Developing a new media platform for grassroots football

Challenge

As governing body for football in Denmark, the Danish Football Association (DBU) has a duty to drive commercial revenue to grow the popularity of, and levels of participation in, the sport. It also has an objective to build stronger relationships with grassroots footballers.

Insight

The DBU operates a central player and match management system that collects data through results, teamsheets, player information and other key match information across all levels of Danish amateur football. While the system had historically been used, successfully, for administrative purposes, it could also be used to create highly engaging and personalised player communications.

Solution

Using insight from the DBU’s deep amount of player data, the DBU could create a media platform that delivered personalised stories and narratives to grassroots players about the performances of themselves and their rivals. It would strengthen the governing body’s engagement with grassroots, and also form the backbone of a new, valuable digital asset for commercial partners.

Action

Two Circles created a data warehouse that pulled in daily results and performances from the DBU’s player and match management system. Based on preliminary analysis conducted by Two Circles on this performance data, the warehouse was designed to auto-generate compelling metrics and insights on a player-by-player level such as upcoming fixtures, team and opposition form and current league tables.

These insights were fed into the DBU’s e-mail marketing provider to create individual player communications that were sent to tens of thousands of amateur footballers every week they played a match, informing them on results, form and fixtures. Additionally, an end-of-season email was sent to players summarising their season through informative stats, infographics and quirky facts.

The campaigns were also used to promote the DBU’s in-house content and ticket sales for national team matches, leveraging the new platform for commercial purposes.