Audience growth for Fox Sports
Building a digital engagement and acquisition strategy for Fox Sports' sports betting show, Lock It In
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Why sports betting?
Fox Sports partnered with Northwestern's Integrated Marketing Communications program with a challenge to build a cohesive marketing strategy for their show, Lock It In. Fox Sports wanted to build and engage an audience of casual betters given the spreading legalization of sports betting across the United States.
Goals & Objectives
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Increase Lock It In viewership by 15% YOY
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Grow combined social media following by 10K to increase brand engagement
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Connect the Lock It In brand to local communities through on-location broadcast and experiential marketing
Methodology
Our team took a multi-pronged approach to developing our Lock It In strategy.
I led the UX research and design work.
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Conduct a competitive analysis of how other sports betting shows and platforms presented information to promote betting
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Deep-dive into sports betting culture and determine who are market influencers and trusted sources of knowledge
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Identify data betters seek out when forming a bet
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Leverage existing content, (sports personalities, brands) assets and market position
Re-designed the Fox Sports app UI with a prototype to improve Lock It In content discoverability.
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Aligned with Fox Sports' Digital Products team to implement changes highlighted in wireframe.
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Won the challenge out of the 8 teams in our class competing and shaped future challenge expectations.
Limited Betting Information Available
To start to understand where Fox Sports' products were not meeting user needs, we conducted a competitive analysis to understand how betting information was being presented elsewhere.
I was struck by Fox Sports' lack of in-app betting information and metrics, that casual betters rely on to make informed decisions.
Information missing included:
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Odds of the game
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Spread of the game
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Over/Under of the game
Fox Sports/Lock It In competitors
Barriers to discovering Lock It In content
While competitors provided insight about optimizing the Fox Sports app for casual betters, an internal audit highlighted opportunities to increase engagement through content discovery.
Our evaluation of the Fox Sports app demonstrated that:
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Current emphasis focuses on driving users toward live content from other Fox Sports brands
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Lock It In content does not always feature on the home page - it is often buried in 'Top Videos'
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There is no repository or category of Lock It In content should users seek it out
Increasing in-app engagement across segments
Evaluating the internal and external landscape provided our team with concrete data to propose a cohesive digital strategy for Lock It In.
We prioritized three key strategies to optimize the current Fox Sports app to drive awareness to Lock It In while introducing old and new users to sports betting.
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Incorporate gambling [Spread, line] under streaming content and other live games.
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Allow fans to track their suggested wins/bets in real time alongside game statistics.
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Introduce in-app live Lock It In contests to stimulate more predictable, sustainable user engagement.
Current home screen of Fox Sports app for Android.
Highlighting opportunities through a UI prototype
Building wireframes and a prototype allowed our team to best showcase how strategic objectives may be met and where opportunities lie in intentional redesigns.
Hi-fidelity wireframe of screens and interactions in the redesigned Fox Sports app using InVision.
Current
Favorite Team Interface
Re-designed
Favorite Team Interface
Keeping track of how Favorite Teams are doing is a major draw to the Fox Sports app.
However, the summary section on the current Favorite Team interface is overloaded with information and requires users to scroll significantly to dig into statistics. It makes content less accessible to users.
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The re-designed interface breaks up the summary across multiple screens, providing breathing room and enabling users to deep dive if interested. This also leaves space to highlight Lock It In video content.
Final UI prototype
Our final prototype emphasizes that high-resource redesigns of the Fox Sports app are not needed to promote user engagement.
By solving key unmet user needs around content discovery and betting information in the in-app experience, the Lock It In brand has an opportunity to capitalize on increased interest in betting.
