In an era engagement fragmentation, basketball games no longer need to be viewed to be consumed. Despite this, fans desire a real-time connection to the game day journey. The Nike x NBA Connected Jersey turns a passive symbol of fan loyalty into an active connection between fans the game they love. The mobile experience launched by scanning the jersey provides seamless access to exclusive and authentic content and offers, and enables two-way engagement between users and the league that was never before possible. Athletes can send personalized messages to their most loyal fans, while users can influence what happens on and off the court. The Connected Jersey allows fans around the world to feel a part of the game, and its data offers a detailed look at the global landscape of NBA fandom. The product enables Nike, the NBA and athletes themselves to develop the future of fan engagement.

The Nike NBA Connected jersey experience is built into the native NikeConnect app for both Andriod and iOS. Concept to Launch was a six+ month period from February - September 2017.

We paired with partners at Nike to complete the design and build, leveraging many existing shared services at Nike as well as building bespoke micro services which are now being replicated to apply the functionality more widely across Nike platforms.

The app is available for download in both apple app store and google play store, and the full experience is available to NBA Jersey owners, requiring the authentication available through scanning the NFC chip in the jock tag of the jersey.

The app is available globally to all Nike NBA jersey owners and translated into 25 languages. Enhancements continue to roll out for this product, and as jersey sales continue, the user pool is growing as well.

This application is the first of a wide ecosystem of connected product experiences which will reach far beyond a single sport. Pilot season allowed us to refine what makes a great connected experience and delivers value to owners. We've seen steady user base growth throughout the NBA season with no signs of stopping.

Basketball is the world's most popular sports with approximately 400 Million fans. These fans are mostly concentrated in the US. Other sports present an even larger opportunity with Tennis having ~1 Billion fans globally, and Soccer/Football with ~3.5 Billion. We've just started to scratch the surface of sports fans and plan to expand into more sports with a global presence.

Reaching 45k users in 120+ countries, the average user logged in 5 times, with an 2m30s of activity per visit. When in the app they have viewed 25k pieces of content a total of 4.7 Million times.