©2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
Picture Credit | NHL, New York City, NY. Used with permission.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Sports and Entertainment | National Hockey League ®
National Hockey League®: Engaging Fans
and Retaining Site Visitors 45% Longer
by Partnering with SAP
The National Hockey League® (NHL®) is partnering with SAP to optimize the
experience of fans through its digital platforms. Solutions and services from SAP help
the league engage its fans through more relevant marketing and vivid, interactive
online statistics. Richer profiles of individual customers equip the NHL® to glean
insights into their specific behaviors.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Sports and Entertainment | National Hockey League®
Executive overview
Organization
BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
National Hockey League®
Objectives
•• Grow the National Hockey League® digital platform
•• Better engage fans with personalized and relevant marketing content
and messages
•• Increase fan engagement and fervor around the game by providing better
statistical visualizations of player and team performances
•• Target specific fan demographics for outreach
Headquarters
New York City
Industry
Sports and entertainment
Products and Services
Professional ice hockey
Web Site
NHL.com/stats
Resolution
•• Partnered with SAP to build fan interest and enable better storytelling
•• Presented hockey statistics in interactive ways fans have never seen before
•• Focused on understanding fan profiles
Benefits
•• Built a richer customer profile, with deeper insights into each fan’s behavior
•• Improved Web site visitors’ experience
•• Made boosting fan engagement and fervor an in-house capability
•• Increased database efficiency with faster response times
25%
More site visitors
45%
More time spent on
Web site
25%
More overall fan
engagement
“We were thrilled about the way fans reacted to our new statistics
section and how much more intelligently we’re now able to market to
them. It shows what we and SAP can accomplish by working together.”
Chris Foster, Director of Digital Business Development, National Hockey League®
2 / 6
© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Sports and Entertainment | National Hockey League®
Executive overview
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
Making statistics exciting and valuable
for marketing
tracking their online behavior. Armed with insights
from analysis of individual fan profiles, the league
knew it could market to them in a much more
relevant and timely manner.
The National Hockey League® (NHL®), the premier
ice hockey league in the world, comprises 30 teams
representing major North American cities. The
league attracts the best players from all over the
world and has rabid fans everywhere.
The NHL® knows that hockey fans increasingly use
the Internet, mobile devices, and social media to
interact with their favorite sport. Realizing that it had
to take better advantage of digital channels to engage
fans, the league made it a top priority to increase its
use of multimedia, expand its social platforms, focus
on mobile areas, and revitalize its Web presence. The
NHL® knew how powerful the right platforms can be
not only for increasing fans’ interest but also for
Recently the league recognized that one area was
being underserved: statistics. “A big reason why we
hadn’t done more with statistics is the perception
that they’re boring and therefore wouldn’t bring in
new fans,” says Chris Foster, director of digital business
development for the NHL®. “Then we realized that
statistics don’t have to be tedious, static numbers in
columns. If presented in exciting ways, they can be
very powerful attractions to fans. But we also realized
that to do that we needed the right kind of partner.”
3 / 6
© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Sports and Entertainment | National Hockey League®
Executive overview
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
Creating a highly personalized,
interactive fan experience
The NHL® found just the partner it was looking for in
SAP. “SAP software provides a vast array of tools for
bringing our statistics to life as well as a willingness
to truly partner with us to get the most out of them,”
explains Foster. “One tool is the SAP HANA database,
whose speed and power allow us to manage our huge
volume of numbers and still enable fans to do filtering
and searching fast enough to have an outstanding
experience getting the information they want.”
The NHL® is using the SAP HANA® Enterprise Cloud
service as the back end of its statistics section. The
SAP® hybris® Marketing solution equips the league
to gain key insights into every single fan and offer up
relevant content and messages to successfully
connect and engage with them. The NHL® had an
aggressive implementation schedule so it used the
SAP hybris Marketing rapid-deployment solution,
which was key to getting the job done quickly and
efficiently. “We can now target specific demographics
with an exact scalpel,” Foster remarks.
Beyond the tools, one of the great appeals of the
partnership was the people at SAP and their ability
to help the NHL® reach its goals. The Global Service &
Support organization from SAP worked closely with the
league to redesign the statistics section of NHL.com.
They started with a clean slate and no preconceptions,
asking fans what they would like to see in the way of
statistics. They created the new solution iteratively,
repeatedly implementing features and checking
with fans until their reaction was overwhelmingly
enthusiastic. “I invite anyone to check it out at
NHL.com/stats,” says Foster. “It’s so intuitive –
that’s all you need to know.”
4 / 6
© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
SAP Business Transformation Study | Sports and Entertainment | National Hockey League®
Executive overview
Giving the fans what they want
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
Fan reaction to the first release of the new online
presence the league engineered with SAP’s help
was outstanding. In the very first week, overall fan
engagement jumped by 25% and has been rising
ever since as word spreads among hockey fans about
all the highly interactive features on NHL.com and
how they can customize the site to focus on their own
favorite players and teams.
Despite this success, the league solicited extensive
feedback from fans asking what could be done
even better. Then the NHL® and SAP teams put their
heads together, addressed the feedback, and made
improvements that swelled the site’s popularity.
Fans are now spending an amazing 45% more time
on the site than before the launch. They are performing
more queries and in general are much more engaged.
“I think a big part of our success comes from the
Run Simple mentality at SAP,” says Foster. “Hockey
is the fastest game on earth, too fast sometimes for
people. SAP is helping us slow down the game for
fans, giving them new ways to look at stats and new
ways to analyze and get insights about our players
and teams. Our partnership is also helping the league
itself improve on its business. It’s given us the tools
and ability to understand audience behavior, what
fans want, and smarter ways to have conversations
with them.”
“SAP is helping the NHL® improve its business by saving time, saving costs,
and delivering a best-in-class product to our fans.”
Chris Foster, Director of Digital Business Development, National Hockey League®
5 / 6
© 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
National Hockey League®
Company objectives
Resolution
Business transformation
Future plans
NHL.com – the
innovations are just
getting started
The NHL® has many exciting plans to build on these
successes. Experts from the league will soon be
working with data scientists from SAP to deep-dive
into all the data collected to date to perform
predictive analysis of fan behavior.
Another major project will be to integrate into the
database all historical information going back to the
league’s formation in 1917. This will allow fans to
compare performance of present-day stars or teams
with their idols and favorites from decades ago using
tools specially designed by SAP to account for the
fact that many of the statistics collected today were
not recorded in years past. In fact, even the statistics
collected today may pale compared with the future,
when the NHL’s® imagination is further unleashed by
the new capabilities made possible by SAP.
38890 (15/11) © 2015 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.
6 / 6
Picture Credit | NHL, New York City, NY. Used with permission.
Executive overview
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