Case Study: Communications, Media & Technology England’s Football Association increases fan engagement to make football for all At a glance Next-gen digital engagement anticipates The English Football Association’s and meets the needs of millions of growing digital engagement programme players, fans and volunteers, helping The is reaching evermore participants in the FA make football in England truly for all. sport. By delivering relevant, personalised experiences to fans, no matter how they participate in football, The FA delivers The English Football Association (The FA), formed in 1863, the moments and connections that all is the oldest football association in the world, responsible for stakeholders really want. Highlights of the overseeing all aspects of the game in England, from grassroots matches played countrywide by amateurs, to globally streamed partnership include: broadcast championships like The FA Cup. ❙ Over 30,000 clubs signed up to the As the administrative headquarters (HQ) and governing Match Day App and the grassroots body, The FA orchestrates the development of football and its game management platform players, and seeks to create deeper engagements with every ❙ Payment processing capability for participant so that English football can thrive at home and match fees and subs for 90,000+ abroad. teams Because opportunities and experiences in the football industry ❙ Wider participation across the Football are defined by deep insights into the people and processes Community with 150,000+ downloads that count, The FA’s engagement vision focuses on knowing and 68,000 weekly users, doubling the and connecting with its audiences directly and personally. expected target via the new FA Match Day app ❙ The ability to execute omnichannel recruitment and marketing campaigns June 2021 This vision, brought to life through the new Digital Engagement (DE) programme, highlights The ❙ Increased revenues through FA’s ambition to engage with all participants with partnership opportunities offered greater precision and speed. Moreover, to ensure by the engagement products and this programme had a continuous and purposeful solutions, powered by data insights change on the broader organisation, The FA ❙ selected Cognizant to deliver on the transformation Greater visibility of grassroots match vision. results and development data via the new FA Full Time solution, with over Craig Donald, chief information officer at The FA, 48M page views, 2.2M users signed up says, “Cognizant really took time to understand and over 40,000 county teams actively the business we’re in and understand what we participating across England need to achieve. For a digital transformation of this scale, it was crucial that we found a partner ❙ A consolidated intelligence data that had been there before. They have become a platform delivering a 360-degree fan strategic ally along our journey, providing sports view of over 5M fan records industry specialists to shape our ambition as well as designing, building and managing the technology programmes and skills underpinning our entire model. Cognizant’s engagement platform enabled organisation.” it to move beyond organisation and rule making into growing and deepening relationships with all The challenge participants, and to derive strategic business value Shifts in consumer and broadcaster behaviour have from interactive audience engagement. changed football at all levels forever, driving The Anticipating new ways to engage FA’s desire to embed digital innovation across its core operational infrastructure with tools, processes Our business engineering programme brought and people that sustain The FA. By deploying data- data modernisation, process automation and digital driven insights and capabilities into digital products consumer products, as well as a commitment to and solutions, it would both expand football’s reach delivering a continuous and accurate, data-driven and streamline the backbone operations that view of football participation in England. The results connect football across England. Accomplishing help The FA to: these goals required a reimagining of The FA’s ❙ Increase and measure the number of technology ecosystem, which included a disparate participants in the sport, especially in range of products and platforms, some over 10 underrepresented sections of society years old. ❙ Engage directly with all football’s participants: Donald adds, “It was time to move away from large armchair fans to players, and sideline spectators monolithic systems, to much more agile, loosely to volunteers and staff coupled microservices-based platforms, which ❙ Provide a single view of all participants and their will allow The FA to pivot quickly when stakeholder activity in football requirements change.” The spirit of the new digital push was underpinned by a vision to unite the ❙ Enhance the football experience for participants game, inspire a nation.” with advanced personalised digital consumer products that simplify and delight The approach ❙ Increase revenues via opportunities that the platform offers to partners In order to stay connected and remain relevant to new generations of players, coaches and fans, our client embraced the next generation operating 2 / England’s Football Association increases fan engagement to make football for all ❙ Implement omnichannel campaigning that ❙ My England Football rewards programme targets all constituents connects commercial partners to fans and Cognizant’s multidisciplinary business engineering delights them with offers and opportunities. It team, embedded at The FA’s Wembley Stadium HQ is The FA’s new direct-to-fan brand and a new physically and virtually, combines a range of skillsets home of English football online. from across the globe. The team includes business ❙ FA Women & Girls is a digital product designed consultants, technology and industry specialists, specifically to increase the participation of and researchers and anthropologists that are able women and girls in football by sharing engaging to adopt a ‘human centered’ approach to digital. content and signposting opportunities to play football for girls from all backgrounds and Leading with digital customer abilities. engagement Georgina Lewis, head of marketing at The FA, Cognizant consultants created detailed data says, “It’s been a really significant shift becoming segmentation analyses that cut across user direct to consumer, enabling us to understand who personas and preferences, from players the audience is, what their drivers are, what their and coaches, to fans and enablers such as motivations are, and what content lands really well administrators and parents. Multiple lenses were with them.” used to categorise participation in the sport and engagement with The FA. These included Pursuing the beautiful game watching a game, digital engagement via various An adage used by players and fans alike, football platforms and user behaviors. The insights from this is “the beautiful game” because it is quite simply, exploration helped deliver targeted content to The beautiful to watch. The following solutions help The FA’s audiences and football’s participants. We used FA enable others to follow, play and engage with a consultative approach that joined agility with data- football, as it manages and delivers the game to all: driven audience insights. ❙ FA Match Day helps grassroots teams A human-centric methodology, coupled with a orchestrate a football game from a smart device hybrid scaled agile delivery model, informed the on match day, allowing players, their parents, collaboration. Moving rapidly from strategy to referees and managers to all connect centrally, business case, we quickly expanded the vision into pick a team, make a formation, share the game market offerings. From this phase, the Cognizant venue and timing, take payments, and ensure team delivered a range of solutions. players are registered with FA and under no disciplinary sanctions. Today, a jointly managed Innovation Hub ❙ FA Full Time is the online league tracker tool continuously looks into ways The FA can use next- that supports development, competition and generation technologies and exciting partnerships engagement across teams, clubs and regions. to form more personalised relationships with fans Managers, scouts and officials can share and and participants. monitor results, game statistics, league positions Solutions to inspire and reach fans and match reports. everywhere ❙ FA Events Management Tool designs, configures With these offerings, The FA can engage audiences and manages football competitions, cups and in novel ways that anticipate their wants and build leagues across The FA, including grassroots lasting connections: games from walking football to Wild Cats girls’ football or The FA people’s cup. ❙ Englandfootball.com incorporates Find Football, an AI-powered tool to find play opportunities for all, including club, casual, women, youth, men, children and people with disabilities. 3 / England’s Football Association increases fan engagement to make football for all ❙ England Supporters Club is for fans of the ❙ England Football.com launched in May to stadium experience, providing a knowledge- announce England’s Euro Squad line up resulted sharing hub, helping facilitate travel, ballots and in 278,000 unique users and over 450,000 page ticketing news for England matches all over the views. world. ❙ FA Match Day has generated over 150,000 ❙ FA Boot Room inspires coaching potential as downloads and boasts 68,000 weekly