Revealed: the technology behind England Rugby’s rapid growth Revealed: the technology behind England Rugby’s rapid growth

Revealed: The technology behind England Rugby’s rapid growth

he RFU has a strategic plan to grow the game of rugby union in England that targets three key constituencies: community rugby, professional rugby and rugby fans. The needs and expectations of these varied stakeholder groups can vary considerably, says Ewan Turney, head of marketing at the RFU. “We work with IBM to segment the rugby audience,” he says. “Matchday fans are just one of 10 personas, from potential players to parents to referees, coaches, administrators and volunteers”. Understanding who you are talking to and when may sound simple but with hundreds of thousands of fans and ways to interact it is anything but simple. That is why technology is recognized as one of the fundamental enablers to growing the game.

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The RFU is harnessing the data revolution to identify and expand its ever-changing supporter base

BM helps the RFU to deliver a strategic plan that makes best use of the technology company’s architectural principles (Cloud, open source, API-based) in which all data is inputted into a Watson Studio platform hosted in the IBM Cloud. These principles are important because the platform built today is the foundation for meeting further demand in the future. Providing data to the business in an open and secure way opens opportunities for new and innovative ways to serve tailored content to all their members of the rugby audience. The centrepiece of the collaboration is a re-imagining of England Rugby’s digital channels, using the IBM Cloud Garage to bring together the latest technologies, technical specialists and end users in an environment where they can rapidly build, test and prove out prototypes. Ultimately this gets new products out to the fan and community rugby audience much more quickly. “‘Put the user first’ was our main mantra,” says Mr Turney, who adds that the end goal of this behind-the-scenes collaboration is a more personalised service. “This could be a fan wanting team news or someone coming to Twickenham who wants travel advice, a coach looking for the latest teaching materials and techniques.” “We have to concentrate on giving them quality content which they’ll find interesting and useful,” says Mrs Chan. “That comes down to understanding the audience’s changing media habits and behaviour. For example, how do you communicate better with female fans and players? How do you reach the young and up-and-coming groups of fans who want to engage with rugby in a very different way and who are not going to the game and watching live matches on television?”

itting at the heart of EnglandRugby.com is IBM’s latest innovation, Match Centre, which collates and stores electronic match card data in the cloud. This innovation shares player performance data across the RFU’s digital ecosystem, providing a consistent experience across the community and elite games. The platform handles more than seven million API calls per month (averaging 500,000 API calls on an average match day) with match-card data from more than 2,000 fixtures submitted per week. Benefiting from the flexibility of the IBM Cloud, peaks in customer demand are easily managed. On an average weekday approximately 250,000 API calls a day could be supported, against a peak of more than two million on a Saturday.

7 million

2 million

2,000

This innovation will soon be rolled out for use in the amateur game, says Mr Turney. “Our ambition is to treat the international game with the same level of service as we treat the club community or grass roots of the game.” This extension of IBM Match Centre technology reinforces the umbilical link between the stars of the elite England teams and their roots in the club community. “When we announced the England squad for Japan in 2019, we produced a video where we went back to each player’s first club and spoke with their coach, former team-mates and club members. We recognised the contribution of those community clubs in the player’s development by announcing their inclusion in the squad with their name, followed by England and their community club name rather than their present professional team. “They all started at a junior club and we wanted to cement that message of the breadth and depth of the game across England,” adds Mr Turney. It’s a simple message that is powered by some very cutting-edge technology.

ype ‘England rugby fan’ into an internet search engine and you’re greeted with a sea of red roses, St George’s flags and tens of thousands of happy, often painted faces. It is often said the secret of great marketing is to know who your customers are. And, on big Twickenham match days, the job of identifying England supporters is very easy. They are the ones over there in the white shirts, singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. And if that’s all there was to it, the job of running a major sport organisation in 2020 would be a straightforward affair.

But when it comes to engaging with the broader rugby community across England, the match-day fans are “just the tip of the iceberg,” says Emma Chan, associate partner at IBM iX, the tech giant’s global business design practice, which works in partnership with the Rugby Football Union (RFU), the sport’s governing body in England. “The iceberg is everyone else,” says Mrs Chan. “We tend to have a preconception that the fans are the ones who turn up to every game in England shirts and provide the roar of the crowd. But actually the fan base for rugby is far wider than that, both across the country and internationally, and we need to understand them all to serve them the way they want.”

Segmenting the audience

“The iceberg is everyone else,” says Mrs Chan. “We tend to have a preconception that the fans are the ones who turn up to every game in England shirts and provide the roar of the crowd. But actually the fan base for rugby is far wider than that, both across the country and internationally, and we need to understand them all to serve them the way they want.”

..."the match-day fans are just the tip of the iceberg”

Emma Chan Associate partner at IBM iX

"Matchday fans are just one of 10 personas, from potential players to parents to referees, coaches, administrators and volunteers”

Ewan Turney Head of marketing at the RFU

Delivering the plan

What business can learn from rugby

he work IBM is doing with England Rugby has a direct application to businesses, many of which are facing the same challenges of reaching new audiences via digital media, says Mrs Chan. “Sports bodies and teams are relatively small in size when compared to commercial businesses but their fan base is huge relative to their size,” she says. “They are tech-savvy customers with high expectations, who demand instant gratification in terms of finding anything out immediately across any device”. A clear trend is emerging in which organisations such as England Rugby are looking and behaving more like media and tech companies than traditional sports governing bodies. “The RFU owns the content and has a creative output too,” says Mrs Chan. “They are using sophisticated data analytics tools, enabling them to have conversations with the fans which are now a lot less about pushing out generic marketing messages. They have the ability to listen to what fans want.”

Match centre

A clear trend is emerging, which sees organisations like England Rugby looking and behaving more like media and tech companies

API calls on RFU platform every month

Peak API calls on a Saturday

Fixtures submitted per week on Match Centre

As the Official AI and Cloud platforms Partner of England Rugby IBM support the RFU year round in solving their business challenges and helping grow the game of rugby. It’s not only sporting organisations such as the RFU that benefit from IBM’s leadership and innovation. Find out more about how IBM is helping clients across numerous industries to solve their biggest problems.

A clear trend is emerging, which sees organisations like England Rugby looking and behaving more like media and tech companies

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