in an increase of new league creations and an increase of time spent in app.
This became a cross-platform experience, meaning if a fan played fantasy football on the NFL Fantasy app, the players on their team would be highlighted across the NFL app as well. This created a sticky experience, keeping fans within the NFL digital ecosystem.
Access
Fans crave getting exclusive access to build a deeper connection with their favorite teams and players. Being the NFL, we had access like no other entity to fulfill those fan cravings. We decided to simply our offerings to better present their value for specific target markets.
With the popularity of RedZone, and the 60% increase in Fantasy Football players, we decided to create a mobile and a connected tv version of the product. The two formats saw immediate uptake and started a new fan behavior pattern.
