SYDNEY — The 2017 Rugby League World Cup has kicked off across Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea with passionate crowds, large broadcast, digital and social numbers all coming through within the opening round of matches. The showpiece tournament featuring 14 nations has also seen the addition of many fan engagement delights both online and at the venues from fan MVP voting and free digital streaming to traditional dancing and culinary food and beverage offerings inside the venues which has added a diverse mix of color and noise to the fan experience.
The National Rugby League’s Australian Kangaroos team has also joined the steadily growing list of Australian sporting teams to hop into the artificial intelligence chatbot game with the launch of its very own Facebook Messenger chatbot, developed by Ready Eddy, which has been designed to bring fans of the game closer to their team and allow them to find the most relevant information quickly such as with information on squad lists, tickets, merchandising and breaking news.
The NRL’s Social Media Manager Cassandra Wilkins states, “We know that fans are comfortable operating within the social environment so being relevant to them within this environment is imperative. They want their information to be easily accessible and tailored to their individual needs so creating the bot with a carousel format menu to make it easy to find information was key in the design. Creating responses to the most asked fan questions was also key, to ensure when asking things like, ‘What’s the score,’ ‘How to buy a ticket,’ ‘Cam Smith Stats,’ there was an answer.
Being relevant to a fan in the social landscape is becoming increasingly difficult in the News Feed, so finding new ways to serve content to these fans, on their own terms, is significant for our social strategy. Having exclusive content served up via Messenger is another way to have our content in the fans hands almost immediately, and be present on their home and lock screens. The opt-in method within the bot gives us a rich data pool, and an engaged audience to speak to.”
While the NRL has previously dabbled in the chatbot space with its successful State of Origin Trivia Bot in 2016, it has learned lessons from that first experience to ensure that that the new Kangaroos bot had simplicity in the execution as well as a splash of excitement for the fans to keep them engaged. The inclusion of GIF-based content, exclusive videos from inside the camp as well as from players has added a new dimension for fans with the NRL digital and social team seeing great engagement rates from the chat bot’s features.
Wilkins’ further adds: “We are seeing great opt-in rights from fans to keep up to date with what’s happening with the World Cup and specifically the Kangaroos, as well as great return rates. Whilst we thought most fans would filter through the available content through the menu function, there is equally as much engagement happening with the fans asking questions and seeking their own information.
“The content integration and API feeds we have been able to utilise from the RLWC website has allowed for us to just aggregate the relevant content we require for the Kangaroos audience with the option for those highly engaged fans to access the deeper level of content on the RLWC2017.com website.”
Chatbot developer and Ready Eddy founder Ed Stevens states that the basis behind the chatbot was “to keep it simple, fun and most importantly helpful. Whilst the bot allows you to get access to all the key information around the games (fixtures, kick-off times, tickets, stats etc.), one of the most important features is score updates.”
Steven’s highlights that “fans ultimately want to know how their team is going especially when they are unable to watch the game. By sending users live score updates at half time, full-time and anytime they ask during the game the user never misses a moment. On top of this we wanted to give people an inside look of life inside the camp with exclusive content. We also wanted to make sure people had a laugh with skip and tried to really focus on making the language less formal and add some fun imagery in there too! The integration and API feeds we have been able to access from the RLWC website has allowed for us to just aggregate the relevant content we require for the Kangaroos audience with the option for those highly engaged fans to access the deeper level of content on the RLWC2017.com website.”
