WNBA - Equal Play
The 6th Annual Awards
- Best App or Mobile Experience
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
For decades women’s sports have gone undervalued and underrepresented, but this past year women’s sports have seen explosive growth. The WNBA has been at the forefront of that growth, not only with the excellence of the players on the court, but now through innovative and unparalleled storytelling showcased in the new one-stop-shop app.
How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?
The WNBA has been able to deliver fans a top tier experience that continues to expand to new audiences. With fan preferences and trends continually evolving, the WNBA mobile app is now built to accommodate new features over time, providing the content and features most desired by the league’s growing fan base. Additionally, the app provides revenue opportunities which will ensure that the growth of our game is sustainable for the long-term. If this success story proves one thing about the struggle for equal play in women’s sports, it’s this: If you build it, the world will watch. The WNBA is raising its game and reframing the future of fandom for women’s sports.
Objective
Despite making up 40% of all athletes, women only receive 15% of sports media coverage. For the WNBA, equal media representation simply didn’t exist. So when major networks wouldn’t cover us, we covered ourselves, by transforming our league app into our very own mass media ecosystem - designed to level the playing field for women’s basketball in a strategy we dubbed Equal Play.
Strategy & Execution
The WNBA app is more than just a league app. It’s our journalism network covering the league from every angle, a social media platform centered on spotlighting female empowerment and a streaming service that broadcasts every game, quarter and bucket. The app is the WNBA’s back-page, box score, team store, community and box office, all in one. The reconfigured WNBA app also offers modernized content regarding the league’s schedule and standings and provides iPhone users the ability to add live updates to games directly on their lock screens. The platform includes a “No Spoilers” feature, which allows fans to hide stats and standings from previous games so they can watch on-demand content and still experience the thrill of seeing how a game plays out. Going beyond the breadth and depth of traditional broadcast, this transformation created a centralized fan-experience that fed into all the ways people consume media. Story mode gives fans the familiar feeling of scrolling their favorite social media platform, while exclusive series, behind-the-scenes content, and game coverage brought them closer than ever before to the action on and off the court.
Organizations
- Deloitte Digital
- Endeavor Streaming
Links
Credits
Colie Edison
Chief Growth Officer
WNBA
Pete Giorgio
Principal
Deloitte
Shawn Bryant
Managing Director
Deloitte
Li-Shen Lee
Principal
Deloitte Digital
Devin Ward
Director of Digital Products
WNBA
Katie Kinchley
Senior Manager
Deloitte
Chad Deweese
Senior Manager
Deloitte
Patrick Parfrey
Product Lead
Deloitte Digital
Caroline Keim
Director of Engineering
WNBA
Daniel Silva
Creative Director
Deloitte Digital
Sumit Kanuga
Managing Director
Deloitte
Gaurav Thakur
Senior Manager
Deloitte Digital
Rajendra Kumar
Engineering Lead
Deloitte
Nathan Hale
Mobile Solution Architect
Deloitte Digital
Apurva Goyal
Mobile Architect
Deloitte Digital
Lucy McCalmont
Director of Content
WNBA
Drew Acampora
Content Senior Manager
WNBA
Pete Bellamy
Chief Commercial Officier
Endeavor Streaming
Grey Miller
Account Manager
Endeavor Streaming
Hugo Rocha
Solutions Architect
Endeavor Streaming
Alex Toogood
Account Manager
Endeavor Streaming
Asia McCray
Content
WNBA
Dellan Sellers
Content
WNBA
Dani Zuercher
Product
WNBA
Molly Guyer
Product
Deloitte Digital
Hemant Gore
Engineer
Deloitte
Rahul Lad
Engineer
WNBA
Priya Mehta
QA
Deloitte
Maria Lazarte
Associate Creative Director
Deloitte Digital
Tara Hadipour
Designer
Deloitte Digital
Celebrate in NYC
Join us for the 6th Annual Hashtag Sports Awards™ on the evening of June 6, 2024 as we celebrate finalists and reveal the winners of this year's awards live during the show.
