MLS is releasing an updated flagship app on Monday with ticketing, merchandise, and fantasy soccer all fully integrated into the platform. The app also builds on last year’s full-fledged relaunch that highlights a club-centric focus for fans.
As MLS Digital SVP and GM Chris Schlosser said, “We know that fans are primarily fans of the club, then the league.” MLS launched an ad campaign last year called “Pick Your Colors.” That has now evolved into “Live Your Colors” to highlight the fact fans can customize features depending on their favorite club.
The integration with merchandise partner Fanatics happened late last year, but embedding Ticketmaster and SeatGeek is new, as is the full consolidation of fantasy. Schlosser said a real focus has been and will continue to be the game day experience, from transportation, stadium entry, concessions, and so on.
There are early plans to incorporate next generation analytics, perhaps for the 2020 season. MLS and Disney engineers also have an ongoing conversation about how to embed the ESPN+ out-of-market streaming feeds right into the app.
Like many of its fans, the league has embraced technology. Before overhauling its app last year, MLS had used third-party developers Possible Mobile but chose to bring its engineering in-house to keep pace with regular updates. The team then switched to the ReactNative coding language, which facilitates easy permutations between Apple, Android, and web uses.
Schlosser reported that 70 percent of all digital consumption is mobile. Last year, 22 MLS matches were streamed on Twitter, drawing nearly 14 million viewers.
MLS saw a 30-percent increase in 2018 app usage rates compared to 2017. The league also reports that its shares of key social media demographics are the highest among North American pro sports. Followers who are female account for 41 percent, fans who are Hispanic make up 34 percent, and millennials account for 39 percent.
MLS plans to continue to iterate, releasing app updates more or less monthly. The next one, planned for early April, will further the team-focused approach.
“We’ll lean even more into the club branding, providing each of our clubs a little more flexibility to program the national app,” Schlosser said. “We think that’s a first in the world of sports where individual clubs actually have places where they can program within a national app.”
Upon download, the app’s first prompt is for a user to select a club of choice. The MLS app then morphs its colors and emphasizes the schedule, results, video, and news feed pertaining to that team.
“What we were looking to do was develop a creative that reflected that ability to colorize and to personalize and to reflect the skinning of the user interface,” said Will Newell, head of creative at Evo Films, the agency of record for MLS.
During a league-organized media and marketing weekend, the biggest stars in MLS descended on Los Angeles’ Universal Studios for a series of promotional shoots, including for “Live Your Colors.” Evo arranged for a Bolt Hi-Speed Cinebot camera rig that can stretch higher than 10 feet and extend outward more than six feet, all while moving in a precise, pre-programmed trajectory.
Each of the MLS stars stood with a smartphone placed on a mic stand and were asked to repeat the same actions. The giant Bolt camera then zipped up, down, back, and forth around them to record a series of coordinated movements to help with post-production editing, where rivets of color were added around each player.
“We could make sure that each shot landed and started with the exact same framing of the phone handset,” Newell said, adding: “You’re able to extract the spatial metadata from the camera and the camera moves. We can use that to build a 3D world around the player. So, suddenly, how can we visualize color in this way? We felt we can build a world of color around them.”
After the camera zoomed in on a player holding the phone, it could then pan out with another player holding the phone in the exact same location. (MRMC, which makes the Bolt, has partnered with Nikon and ChyronHego on an optical tracking system as well.) A key feature of the Bolt was its ability to recalibrate itself based on the height of players. The LA Galaxy’s Zlatan Ibrahimović is 6’5” and Atlanta FC’s Josef Martinez is, depending on the roster, listed as 5’6”. (Martinez is also reigning MLS MVP.)
But, whatever each player’s physical or figurative stature, they were all suitably impressed with the Hollywood equipment.
“It’s funny, you have all these new players who are 19, 20 years old who haven’t any camera experience and then you have the Wayne Rooneys and the Zlatans who have been on cameras their whole lives, so they’ve seen it all, but no matter what, as soon as you put them in front of the Bolt system, it’s like they meet a robot,” said Geoff Walker, Evo’s head of production.