https://www.afr.com/business/sport/...ory-for-100m-digital-business-20180531-h10s7o
NRL claims early victory for $100m digital business
This week marks the start of the biggest time of year for rugby league with game one of State of Origin on Wednesday. But the NRL believes it is already winning with what has been one of its more controversial investments.
Origin matches are almost always among the top 10 most watched shows on Australian TV each year, but have tended to overshadow NRL home-and-away matches. The league hopes a better digital presence can help somewhat overcome the issue at least.
The league is spending $120 million in the next five years on its own digital business, having taken control of its digital assets from Telstra under the terms of its $1 billion broadcast deal signed three years ago.
It marked a significant change in strategy for an Australian sport, and meant the NRL had to convince its clubs it would be better to spend the money establishing its own digital arm rather than outsourcing it to an established media or technology company.
NRL Digital,
encompassing a central news website, and sites and apps across the competition's 16 teams, went live in December and while there is clearly a significant news and video component for the business, just as important for the NRL is using it as a data-gathering exercise.
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That means it can better understand its fans, convince more of them to attend matches and buy memberships for their clubs and also sell merchandise and other offerings to them.
"It is also important in the terms of the acquisition or retention of sponsors," says NRL Digital boss Rebekah Horne. "Just about every ad campaign these days has a significant digital component to it, so we needed to show we have a 360-degree solution and people across all platforms."
So far, almost three months into the season and heading into the three-match State of Origin series, the NRL is satisfied with how the digital business is performing.
Horne says NRL.com and associated websites have an average of 2.6 million visitors per week and the number of live pass subscriptions consumers are buying via Telstra to watch matches on the handsets and devices are up 95 per cent compared to last year.
"We are averaging about 300,000 streams per game, and if you add that to the TV numbers – which are broadly holding steady after the first 11 rounds – we think that is pretty good. As an industry we've learnt the lesson that people no longer watch just on TV, so we think this is making a difference."
Telstra still retains streaming rights and has built a new NRL app in conjunction with the league. The NRL and Telstra also share some commercial income.
The NRL has also asked website users to register this year, which Horne says has resulted in about 800,000 people signing up. "We built an entirely new identity product. So we've got all this data and about 60 per cent of those ID records of people are new to us. So there's a really big opportunity there for us to get to know the new people and really understand what they want and better service them."
Each person is asked who their favourite club is, information which can then be used to tailor ticketing, merchandise and membership packages. Horne cites the West Tigers as a good example of a club doing a better job with its digital assets, which has resulted in the team breaking its membership record this season.
"Memberships across all the clubs are up past 300,000 already this season [ahead of the same time in 2017]. Some clubs are up 30 per cent from last year, some are up 10 per cent. So we think this helps us. And there are also clubs doing well commercially from their digital assets as well."
Both South Sydney and the Melbourne Storm, two of the more popular clubs in the competition, are on track to write about $1 million in digital advertising revenue each this year, according to Horne.
The league is also using its digital assets to drive an increase in participation numbers via its Play NRL website. Horne says women have been a big source of player growth, with female participants up 23 per cent compared to last year.
The NRL now has about 2.5 million fans across all the social media accounts, and the NRL will use the accounts to amplify events during and around the three State of Origin clashes, beginning with game one in Melbourne.
More than 80,000 people are expected at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the television audience could peak at more than 4 million viewers nationwide .
The audience will be provided with information and statistics via the Telstra Tracker feature, which will also be pushed out via graphics and data via NRL social media accounts and websites. The data is gathered from tracking devices made by ASX-listed Catapult Group International and worn by all the players.
