The Challenge
Sports bring people together, but to bring a sport to a fanbase as diverse as that of UEFA takes extra commitment—especially if every match needs to have a hometown feel to it. With an estimated fanbase of 3.5 billion, football (or soccer) is the most popular sport in the world. UEFA stands at the helm of one of the sport’s most engaged populations. As one of the six continental arms of the world’s football authority, FIFA, UEFA represents all national football leagues in Europe. This covers 55 national member associations and spans four official languages (French, English, Spanish, and German). UEFA is responsible for running a series of national and club-based competitions, such as the EURO Championship, Champions League, Europa League, and Super Cup.
Managing Real-Time Updates
in Multiple Languages
Given its broad scope and local fan communities, UEFA faces the challenge of providing viewers from around the world with live updates for matches in many languages across multiple platforms. This is particularly challenging in high-profile tournaments like the most recent EURO Championship of 2016. The EURO is held once every four years. This year’s championship featured 24 teams playing 51 matches across 10 host cities in France. This large-scale international sporting event was matched only by enthusiasm from football fans: nearly 2.5 million people attended live stadium matches while 150 million viewers watched the games live over 230 broadcast zones worldwide.With this kind of global reach, UEFA was faced with the major task of pushing instant updates in nearly a dozen languages on their website and mobile app every day of the tournament, for an average of three matches per day. The competition this year saw an unprecedented rise in mobile app engagement, keeping with global trends of mobile becoming a dominant channel for news consumption. A reported 44% of mobile users accessed two or more sports apps and websites per day, compared to the 36% before the tournament began in June. Mobile usage not only increased in volume during the 2016 EURO, but 17% of mobile users who previously did not use mobile sports apps or websites reportedly changed their behavior to become active sports fans through use of the EURO mobile app.
Given its broad scope and local fan communities, UEFA faces the challenge of providing viewers from around the world with live updates for matches in many languages across multiple platforms. This is particularly challenging in high-profile tournaments like the most recent EURO Championship of 2016. The EURO is held once every four years. This year’s championship featured 24 teams playing 51 matches across 10 host cities in France. This large-scale international sporting event was matched only by enthusiasm from football fans: nearly 2.5 million people attended live stadium matches while 150 million viewers watched the games live over 230 broadcast zones worldwide.With this kind of global reach, UEFA was faced with the major task of pushing instant updates in nearly a dozen languages on their website and mobile app every day of the tournament, for an average of three matches per day. The competition this year saw an unprecedented rise in mobile app engagement, keeping with global trends of mobile becoming a dominant channel for news consumption. A reported 44% of mobile users accessed two or more sports apps and websites per day, compared to the 36% before the tournament began in June. Mobile usage not only increased in volume during the 2016 EURO, but 17% of mobile users who previously did not use mobile sports apps or websites reportedly changed their behavior to become active sports fans through use of the EURO mobile app.
OneSky Solution
Translating anything can get complicated—not to mention delivering live translations for a global sporting event across multiple platforms. For their many tournaments throughout the year, UEFA was looking for robust and holistic translation solutions. In partnering with OneSky, UEFA was able to find a solution that encouraged integration with their own tools, and external developer/translation agencies from around the world. OneSky prioritized delivering a high standard of quality, reliability, and efficiency throughout the whole translation process.The perfect fit for UEFA to bring “the beautiful game” to fans all over the world was OneSky’s Results The OneSky Translation Management System (TMS) is a central platform that allows for UEFA to efficiently collaborate with their different internal teams. Integrations and plugins built into the TMS allowed UEFA to send instant updates to 300,000 new users every day of the EURO Championship, which resulted in 4 million downloads of the mobile app in 8 languages throughout the month of the tournament. The EURO website’s content was updated hourly in 11 languages through OneSky’s API. Everything worked seamlessly and effortlessly so we could all get back to what really matters—watching history being made at the games. Translation Management System (TMS), which allowed UEFA’s web and mobile developers were able to not only coordinate all text imports and translation exports, but also communicate/ translate directly on OneSky’s platform.
Results
The OneSky Translation Management System (TMS) is a central platform that allows for UEFA to efficiently collaborate with their different internal teams. Integrations and plugins built into the TMS allowed UEFA to send instant updates to 300,000 new users every day of the EURO Championship, which resulted in 4 million downloads of the mobile app in 8 languages throughout the month of the tournament. The EURO website’s content was updated hourly in 11 languages through OneSky’s API. Everything worked seamlessly and effortlessly so we could all get back to what really matters—watching history being made at the games.