With the start of the English Premier League right around the corner, it is time for soccer fans to once again set aside an extra two hours of time every week to watch their favorite team play. For fans in the UK, it might be easy to know when the local match is, by merely looking outside. But for fans in different time zones, it might take a bit more effort to support their favored club.
To connect with all of these fans, the Premier League has partnered with Australian calendar-based tech company ECAL.
The idea behind ECAL comes from the startling statistic that only five percent of emails are actually opened, according to their CEO Patrick Barrett. ECAL skips the process of email reminders altogether, and sends updates right to whichever calendar a fan uses.
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By clicking on this link, a Premier League fan can follow the instructions to add any fixtures to their digital calendar. The user can choose from any variety of teams or even add every single Premier League matchup to their schedule. This way, the games sync up with any possible time zone or switch between time zones.
What’s more, the Premier League even gets access to all of the client data that ECAL collects.
While ECAL may not be a directly familiar name to most, they have a hand in quite a bit of different sports, entertainment and lifestyle ventures. They have accounts with some of the biggest names in sports, such as the NHL, MLS, a number of different NCAA programs and even a few choice NFL teams.
However, the partner that they work with the most is Ticketmaster, which is where the public has most likely seen ECAL at work without noticing. ECAL has set up a calendar event for every single Ticketmaster event that they host.