In recent years, major football clubs with large domestic and international fan bases have had to quickly adapt to the digital engagement their supporters demand. Not only do they need to constantly deliver the latest stats and information about the club, but they need to provide original digital content that can be consumed easily and keeps supporters coming back for more; all while understanding that the fans they are engaging exist in every time zone around the world.
FC Bayern Munich, has won 26 national titles and 18 national cups (Pokal), including the 2015 -2016 season. It is safe to say they are the most successful club in German football history and one of the top clubs in the world. But to keep up with the challenges of engaging a global and digitally savvy fan base, Bayern has now launched a new suite of iOS and Android smartphone and tablet apps that contain new features that should excite their supporters.
To execute the launch of these new apps, which come at a strategic time with the Bundesliga kicking off tomorrow, Bayern’s digital team turned to Omnigon, a leading sports digital services firm to help execute the vision for the new apps.
“We are very happy with our app partner Omnigon,” said Stefan Mennerich, FC Bayern Munich’s Director Media, Digital and Communications. “We chose to work with them because they are the absolute benchmark for app- providers in the sports industry, and they have maintained that standard throughout the whole project with us. Both the Android as well as the iOS app have been well-received among our fans, and we are proud to have taken the next step of our digitization process together.”
The features of the new apps include a Match Center with full match statistics, scores, fixtures and tables (from the Bundesliga, Champions League and the DFB Pokal), news and photo galleries. Furthermore, there is a Squad page with detailed statistics and full profiles of all Bayern players.
There are also some interesting new elements that Omnigon and Bayern will be adding to the apps very soon. These includes personalization capabilities that will allow fans to follow their favorite players, polls, sweepstakes, and the ability to deliver content based on “fan context” – whether they are on the go, watching on TV, or attending the live match.
Additionally, Bayern supporters around the world will also be able to utilize Bayern’s TV hub to access club highlights and post-match interviews. And perhaps the most inclusive feature of the new app is the ‘Webradio,’ which will allow the millions of global Bayern fans to listen to all of the club’s matches.
The current features and soon-to-launch features all contain a global mindset demonstrating how Omnigon and Bayern approached the new apps. “We’ve worked very closely with the Bayern digital team and formed a real partnership. Bayern has one of the largest fan bases in the world so we understood how important it was to create an experience that would resonate all over the globe. We’re excited the passion our team brought to this product will be in the hands of FC Bayern fans worldwide,” said David Nugent, Chief Commercial Officer, Omnigon.
For Omnigon, this collaboration with Bayern is now added to a long list of major sports brands they have worked with from a digital, artistic and technological standpoint. Some of the biggest digital projects they have helped launch in the past include working with the PGA TOUR, AS Roma, the DFB Pokal, Ironman, NASCAR, World Rugby, the United States Golf Association (USGA), FOX Sports, and the Miami Heat.
This app launch between Bayern and Omnigon stood out to us as a unique digital collaboration between a global club and agency and we wanted more details on the behind-the-scenes execution of this new digital product launch. Fortunately, Nugent was kind enough to indulge us:
SportTechie: Please describe the process of working closely with the Bayern digital team to launch this app. What was the day-to-day project management process? Who on the Bayern side worked with who on the Omnigon side?
David Nugent: All our engagements go through strategic planning and requirements gathering sessions when the project kicks off. We have an agile, but pretty rigorous business requirements protocol that ensures that our clients receive solutions that achieve their goals. Our core project team – including a digital products specialist,, a project owner, and design and tech leads – worked in tandem with various stakeholders at Bayern Munich, most notably their head of digital.
ST: Were there any challenges presented by creating a suite of apps for Bayern’s international brand and supporters who speak numerous languages?
DN: In Europe we’ve focused on project team members who speak multiple languages. In this case the London-based Project Manager is a native German speaker, having been born and raised there. He also happens to be a diehard Bayern fan, which greatly helped us greatly as we were going through the functionality and feature requirements as well as the overall design process.
ST: What kind of resources does Omnigon commit to a project like this?
DN: Over 25 employees were involved in this project across multiple disciplines – client engagement, project management, business analysis, UX / UI design, solutions architecture, iOS and Android development, implementations, quality assurance.
ST: Ultimately this new suite of apps was built with the fans in mind. What new features are you most excited to help offer Bayern fans that they have not had before?
DN: One of the primary objectives was to design an experience that would resonate with Bayern’s fans around the world. We are probably most excited about the live match center functionality, providing fans with live match commentary, match statistics and video highlights, among other features they’ve not seen before. As part of phase two, the personalization and contextual features will be quite innovative and groundbreaking.