Best Fan Engagement Programme

Arsenal Football Club – Junior Gunners

In August 2016, Arsenal became the first Premier League football club to launch a fully interactive children’s app specifically for its young supporters.

The Junior Gunners app includes a range of activities and games that aim to educate children and help them to develop new skills.

Young Arsenal fans globally can join a virtual Arsenal world and have been directly involved in how the app develops over time. This includes voting players into the app’s most popular game, Pocket Player, and coming up with new games ideas; one of which just recently been launched as part of the new Christmas update.

After being live just four months, the app already has over 33,000 downloads, 4.8/5 ratings on iTunes and Google Play, over 14,000 new digital members for Arsenal and overall more engagement between the club and its young supporters. With new updates, we expect these numbers to increase further.

Chelsea Football Club – Chelsea FC Junior Fan Engagement

Chelsea are the market leaders in engaging, inspiring and exciting the next generation of football fans; showing a remarkable level of commitment, ingenuity and passion along the way.

The club’s insight-led strategy has ensured that they have become the choice of club for young supporters; growing their fan-base through engaging with them through traditional fan engagement methods rather than relying on winning.

Their engagement-centric ethos; whether through local events, strategic digital campaigns or creative communications, has seen the club’s junior database grow by 900%, and membership by 30% in three years; and secured their place as the leading sports club in junior fan engagement.

EXTREME International for STANLEY, BLACK + DECKER and DEWALT – Lochdown

EXTREME currently acts as the exclusive worldwide agency for Black+Decker, Stanley and DeWalt across all action sports activations. We currently provide them with sponsorship for 18 athletes, 8 events, 6 weekly video clips, several viral video creations as well as demos and retail activations. Throughout 2016 we created and promoted brand messages and content through our athletes, story-led video content for social media and inclusion in EXTREME events globally. One of the many productions we created for DEWALT was LOCH DOWN. Lochdown is our film project that sees Jason Phelan complete a world’s first and take BMX to the middle of the Holy Loch in Scotland. With 2 boats, a BMX and a load of wood and tools, he creates a freestyle course like no other. EXTREME is proud to have produced a piece of art which has helped promote both DEWALT’s brand and products and the action sports industry. With the aim of attaining 750,000 reach on digital channels, LOCH DOWN went above and beyond this figure, gaining 2.1 million views, 4.7 million reach ,40 thousand interactions and it is still growing!

Kick It Out and the Football Supporters’ Federation – Fans For Diversity

The Fans For Diversity campaign, run in partnership between Kick It Out and the Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF) was launched in 2014 to help target a number of fan initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion across the professional and non-league game.

Led by Anwar Uddin, the first British Asian to captain a team in the English Football League, the campaign provides essential guidance for supporter-led events that encourage all members of the local community to participate or engage with their local club and celebrate the power of football.

The impact of the campaign since its inception has been remarkable. In Bradford, a local Asian community group based within 200 yards of Bradford City’s ground now have set-up their own supporters’ group and helped increase participation in football-related activities. Pride In Football, a collective of LGBT Supporters’ group was formed with help from Fans For Diversity.

This is alongside over 70 events run in the last two years which have helped increase the awareness of diversity and inclusion amongst football fans across the country.

Liverpool Football Club – LFC WORLD

In an increasingly digital world, here at LFC we believe truly great fan engagement comes from on the ground activations. We pride ourselves on being the World’s Greatest Footballing Family and in keeping with this we decided to create an event that would put the fan at the forefront and deliver an engaging and exciting experience.

The challenge – How could we bring the magic of Anfield to our wider football family around the world?

The answer? LFC World; an immersive and multi-faceted fan experience that brings the club closer to our global fan base. So far, it has touched down in two destinations and over 35,000 fans have visited the mall activations alone. Singapore was the first stop followed by Kuala Lumpur and we are currently in preparation for our next destination, Hong Kong.

LFC World encompasses a wide variety of LFC based activities designed to captivate and engage the local fan base. This activity is then amplified via LFCTV and Social Media platforms to take the LFC World experience further across the globe.

NTT DATA / The Open

The Open is the world’s most prestigious golf tournaments in the world, providing a stage for the world’s best players to challenge for one of sport’s most iconic trophies.

With 200,000 spectators lining the fairways and ½ billion more following on TV, there’s so much analysis of every shot, highlighting the importance ‘data’ plays in the world of sport.

As an ‘Official Patron’ of The Open Championship, NTT DATA wanted to create an iconic activation to transform the on-site fan experience through immersive data-representation and innovative technology (bringing spectators closer to the action than ever before by revealing hidden trends and powerful insights on the tournament and players).

NTT DATA set out to challenge the way data had traditionally been represented in sport and to ‘bring data to life’ in a way never before seen at a golf tournament – positioning NTT DATA as pioneering this space in the minds of golf fans and NTT DATA’s corporate customers and showcasing NTT DATA’s capabilities as a global IT innovator.

The NTT DATA ‘Wall’ was unlike anything spectators had seen before at The Open – engaging with more than 100,000 fans – creating an immersive entertaining experience that complemented the live action on the course and the live TV broadcast.

For NTT DATA / The Open video please see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFV-cmgbJTw&t=15s

Rewards4Racing Limited – Rewards4Racing

Rewards4Racing is a rewards programme specifically aimed at racegoers. It enables racing fans to collect points when they go racing, when they spend with over 4,000 retail partners and when they bet with our three exclusive bookmakers (bet365, Betfred and Coral). Those points can then be used to purchase tickets, race day packages and hospitality at our partner racecourses.

Since its launch in January 2011, the programme has attracted over 1.1 million members who have collected over 1.7 billion points and spent over £15 million when redeeming Rewards4Racing points on tickets to go racing. Rewards4Racing is now an integral part of our members’ racing experience and employs 35 full time staff, largely in marketing, analytics, IT and customer service.

Racing partners that participate in the programme include: The Jockey Club’s 15 racecourses, York Racecourse, The Racing Post, Racing UK, the Racehorse Owners Association, the Racegoers Club and the British Racing Club. A further 16 racecourse partners will be added to the programme in 2017.

Rewards4Racing is owned by its three founders, The Jockey Club (the largest commercial body in British Racing) and The Racing Post.

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