Introduction

Back in 2015 the goal was to communicate the sports brand with a new state-of-the-art app and offer fans of Europe’s premier basketball competition a one-stop mobile destination.

In a partnership with the german digital specialist and award winning agency D/UNIT — responsible for the overall concept and visual design — Modeso was assigned to lay the foundation for the future digital strategy of Euroleague Basketball.

In short, the app should become the mobile address to watch Euroleague Basketball games and keep abreast of the latest news and content wherever you are including the following competitions:

Story

At the beginning of 2015 Euroleague Basketball was present with a web based mobile app on mobile devices initially developed in October 2012.

Back then it definitely was a good shot, but you have to go with the fast paced digital world. So, a couple years later the app was craving for a remake — preferably as a native/hybrid app with all the small usability advantages — matching up to a state-of-the-art mobile experience.

First let’s take a look at the previous mobile app:

The old Euroleague Mobile app – mid 2015
Key Take Aways (old release)
  • Google Play and Apple App Store ratings register a continues downtrend
  • Fans are more and more requesting new features
  • Bugreports — mainly caused of the changes in the mobile environment — are increasing
Key Goals (new release)
  • State-of-the-art scalable and sustainable foundation for a continuous feature extension
  • Noticeable strong increase in usability
  • Targeted mobile operating systems: Android & iOS

Design & Requirements Engineering

Under the direction of D/UNIT we started with a workshop at Euroleague’s HQ located in Barcelona in May 2015. The objective was to pin down all high level requirements, which we specified in detail at the office of D/UNIT in Munich shortly after.

First discussion about the IA in general and the matching navigation concept.

One of the first conceptional steps was understanding the information architecture based on the fixed requirements and finding the right type of navigation for it.

Final information architecture.

Besides a common off-canvas menu for league internal navigation an elegant solution was found with the league-switcher. That additional navigation element enables switching between the three competitions.

Interim App

During a meeting we realized that we were encountering a three month gap between the operational stop of the old app and the live-going of the new app.

Due to that we needed to come up with a solution and decided to develop one more app within two weeks — only interim.

Concept scribbles of the interim app.

For the added fan value Euroleague organized a competition to win two tickets for the Final Four weekend in Berlin. In return we had the chance to do some market/target-group analysis and got the most requested features via survey in return.

Visual design of the interim app.

Visual Design

In parallel to the interim app development the concept of the main app was finished and the work on the visual design began.

Turkish Airlines Euroleague screens.

In parallel to the interim app development the concept of the main app was finished and the work on the visual design began.

League switch and visual theme adoption.

For a preferably fast and effective realisation the visual design was created in Sketch and made available to the developer team via Zeplin.

Result

After nearly four months the new Euroleague Mobile app was available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Official posting: Euroleague Mobile, a European professional basketball go-to mobile destination

Key Features
  • News related content of all competitions including photos and videos
  • Live streaming of all games (requires Euroleague TV subscription)
  • Push notifications for game tip-offs and results
  • Games, standings, teams and players details
  • Play-by-play, shooting chart, game evolution
  • Official team and player tweets
  • Real-time analytics and contextual sales targeting
Store Links

Outlook

Now that a sustainable foundation is in place, the way is paved for plenty new and exciting features to come.

  • Apple TV and Fire TV app to conquer the living room
  • Tablet app as 2nd screen to discuss topics, check detailed player movement, participate in the community while watching a game on TV
  • …