Brief

Build upon O2’s sponsorship of the England Rugby team by offering fans new ways of getting closer to the team.

Solution

O2 already offer its customers a great experience at Twickenham on England Match days. Through ‘Priority’ you can get tickets before anyone else as well as a free pie and a pint at the game. But for thousands of fans across the country the big match experience is generally enjoyed at home or at the pub.

We wanted to create an experience that brought a bit of the Twickenham atmosphere to the fans – and so the O2 Matchday app was born – a dual screen app that gives fans outside of the stadium exclusive real time content to help fuel conversations around the game.

The key feature of the app is Ref!Link, a direct audio feed to the referee in charge. Through this feed not only do you get to hear every call made direct from the ref, but also pick up the on-pitch atmosphere, each and every bone crunching tackle as well as the decisions questioned by the captains.

We coupled Ref!Link with a digital Matchday programme which we made available before the game and reported on the history of the fixture, gave historic head to head stats, a bio of the ref in charge and a key player to watch from each side.

During the game we partnered with Optasports to give fans live-in-game stats from the opposing teams, a live score with a breakdown of who took the points as well as a live twitter commentary from our ‘Man at the Match’ - a real journalist who gave opinion and punditry from the touchline - adding a unique perspective to the game. Fans were able to join the conversation in app by using the hashtag #O2Matchday.

The app achieved over 41000 downloads during the RBS 6 Nations and was the number 1 free Sports App in the iTunes Store.