The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport App team have been gearing up for the greatest show on earth – the Rio 2016 Olympics. Executive Product Manager Justin Barritt provides an overview of the sport app’s transition from a simple destination to a personalised service and also provides details of an Olympics Virtual Reality trial app available from today.
Transitioning from a one-size fits all destination
The adoption and use of mobile devices has grown exponentially over the last 5 years and in 2014 mobile marched past desktop to become the most popular device used for accessing the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ online. Mobile use continues to grow, powered by social media and a continuing array of mobile apps and services that make our mobile phones that bit more indispensible each day.
Mobile is big for both publishers and users meaning competition for attention on the small screen is fiercer than ever! And, it’s not just competition from other publishers but increasingly from the content and services offered by the mobile platforms and social media services such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition, 84% of mobile users’ time is spent in just 5 apps (Forrester Research 2015) so to ensure we remain relevant in this competitive landscape we have been working to transition our proposition from a one-size fits all destination to a more wide-reaching, personalised and valuable service.
Your Personal Sport Service
Sport fans are hugely passionate about sport and it creates a wide range of positive and negative emotions. Of all the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ genres, sport is one of the most divisive where users might love a sport but then hate others with a passion! Our editorial teams do a great job of curating the homepage of the Sport App but in order to meet the needs of each individual user we need to understand their interests and then create an experience unique to their individual needs.
At the end of last year we made some big changes towards delivering ‘A more personal Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ’ including the launch of My Sport which I about when we launched. Since then the team has expanded our range of personalised services to provide valuable experiences outside of the app destination:
1. Personalised News alerts – News alerts for your favourite sports
2. Event Reminders - Reminders for live sporting events covered by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport
3. Euro Football Alerts – Match alerts for all 24 teams taking part in the Euros
4. Spotlight Search – Search & navigate to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport content from iOS search
5. iOS 3D Touch – Link to sections by applying pressure on the App icon on iPhone 6S
Within the app we have also improved discovery and navigation to My Sport with a new tabbed navigation providing one click access to your personal My Sport page. The new personalised services have been well received by our audience with Alerts accounting for the largest proportion (34%) of positive feedback comments in the App Stores. This range of services has also contributed to significant growth with a 50% year-on-year increase in browsers during May even before the big summer of sport kicked off! And, in the last few weeks we also broke our weekly record with over 4.4M unique users. Through A/B testing of in-app prompts to encourage discovery of our personalised services we have also seen a significant adoption of these features including:
1. 2.3M overall active push alert users
2. 800,000 subscribers to Euro 2016 Match alerts
3. 750,000 signed-in users
4. 100-150K weekly My Sport users
These new more personal and relevant services resonate well with the audience and we plan to deliver further innovations in this area in the future including for the next big major event around the corner…
The Personalised Olympics
The last 18 months have been leading up to the biggest show on earth – the Rio 2016 Olympic Games!! We expect our personalised features to provide a great Olympics experience for our audience and along with 24 live streams of coverage and all the latest news, analysis and highlights Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport app users can:
1. Curate their personal My Sport page with their favourite Olympic disciplines e.g. cycling
2. Add Top Stories Alerts for the latest news stories from the Olympics
3. Add gold, silver and bronze medals alerts for instant alerts when their team wins a medal at Rio
4. Add event reminders in the schedule for any of the 100+ live events taking place each day
5. Navigate quickly to Rio 2016 from the new link at the top of the Menu
To find out what’s coming up and set event reminders for your favourite Olympic events visit the whilst in the Sport App.
Olympic Games Virtual Reality Trial
In addition to the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport App we have just released a virtual reality trial app for the Olympics – Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport 360. This app has been developed in conjunction with the Olympic Broadcasting Service to offer 360-degree coverage of the Olympic Games. Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport have taken part in this trial to learn more about the technology and to better understand audience needs to help shape our future Virtual Reality plans. This is an emerging and exciting area, which we will explore further after the games.
The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport 360 app will offer live 360 video footage of an event each day with around 100 hours in total. Users can choose from four different camera angles during the live event and can access a daily five minute highlights package from around 4pm the next day.
The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport 360 service can be viewed on a Samsung Note 5, S6 or S7 mobile phone using a Samsung Gear VR headset. It can also be viewed using a low cost mobile VR headset such as Google Cardboard on either Android or iOS smartphones. Simply download the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport 360 trial app and slot the phone into the headset to watch live and on-demand coverage.
The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport 360 app is available from Google Play, the Apple App Store and Samsung Gear VR. The full schedule of live Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Sport 360 coverage is available . The 360 video content can also be viewed on your desktop PC on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Taster website without a headset, where you can manually scroll around the video for a full 360 view . Please try out the service and provide feedback on the web or app experience via the Taster website.
We hope you enjoy the Olympics and look forward to hearing your feedback on our new services and how we can improve these in the future.