With vast experience in this sector and having been involved in the planning and delivery of both London 2012 and Rugby World Cup 2015 events, we knew the complexities that would be faced in Cardiff and developed a solution which would make the event fan experience more pleasurable and help to run the event more efficiently.
Our Event Guide application was conceived to address the fact that there is a limited transport and accommodation capacity in Cardiff, and an unfamiliar crowd attending the event. We knew that an event-focused digital product would present a more dynamic and personalised way to engage with fans, giving the event team an opportunity to raise awareness and influence behaviours before and during the event.
The application developed included:
- Match specific information
- Translation in five languages
- Cardiff tourism content
- Champions Festival content
- UEFA commercial partner activation
- Tailored journey planner module
- Ticket/travel purchasing links (including Uber)
- Accommodation links
How we helped
Behind the scenes, our platform brought together market-leading technology vendors, including a location intelligence solution from Crowd Connected. We knew that their solution would raise the bar for situational awareness and geo-targeted messaging capability by providing:
- Real-time visualisation of fan movement in a qualitative and quantitative form via heatmaps and dashboards delivered via an intuitive web console.
- Real-time app user audience segmentation based on geo-behaviour. Segments used to for targeted push notification messaging.
Our primary target was the travelling fans from the two finalist clubs, and with over 10,000 downloads we captured a representative sample of these fans and were able to engage with them directly in the days leading up to the event. The app saw sustained usage right up to and during the event, with approx. 5,000 active users on match day itself. Over the life of the app we saw:
- 500,000 screen views
- Average of 7 sessions per user
- 50 geo-targeted messages, with 30,000 messages sent
The situational awareness evidenced aggregated travel insights and supported the team in the Transport Coordination Centre by quantifying travel times on key corridors, arrival and departure profiles at key ports of entry and unexpected travel behaviour.
Post-event the data captured via the app is being used to debrief the Organising Committee and consider how future events could be better supported by a holistic, data-driven digital experience.