How a top sports league drove viewership numbers with YouGov
Challenge
Understand which headlines / stories to use in campaigns to drive fans to watch specific sports games on television.
Solution
Survey specific fan bases to make data-backed business decisions.
Results
Data on which headlines were more likely to drive viewership, informing successful campaigns.
Business challenge
As one of the leading sports leagues in the USA, the client’s main objective is to continue driving the sport’s popularity and growth across the globe. As part of the strategy to achieve this, the client wanted to understand what campaign stories interest and engage fans so they could optimize headline copy to draw as many viewers as possible to their games.
Solution
Using YouGov Surveys: Self-serve our super-fast self-serve audience insights platform, the client ran weekly surveys to a specific audience group to test headlines and campaign stories. The surveys were run a couple of weeks before the games to give enough lead time to circulate the findings. The marketing teams were then able to use this information to inform the best headlines for upcoming games.
Using YouGov Crunch, our powerful data analysis platform, the client was able to break down the survey results based on age, gender, and level of interest in their sport to get the most granular insights on the different headlines. The platform also stores historical data which can be used to see what types of storylines and subjects have previously resonated most with viewers. This data allows the client to see trends in players, team popularity and the corresponding viewership numbers.
Results
With the YouGov Surveys: Self-serve survey results, the client was able to see which storylines drive viewership, enabling them to change and strengthen their strategy based on data-led decisions. The client also relayed this information to their media partners to display the relevant headlines in TV guides and promotional content.
Due to the success of the project and the self-serve functionality of YouGov Surveys: Self-serve, the client has rolled out the tool to more of its internal teams. The teams use the rapid research tool, with results in as little as 1 hour, on subscription packages, advertising campaign sentiment and segmentation profiling, with the additional benefit of having 200+ points of customer background data to further segment the results.