Brand Apps Are Dying,Don't Go Down with Them

As mobiles have taken over a major portion of the digital world, teams and associated brands started building their own mobile applications to connected with fans and keep them engaged. The below on people preference over individual Vs. aggregate apps.

All the Major league teams in the US sports industry have got their own apps along with the official League Apps. Leagues like NHL, NFL, NBA, and MLB have a larger fan base in and outside the country. Most of the Team have more than 3-4 million followers in social media, but the number of App downloads from Play store and the App store are exceptionally very low.

After analysing more than 125 team’s apps downloads in Google Play store and Apple App store to figure out how likely Fans are interested to download their favorite team's mobile apps was quite interesting.

Here’s how NHL fans digital preference in downloading Mobile Apps broke down…

Which Mobile Apps' are downloaded more by Fans?

NHL League App, theScore and NBC Sports Live Apps are the Top Downloaded Apps

After analyzing 30 team’s individual mobile app downloads in Play store and iTunes along with NHL, the Score and NBC sports Live Apps, it was clear that the Aggregated apps are Fans more preferred by fans. Even though NHL teams have larger number of loyal fan base, can’t seem to get that translated to app downloads.

Percentages of Mobile App downloads:

• 58% of Fans downloaded NHL app
• 20% of Fans downloaded theScore App
• 19% of Fans Downloaded NBC Sports Live
• 03% of Fans downloaded Individual Teams App combined of all the 30 teams

Number of Fans downloaded Aggregate apps from Play store and App Store

It is evident that the aggregate apps are downloaded more compared to team apps. 97% of total app downloads contribute to the aggregate category, which indicates fans/users are not interested to restrict themselves to a single entity though they prefer few or more.

Individual App Downloads

Fans are less likely to prefer installing individual apps until those applications offer something unique that is not available anywhere else. People like to grab whatever information they needed by accessing minimal resources which is more possible in connected platform.

Main features that influence the number of Individual vs. Aggregate App Downloads

In this case, the key features that differentiate Aggregate apps from individual apps are, Live game coverage, complete league wide stats with customization options.

The rights of leagues for live content is by far the most important reason for app downloads..

Aggregate apps have very high engagement rate and less churn rate which reduce the retention cost by increasing the Life Time Value (LTV) of fans.

 Anaheim Ducks is one of the NHL league team with a Facebook Fan follower base of 411K compared to 419K of NHL (as of 5th-June-2016). But, when it comes to app downloads the difference is 38% and Anaheim Ducks App download is 10% compared to their 90% social media Fan base.

NHL Mobile App has 3x extra downloads when compared with their Facebook Fan base.  

When it comes to Facebook vs Apps, an interesting factor is that Facebook medium is more intimate than App medium because it’s a connected platform which combines all user requirements in a collected manner.

Key Factors

• Access to a wide set of Information

         Fans wanted to stay updated on everything that’s happening in and around the league as well as about their team.

• More features 

     In aggregate apps, fans have more features like options for customization, detailed contents and stats; more over it brings all the requirements in a consolidated fashion.

• Promotion and Engagement

         Promoting an app and convincing fans to download is very challenging. Also, engaging fans by understanding their preferences makes things more difficult.

How to use your Digital Properties for managing Fans?

1.      Connect your fans on a common platform where they frequently visit and easily reachable to engage them rather than trying to bring them on individual platform until there is a specific USP and business model.

2.      Develop specific set of interaction methods to speak to fans and manage them. Building various assets are not enough to engage and retain fans for the success of business.

3.      Build mobile responsive websites to service fans who are not interested to download apps for accessing contents.

4.       Use Analytics to understand your fans preferences, likes and dislikes, past activities to build more competitive/ personalized campaigns and cater them by providing what they may actually prefer to do.

The best practice is, service fans on a platform where most of them are connected to rather than trying to bring them in to own platforms because the risk and marketing efforts are higher to hold them. Engagement rate will be less and Churn rate will be higher.  Facebook, Flipkart, freecharge are all the example of aggregate platforms.