How the NWSL's Digital Strategy Should Evolve

Rumor has it that the NWSL will be relaunching its website prior to the start of the 2024 season.  My fingers are crossed that this is not only true but that the league also evolves its mobile app experience and creates much richer digital marketing capabilities to power them.

Much of NWSL’s digital strategy to date has encompassed growing and engaging with its social media base, which makes sense for a nascent league.  You have to gain exposure and social media is a great way to get in front of potential fans.

Now as the NWSL enters a new phase of growth, evidenced by its just signed $60m per year media deal and a 26% increase in average attendance from 2022 to 2023, the league needs to evolve its digital owned channels - NWSLsoccer.com and the NWSL app - to not only keep pace but to drive meaningful business impact.

The Starting Point: A Neglected Mobile App

While the NWSL has a serviceable (not perfect but serviceable) website, that’s not the case with their mobile app.  There is no easy way to say this: the NWSL is neglecting its mobile app.  That is a huge mistake, especially as the league enters a new wave of growth.

Why have I come to the conclusion that the NWSL app is out of sight and out of mind for the league?  Let’s look at the evidence.

Exhibit A

The iOS and Android NWSL App Store pages haven’t been updated to include listing Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC - both of whom began play in 2022 - as member clubs not to mention Bay FC and Utah Royals FC who begin play in 2024.

Exhibit B

The league hasn’t published an update to the NWSL app in 2.5 years - since June 2021 on Android and August 2021 on iOS.  For comparison, most active apps are updated every two weeks to release new features, to fix bugs and to make general improvements.

Being this out of date also means the NWSL app isn't utilizing the latest technology available. Having not updated its app in 2.5 years, at best the NWSL app is optimized for Android 11 and iOS 14.  The current versions of these mobile device operating systems are Android 14 and iOS 17.

What's among the delta that the NWSL app could be taking advantage of in these more advanced operating systems but isn't? A new Stickers experience and a redesigned Apple Maps experience on iOS, an updated design language on Android and enhancements for app privacy, security and accessibility on both platforms.

Exhibit C

The NWSL App is a “mobile app” in name only.  It’s really a website that has been disguised as a mobile app.  This means fans aren’t getting a standard, nevermind premium mobile app experience.  Examples of this poor experience from the iOS version of the app:

1. Navigating the app is difficult: Clicking on anything (except the Video tab) pulls up a mobile web browser pane from the bottom of the screen which covers the app’s bottom navigation - a standard for iOS apps - leaving you without a key app navigational tool, which makes finding your way around the app difficult.  Another example of the app’s poor navigation due to it really being a poorly wrapped web app is that there are no back arrows, another standard user interaction on iOS apps.
2. Some pages bounce: Go to “Games” on the main nav and you can pull the content left and right creating ugly whitespace as it hasn’t been locked to the mobile device screen.  True mobile apps don’t bounce.
3. Some content isn’t optimized properly: Go to the “Tickets” page and witness how the “Individual Tickets” and “Season Tickets” buttons have no buffer as they haven’t been optimized properly for various mobile device screens.

Exhibit D

Apple requires apps to indicate in their Apple App Store page what type of data is collected from your usage of an app. The NWSL indicates on their Apple App Store page that no user data is collected from usage of its app.

This isn’t true.

iOS’s App Network Activity report (Found by going to Settings —> Privacy & Security —> App Privacy Report —> App Network Activity:  Show All —> NWSL) reports that the NWSL App is contacting domains such as:

• app-measurement.com, which is owned by Google
• analytics.google.com
• g.doubleclick.net, which is Google’s Marketing Platform
• evergage.com, which leads to Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud Personalization solution

The only reason for the NWSL App to be contacting these domains is to collect data on how fans are using the app.

Do I think the NWSL is attempting to mislead fans by not accurately acknowledging this on the NWSL App Store page?  No.  To me, it’s just another example of how neglected the NWSL App is and how the league has lacked the ability to adequately manage its mobile app property.

(To some degree, the league appears to acknowledge the the NWSL app is neglected.  As part of the 2024 schedule announcement, the NWSL announced a new direct-to-consumer streaming service, NWSL+, which will have its own mobile experience, the NWSL+ app.  What remains unknown at this point is whether the league will sunset its current NWSL app to focus on the upcoming NWSL+ app or whether the league will attempt to have both a NWSL and a NWSL+ app in the marketplace, which would create a massive mess from both branding and fan experience perspectives.)

Why having strong digital owned channels should matter to the NWSL

So the NWSL has a substandard mobile app.  To be clear, that’s been okay for the initial phase of growth the league has been in.  Sometimes - and I’d argue this has been one - it’s better to have a presence even if it’s substandard, than to have none at all.  When you’re operating on a shoestring budget, you do what you can to meet fans’ needs in certain areas like digital while investing in higher priorities like the on-field product.

But now with more fans than ever and with a new media deal starting this season that will pay the NWSL $60m a year - a 40x increase over the NWSL’s media rights in 2023 - it is time to raise the bar both in meeting fans’ digital expectations and in creating a digital engine that will contribute to the league’s continuing growth.

Let’s start with the question of:  What is the purpose of a league app / website?  To provide all of the details on the league’s schedule, standings, stats, news, clubs and players while selling tickets and merchandise and offering up video highlights?  I’d argue that’s out-dated thinking.

For any company, their app and website need to power their business by acquiring new users, retaining current users and reactivating lapsed users … with the ultimate goal being to keep a user for as long as possible while deriving as much value out of that user as possible by incentivizing them to perform key actions.

Name the company - Amazon (key action: buying), Netflix (watching), Spotify (listening), Delta (booking tickets), Starbucks (ordering coffee), etc. - and they are focused on this.

Putting this into context for the NWSL, the league’s app and website need to power their business by acquiring new fans, retaining current fans and reactivating lapsed fans … with the ultimate goal being to keep a fan for as long as possible while deriving as much value out of that fan as possible through key actions like buying tickets, watching matches and purchasing merchandise.

Let’s visualize this acquisition, retention, reactivation model with a leaky bucket metaphor, drill into these three activities a bit further and call out digital marketing capabilities the league doesn’t have today and needs to create to support these activities:

Acquisition Strategies & Digital Marketing Capabilities

Key Questions: 

• How does the NWSL reach as many potential new fans as possible?  
• Once the league has potential fans’ attention, how does the NWSL activate them as a new fans?

Acquisition strategies to acquire new fans include media deals, TV & digital content, social media, influencer marketing, sponsorship deals, community engagement, direct marketing, etc.

Then there are varying levels of new fan activation:

• Following the NWSL or a club on social media
• Creating a digital account with the league (which doesn’t exist today but should)
• Watching a NWSL game
• Purchasing tickets to a NWSL match
• Buying NWSL or club merchandise
• Purchasing season tickets

The NWSL is doing a great job on the fan acquisition and activation front.  The league is getting in front of fans through traditional media, digital media, social media, sponsorship activations, etc. and is converting them into social media followers, game viewers, merchandise purchasers and ticket / season ticket purchasers.

With this fan acquisition engine largely in place, the NWSL needs to double down in terms of investment in it as there is still tremendous growth to be had.  

One digital capability the league needs to add to this acquisition engine: NWSL accounts.  

Why?  Because the league (and its clubs) need to know their fans to power their retention and reactivation strategies.  Or put another way - how do you keep your fans around as long as possible and derive as much value from them as possible when you know nothing about them?

Yes, each NWSL club has a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that at a minimum is helping them manage and drive ticket sales.  But both the league and its clubs need to understand the fan holistically across all touchpoints: tickets, merchandise, TV / digital viewing of matches, social media, etc. to both create an awesome fan experience and to understand, analyze and drive the health of their business.

How does having NWSL accounts help with this?  When a fan creates a NWSL account, the league now has a unique identifier for that fan and can start tying that fan’s activity to their unique account - digital purchases of tickets and merchandise, digital viewing of matches, engagement with digital content, etc.  (If this is creeping you out, please bear in mind that every company you have a digital account with is already doing this today.)

Finally, the NWSL account will be most valuable to fans and the league alike if it is utilized across all league and club websites and apps as well as to access NWSL+ content.

Let’s look at how that value is achieved.

Retention Strategies & Digital Marketing Capabilities

Key Questions: 

• How often do fans come back?  
• How often do they buy tickets / watch games / purchase merchandise?  

As fans engage more and more, each interaction should be tied to their NWSL account which in turn can improve the way the league markets to them and enriches the fan experience.  Once the league knows something as simple as who my favorite team is - the Portland Thorns, the league can:

• Prominently show me Thorns content when I visit their app / website
• Target me with personalized journeys like sending me a push notification to tune into Amazon Prime as the Thorns game is kicking off
• Personalize merchandise recommendations with Thorns gear
• Send me Thorns ticket offers
• Weight my search results with Thorns content when I search on the league's app / website

While the NWSL has built up a sizable social media following, the league can’t do what I’ve just described on social media.  To a degree, each NWSL club can perform the basic examples listed above with their individual fan bases on social media but more advanced targeted marketing - target new fans who have yet to purchase tickets, target fans who haven’t watched a match digitally in the past month, etc. - aren’t possible on social media.  This type of digital marketing only be done via your digital owned channels.

Further, it’s not a good business decision to put all of your digital marketing equity in third-party social media channels that you don’t own because it leaves you with limited options when those social media channels opt to change their business model, when social media usage trends change, or when the owner of a social media channel uses the channel to make anti-semitic or racist comments that do not align with your brand’s values.

It’s time for the NWSL to start investing in digital marketing capabilities that allow the league to know and serve its fans; that allow the NWSL to directly own its relationship with its fans - such as NWSL accounts, progressive onboarding (learning more about the fan as the fan engages more and more with the league's app / website), personalized content and journeys, richer audience targeting and push notifications.

This latter digital capability - push notifications - is vital and desperately needed in the NWSL app.  (Since downloading the NWSL app and turning push notifications on in mid-November, I’ve received zero push notifications from the league.)

Push notifications combined with how mobile apps keep users logged in is why mobile apps are more valuable to brands than their websites.  Push notifications should serve as a call to action to fans to open the NWSL app and as they are logged in when they arrive, the content and fan journeys in the NWSL app should be personalized, which in turn should make it seamless for fans to buy tickets, watch matches and purchase merchandise.

Reactivation Strategies & Digital Marketing Capabilities

Key Questions: 

• When is a fan on the verge of lapsing?  
• How do you encourage them to reactivate?

At some point, every fan will drift away whether due to fading interest or increased options for other avenues to spend their time and money.  It’s the league’s job to notice when a fan is starting to fade away and attempt to bring them back.

In order to notice, the league needs data science capabilities.  As the NWSL gathers data on its fans initially through acquisition strategies and then through retention strategies, the league needs the ability to bucket fans into four high-level groups:

1. New fans who the NWSL wants to activate by encouraging them to buy tickets / watch games / purchase merchandise for the first time.
2. Active fans who the leagues wants to incentivize to continue to regularly buy tickets / watch games / purchase merchandise.
3. Super fans who typically without a lot of marketing will continue to be highly engaged in buying tickets / watching games / purchasing merchandise and who the league wants to empower to evangelize the NWSL to other fans.
4. Fans on the verge of lapsing and who the league wants to keep in the fold by continuing to buy tickets / watch games / purchase merchandise.

Based upon which group a fan falls into, the league should be targeting their marketing accordingly utilizing the same audience creation, push notification and journey creation capabilities utilized when attempting to retain fans.  The key to reactivation is having enough data to get signals when a fan is about to fall off and having the data analysis capabilities required to notice these signals and take action on them before it’s too late.

Do you get those “We Miss You” / “Come Back” emails from brands?  That’s reactivation marketing.  “Happy Birthday” promotional emails, SMS’s and push notifications are another great reactivation backstop.  The NWSL similarly needs to define and execute a reactivation strategy.

How should the NWSL take the next step on their digital journey?

So you’re the NWSL.  You get it - your mobile app could use a major upgrade, your digital marketing capabilities are substandard and you need to evolve your digital owned channels into an engine that drives your business.  How do you start?

The first action I’d recommend is cutting ties with the league's current digital vendor, Sidearm Sports.  While Sidearm Sports was a great partner in helping the NWSL get this far, I don’t believe they are the right partner for the league’s next stage of growth.

Some background on Sidearm Sports: Today the NWSL App and NWSLsoccer.com are powered by Sidearm Sports, which in turn is owned by Learfield.  (The NWSL’s Executive VP of Partner Strategy, Mitch Poll, previously worked at Learfield.)

Sidearm Sports creates official websites and apps for over 1,500 partners with their clients primarily being NCAA athletic departments across all three divisions.  Learfield, who following a 2018 merger with IMG College had Multimedia Media Rights (MMR) deals with 86% of NCAA Power Fiver conference schools, likewise focuses nearly entirely on collegiate sports.  

How zeroed in on college sports is Sidearm Sports?  They list the NWSL on their website as one of their partner conferences alongside the likes of the National Collegiate Acrobatics & Tumbling Association and the National College Equestrian Association.

Further Learfield, and by extension Sidearm Sports, were in a tedious position during much of the past few years.  By mid-2022, Learfield had a reported 30x debt ratio (for every $1 of assets, there are $30 of debt) and by 2023, was over $1B in debt.  With a choice to either go bankrupt - and thus go dark on all of its partners including the NWSL - or to restructure its debt, Learfield announced in September 2023 a $600m cut in debt through an ownership shuffle which also resulted in $150m in new investment.

To be fair, the NWSL has been operating on a shoestring budget and Sidearm Sports has provided them with a serviceable website and a mobile app presence.  But while Learfield, and by extension Sidearm Sports, are now more financially stable, with the NWSL’s growing fanbase, budget and standing in the sports landscape, it’s time to move on.  It’s time to start investing in digital properties and digital marketing capabilities that are worthy of a professional league.

So after cutting ties with Sidearm Sports, what direction should the NWSL head?

First, if the league hasn’t already done so, start hiring a team to specifically create and execute a strategy for its digital properties.  This team should consist of leaders with strong engineering, design and product management backgrounds and should be uniquely focused on the NWSL’s mobile app, website and digital marketing capabilities - not on social media or other marketing channels. Also do not outsource this to an agency as agencies typically launch and leave. The NWSL's digital properties and digital marketing capabilities need to be obsessed and enhanced continually in order to maximize the league's growth.

Second, define the NWSL’s digital strategy for the next three years and set a vision for where the league wants to be from a digital perspective on the eve of the next media contract.  Include in this strategy how the league wants to see their digital properties and digital marketing capabilities contribute to revenue generation through ticket sales and merchandise sales as well as NWSL+ video consumption.  Based on this three-year digital strategy, the league’s long-term vision, and current and future budget forecasts, determine the digital business model approach to pursue for the next three years with the potential to evolve the digital business model when the next media deal is signed at the end of 2027. 

Digital business models to consider now or in the future include:

• Hiring a new digital partner to perform the day-to-day execution of the mobile app, website and digital marketing capabilities under the guidance of the engineering, design and product management leaders the NWSL in theory already hired.  Look to MLS’s deal with Deltatre as inspiration.
• Establish a technology sponsorship to provide digital marketing capabilities.  Ideas:
  • Consider expanding the already existing Adobe sponsorship which is geared towards branding and content creation capabilities to include Adobe Experience Cloud which provides digital marketing capabilities that power personalization at scale.  For inspiration, look at MLB’s Adobe deal.
  • Strike a deal with a technology leader - i.e. Microsoft, Google, Amazon - to power the league’s digital properties and digital marketing capabilities.  For inspiration, look at the NBA’s partnership with Microsoft.
• Include the management of the NWSL’s digital properties in the next media deal for the 2028 season and beyond.  Look to the NBA’s longtime partnership with Turner on NBA TV, NBA.com, NBA Mobile, NBA League Pass and WNBA.com for inspiration.
• Establish a media company to oversee the NWSL’s digital properties and digital marketing capabilities which could eventually lead to hiring hundreds of employees.  See NFL Media and MLB Advanced Media for inspiration.

Third, revisit the league and clubs’ approach to their digital properties from a consolidated vs individualized perspective.  Today each club as well as the league itself is responsible for creating and managing its own digital properties and digital marketing capabilities.  This model allows for each club to invest in digital as it sees fit and also allows each club to create its own club-focused digital sponsorship packages.  Still, I’d recommend moving away from this model to a consolidated digital platform that encompasses all league and club digital properties and most, if not all digital marketing capabilities.  Every other major sports league in the U.S. takes this approach: the NBA, the WNBA, the NFL, the NHL, MLB and MLS.  

There are operational efficiencies and league-wide business advantages to be gained from every club being on the same digital platform.  Plus, I’d argue that digital isn’t an arena where NWSL clubs should be competing in terms of making differentiated, individual investments.  For the long-term health of the league, all clubs should have a level playing field when it comes to digital app and website experiences and digital marketing capabilities.  Where NWSL clubs should be focused on making differentiated, individual investments is in their unique on-field product and fan experiences - their rosters, their stadiums, their amenities for fans who attend their matches, their training facilities, their coaching and training staff, their player performance capabilities, etc.

So there you have it - one fan’s two cents on the current state of the NWSL’s digital properties and digital marketing capabilities, how to evolve the league’s digital strategy for its next phase of growth and the tangible next steps the NWSL should take to ensure their digital efforts make a significant contribution to the league’s future.