9
Matches at the same time per matchday
25
Editors
600
Requests per second at peak times
The easyCredit Basketball Bundesliga is the umbrella organisation for the 18 teams in Germany’s top basketball league and organises the German Championship and the BBL Cup. Since 2016, the official sponsor name has been easyCredit Basketball Bundesliga.
1996
Cologne
Sport
Website, app, live data infrastructure
The technology partnership between the easyCredit Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) and SPRYLAB began before the 2021/22 season. As part of a comprehensive modernisation and marketing strategy under the claim “Welcome to Wow”, a comprehensive relaunch of the website and the associated apps as well as a new data architecture were to be implemented.
The easyCredit Basketball Bundesliga, which has been operating under this official name since 2016 as the umbrella organisation for all 18 teams in Germany’s top basketball league, was therefore faced with the challenge of implementing a contemporary digital brand identity. In particular, the brand attributes spectacular, eventful and close to the action were to be reflected throughout the entire website.
This case study covers the first joint modernisation project, which was divided into three components:
Basketball is an extremely data-driven sport with fans constantly demanding comprehensive statistics on games, players and teams. This applies to real-time statistics, live from the courts, as well as season and all-time statistics and league table comparisons between teams.
The aim was to develop easycredit-bbl.de into the largest infotainment platform with all the relevant information, videos and statistics for basketball in Germany. And to make the dynamics of the game and the character of the event digitally tangible. After all, the easyCredit Basketball Bundesliga provides sports entertainment in the arena and this should also be reflected in the digital world.
The relaunch of the website and low-cost hybrid Android and iOS app was the first step in a comprehensive digitisation process. As well as a new design, a new data backend and live architecture were also introduced. The high-performance, scalable server structure is optimised for the temporary high traffic during live matches, ensuring the required reliability of data and services.
The implementation of a modern and secure data pipeline was the next decisive step. The data pipeline makes it possible to collect live data from the halls, calculate statistics and display them on the website and app with minimal delay. This means that fans and partners always receive the latest information. SPRYLAB has developed a highly scalable LIVE data infrastructure that allows data points collected by the scouts to be transferred from the arena to the Sportainment platform in just a few seconds. Each match has its own page with a live ticker and the most important statistics.
When developing the data structure, it was very important that the information could be seamlessly integrated into the editorial content. This was achieved with data widgets that editors can place in articles or on content pages with just a few clicks. In addition, a customisable headless CMS was developed for the large editorial team. As a result, easyCredit BBL publishes new content on a daily basis and has a news archive with over 15,000 articles from the 2010/2011 season. The new online presence now receives several million hits per year.
The relaunch has turned the easyCredit BBL into a hub for basketball fans in Germany, with a variety of entertainment options, high-quality editorial content and comprehensive statistics. In addition, the result has fully met the needs of the fans and various partners and has further increased the success of the league. Both the website and the apps have been equally well received by the market, with the interaction rate up 22% and the number of users up 10% and 12% respectively on the website and the app compared to the previous season.
The joint transformation process is continuing. The current focus is on data as an economic factor. The aim of this project phase is to further develop easyCredit BBL even more strongly into a data-driven organisation that controls the use and sharing of its own data. The focus is on rights management, so that the league can control which partners and customers have access to which data. A standardised API interface will enable clubs, media partners and betting providers to integrate more quickly and efficiently with the official data.
About the easyCredit Basketball Bundesliga
The easyCredit Basketball Bundesliga is the umbrella organisation for the 18 teams in Germany’s top basketball league and organises the German Championship and the BBL Cup. The operational business is managed by Basketball Bundesliga GmbH. It is responsible for organising the competitions and scheduling the games. BBL GmbH also organises licensing and player transfers. easyCredit BBL also creates the strategic framework for the sporting and economic development of the clubs and is responsible for the central marketing of the naming rights and media rights. Since 2016, the official sponsor name has been easyCredit Basketball Bundesliga.
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