With the paint still drying in their new stadium, Fiserv Forum, the Milwaukee Bucks have already hit the ground running. And while the “Greek Freak,” has led the charge on the court, the team has been leading the charge on digital too.
One of these leaders is Abby English, the Bucks’ Digital Sponsorship & Activation Manager.
While every person in sports wears a multitude of hats, Abby’s role lives in-between digital and sponsorship. Simply put, she manages all digital partnership, and more specifically, the process between digital and sponsorship sales and activation.
An integral part of her role is identifying new digital programs and their strategy. She explains that one of the platforms she’s been focused on this season is mobile.
“With Fiserv Forum opening this fall, we’re leaning on our mobile app more than ever. We have worked hard to optimize the Bucks app to enhance the mobile experience for fans at Fiserv Forum, at home, and also internationally. We know how much fans use their phones, and because of that, our digital team thought it made perfect sense to keep evolving that concept and integrating partners where it’s mutually beneficial.”
Abby English
Bucks’ Digital Sponsorship & Activation Manager
One of the ways they have been able to accomplish this feat this season is by adding Rover to their mobile stack, enabling the Bucks to be able to design, deliver, and analyze their mobile content without any need of development.
“The Rover platform has helped us build new digital inventory for partners and fans. It also makes creating and executing campaigns quick and easy. The Rover team has also been incredibly helpful, almost acting as an extension of our own team in terms of ideating, creating, and activating many of our concepts. We don’t know where we’d be without Rover.”
One of the campaigns the Bucks have already began executing is their game day preview. This piece of content is served to fans as a full guide of game notes, video and day-of-game content, including the day’s entertainment and concession info. The game preview is sponsored, with an ad section and a clear call-to-action at the end for one of their partners, Johnson Control.
“The goal for our Gameday Guide was simple,” says English. “Deliver content to our fans that is most relevant to them on a timely basis.”
“Rover helped us template the experience so it’s easy to update each game, and we even have different looks for different theme nights (ie Fear the Deer Nights when we wear alternate uniforms). We wanted all the info in the guide to be valuable for fans while also giving our partners the opportunity to have their brand front and center as a natural piece of that experience.
When we do that successfully it’s a benefit to the business, partners, and fans alike. Mobile will continue to be a strong part of our future, which is really exciting to see from the partnership/ activation side. We’ve got some great experiences that we’ll be adding throughout the season that I don’t think any other teams have done yet, so keep your eyes peeled!”
But that’s not all. Buck fans should keep their eyes peeled for plenty of other mobile experiences in the not-too-distant-future.