The 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup represents the culmination of a strategic journey to transform the ICC from a traditional governing body, known predominantly for its role within governance and regulation of the sport globally, to a content focussed destination that engages, informs and inspires cricket fans all over the world. Prior to Pulselive's partnership a number of short-mid term digital commercial partnerships between the ICC and various third parties (e.g. Yahoo! and ESPNcricinfo), had diluted the ICC's digital strategy with many stakeholders driving different agendas. Pulselive revisited the ICC's overall strategic objectives to explore how the ICC's digital properties could help achieve these core goals. Working in close collaboration with all stakeholders at the ICC, new ICC digital objectives were devised with the overarching theme of 'creating value for ICC and stakeholders' and to establish ICC as the home of the best international cricket content for all fans globally - wherever they were, whenever they wanted, across any device. Central to this was a strategic move to deeply integrate and embed social media throughout all 'fan touch points', whether digital, mobile, broadcast, big screen or in-stadia, to allow fans to discover, share and interact with ICC content easily and on their terms. The aim of the ICC's Cricket World Cup activation was to deliver a connected fan experience that met and surpassed modern sports fan expectations, ensuring they would remain informed and inspired throughout and after the tournament across ICC owned platforms.
In the years prior to the CWC tournament, Pulselive created a consistent user interface that flows through all of the ICC's digital properties. Achieved by developing a cross-platform flexible UI toolkit and template structure that accommodates multiple pages and content requirements. Moving all sites under one URL to improve SEO also helped to establish the ICC as a consumer facing platform, driving referral traffic and reaffirming it as the destination for the best cricket content globally.
ICC helped inspire and encourage fan interaction by strategically focussing on video, live content, data and statistics in the build up to and during the tournament. Social tied all of this together.
Cricket World Cup Greatest Moments - A 100 day tournament countdown that featured a daily video of an iconic historical moment that allows fans to vote for their favourite, via twitter and on the site, and determine the top 10 moments of ICC CWC history.
Cricket World Cup Greatest XI - Fan vote for their greatest ever CWC team from legendary players from previous tournaments. Shareable across social, high profile players and celebrities participated helping it go viral.
Social Hub - Deeply integrated, the tournament saw numerous activations to allow fans to interact and experience the tournament like never before. Social became the distribution platform for all ICC CWC content to global audiences.
Live Match Centre - A new interactive Match Centre was launched to allow fans follow live action that featured live ball by ball action with inplay statistics, interactive scorecards, near live video highlights, live commentary, fan polls and social media integration.
Mobile App - A native tournament app, iOS and Android, to allow fans to follow the action on the move, it focussed on video, match centre, statistics and social.
Video - Video was central to the success of the ICC's CWC digital properties. Providing near real time highlights, integrated into the Match Centre, summary video clips and highlights packaged and distributed across social media ensured that no wicket or six was missed. Daily summary videos were generated and shared on social under #CWCDaily.
Data visualisation - Cricket is a stats heavy sport, presenting this data to surface unique insights and perspectives was crucial. Hawk-Eye ball tracking data and real-time Opta data was visualised in new ways and automatically generated data and insights, triggered by live match events, were presented to site users.
Fantasy - Launched to allow fans to play against each other, this engaging game drove repeat visits and engagement with content.
The ICC has established itself as the digital destination for compelling and engaging international cricket content globally, social was integral to this.
From 2.7 million website users, generating 13 million page views in 2012, Pulselive's digital strategy, design and expertise grew the ICC's online audience to more than 47 million unique users generating in nearly 360 million page-views in 2015. This trend was mirrored across social, with organic growth from 1.5m facebook fans to 12m and 480k twitter followers to 3.1m over the same period. Fans now spend more time engaging with content on ICC's platforms than ever before, averaging 4 minutes 20 seconds per session in 2015 - double the time spent in 2014.
Collectively the ICC Cricket World Cup platforms and online activations generated:
57.5 billion social media impressions
304 million page views
36 million Unique users
233 million digital media video views
4.6 million mobile app downloads
- 90% of users using it for 5 minutes or more everyday of the tournament
- Over 600 tb of video content consumed through the app during the tournament
750 million Search Engine Impressions
The CWC digital strategy allowed the ICC to leverage its commercial partnerships and create new revenue streams. Creating digital sponsorships assets that reached millions of fans ensured sponsors could activate across ICC's platforms and ensure a credible and relevant brand positioning with fans. Sponsorships such as SAP's Match Centre and LG's Greatest Moments helped make the 2015 ICC CWC the most commercially successful CWC to date.
