FC Luzern x yawave

Challenges off the pitch

1. How can FCL offer its blue and white fans a consistent fan experience across the entire journey in the future – both physically and digitally?




2. How do Lucerne bring more news power (frequency x reach x involvement) to the field without having to increase resources (primarily staff and time)?




3. How can employees handle all marketing and communications processes independently, in an integrated and efficient manner, without having to constantly rely on an external partner?




4. How can the great hunger for information and news of Central Switzerland’s football fans be satisfied in an integrated and fan-centric way on a new web platform?




5. How can the club collect more fan data, manage all contacts centrally, learn from the user with every interaction, and ultimately personalize individual contact segments?

Fan centering as a starting point

“We have to take a step forward in the digital area and become fitter. Why don’t we start with the website? Or do we need an app?” – this line of thought is common in sports clubs. Often, one is faced with a digitization mountain and already thinks of the ropeway as a system technology solution in the same breath. This consistent solution orientation is not negative, the only question is at what point it is allowed to lead an organization. Because a transformation process goes further than simply finding the right technology. Digital transformation is much more about changing the entire club and all the people involved through new ideas and stimulus points based on technology. Without fans, employees, partners, and ultimately people who go along for the ride, digitization will fail. This is precisely why sports clubs need a fan-centric target image to which everyone can orient themselves.

FC Luzern was aware of this fact at a very early stage and therefore wanted to think about crucial issues right from the start in order to be able to initiate a targeted and, above all, effective digitization.

Step 1 + 2: Future Fan Experience & Processes

Football is not a normal sport. It has an appeal that manages to inspire and bring together people from all walks of life. This makes it all the more important to develop an awareness of the fan perspective and the diverse needs of the club environment. Particularly in the case of digitization projects, focusing too early on concrete implementation can lead to crucial questions not being asked:

• Who is the future (digital) experience for? What does my club environment look like?
• What drives my fans? Is there a shared interest, a common core of values?
• How and where do I want to interact with whom in the future?
• How and when can digitization support the future experience?
• Which goals are associated with which digitization step?
• What processes and capabilities need to be in place for the target experience?
• And what does this mean in concrete terms for digital requirements?

Thanks to the holistic experience approach, FC Luzern succeeded in breaking out of the individual departmental silos and linking the 43 individual contact points with the respective individual experiences into a stringent journey. Today, this is the only way to offer fans, sponsors, partners and employees a stringent overall experience.

In addition to the experience map and a prioritized list of measures with a total of 210 concrete ideas, the internal organizational structure and the associated processes were also looked at in a further step. Again, the target view was taken to make visible existing gaps, current process hurdles and missing capabilities.

Step 3: Interaction design & user stories

With the defined target image of the future fan experience, FCL had a clear compass for the individual digitization steps. A key component of the future fan experience was to be the new FCL platform. Just as with the physical experience, a tangible plan is critical. Based on the preliminary work, it was clear that the new digital home of FCL fans should have a high news and information focus and must offer many opportunities for direct interaction. This is exactly what was ensured with a targeted interaction design.

Before the concrete conception, design and implementation of a platform, website or app, it is crucial to know the exact digital requirements for the systems and individual components. This was ensured by means of concrete user stories. In this way, it was ultimately possible to visualize exactly which requirements the future website would have to cover from the user’s point of view.

Step 4: Agile Development & Fan Interaction Suite

As already mentioned, the path to a digital and future-proof sports club also depends to a large extent on how specifically and “customer-centric” the transformation process is designed and how well the internal and external club environment can be brought along on the journey. In the concrete implementation phase, the “Leuchtenstädter” were able to benefit greatly from the strategic foundation (Fan Experience Map, Process Map, User Stories, Epic Mapping, etc.) and thus work together with yawave specifically in the direction of the new platform without losing sight of the defined target image. All people involved ensured ongoing progress in weekly sprints – from the start of development to the final “go live” date.

The existing website, which was based on a complex CMS and required a lot of agency effort to maintain, was replaced with a WordPress site with an integrated yawave plugin. The direct connection of sports data from the global data provider Sportradar to the new FCL platform enables the integration of game-relevant data in real time. Through a connection that can be configured in the Fan Interaction Suite, the football data is also played directly into individual yawave tools (e.g. liveticker).

Automated news categorization ensures that each individual publication can be given a variety of appropriate categories, so that each piece of content is fed to the appropriate pages. This enables intuitive and user-centric news orchestration. What does that mean exactly? A background story on FCL goalkeeper Marius Müller in the run-up to a match is automatically played into the matchday-relevant subpages, the 1st team page and the player page. This way, all news are where they belong thematically and are searched for by the fan.

The Fan Interaction Suite with the User and Interaction Hub is the daily working tool for the marketing and communications department when it comes to creating and playing out content across channels, generating targeted fan interactions and enriching user data in a centralized and operationally usable way. The branding of the respective yawave application and the internal user rights for the different departments and employees can be determined configuratively in the suite. yawave simplified the FCL team’s entry into software use through personal training and today provides ongoing platform operation and customer support.

Even after the blue and white fan world goes live in September 2020, Lucerne’s digital journey is far from complete. Further adjustments are being made on an ongoing basis, such as the targeted development of contact dimensions for more personalized fan communication. Topics such as a fan login, loyalty program and the dissolution of data silos will also bring the club step by step closer to the defined target image in the near future.

Strategy + Implementation x Technology

This yawave approach also became the central formula for success at FC Luzern. Agile implementation ensured that the previously built strategy foundation could be brought to life in a targeted and effective manner. These two building blocks were then made to fly with the appropriate technology. Sounds good, but how does it show up in concrete results? Below are a few examples:

Live ticker

Thanks to the live ticker, fans can follow their heart’s club from anywhere. There is a direct connection to the game data of Sportradar. At the moment the ticker still lives from the automated data points, in the future it will be interactively enriched by fans (socials, giphs, votes, etc.)

Contact Management

FCL interacts with its stakeholders at various touchpoints.
Thanks to the central data platform, the management, enrichment and use (including data protection) of all user data is solved. The individual contacts can be automatically assigned to different dimensions depending on their behavior / interests.