There is no denying that sports fans are growing in large numbers, and according to one statistic, it shows that more than 74% of the annual growth comes from sports. In order for everyone to cherish the victory of their favorite player and bring everyone together, mobile and web applications will bring more and better features.
There are already some top sports apps in the market and more are emerging in the market related to sports channels. While sports channels are allowing people to watch shows from the comfort of their homes, they are also investing in mobile apps that allow other users to enjoy sports remotely or without a TV set.
Are you looking for ways to promote your sports business? Raising awareness of a soccer game or sports team can be tricky on a limited budget. But with a smart marketing strategy and some powerful tools, it is possible.
Statistics of sports app marketing
The sports division is expected to generate total revenues of $3,959 million by 2022. Total revenue is expected to show a 7.98% CAGR, with the market size expected to reach $4.985 billion by 2025.
A global comparison shows that most of the revenue comes from the United States ($1.259 billion in 2021), and the market size in this continent is growing every year.
In-app purchase (IAP) revenue in sports is expected to reach $1.297 billion in 2022. Paid app revenue in sports is expected to reach $188 million in 2022, and advertising revenue will reach $2,473 million.
The sports segment is expected to reach 2,033.9 million downloads by 2022.
For paid applications, people prefer sports simulators and certain applications created by radio stations. Clearly, the highest revenue areas are dedicated apps that provide sports-specific information. The business model for most of these apps is freemium. They offer basic features to users for free and then ask them to pay for premium features.
What functionality do you need in the sports app?
Core functionality
As with any other app category, most sports stats apps have many features in common. Without them, your application will not be able to meet the expectations of your users. Therefore, consider the following must-have features for making a great sports stats app.
News aggregators
News feeds with the latest sports information. This would require integration with popular sports news portals. It is important to focus the feed on the user's preferred topics (certain teams, sports, leagues or local sports news). Or, you can include both personalized feeds and "trending" news tags.
Score updates
Provide real-time score updates for those who can't watch the stream on TV or online. According to an Avaya report, almost three-quarters of sports fans ages 18-34 want live score updates.
Community features
Community features, such as comments, group discussions, chat rooms, etc., are good to include because they allow users to interact with each other and discuss news or scores in real time. In addition, allow users to share content outside of the app (on Twitter or Facebook).
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Push notifications
Push notifications to help keep users up to date with events. Their goal is to keep push notifications relevant and urgent. For example, it makes sense to use this method to alert users of upcoming games, while notifying them of new features via email would be better.
Schedules
A schedule of all the races in each sport would be very helpful. Regardless of the type of app you have, customer loyalty will increase if you allow users to view game schedules for their favorite sports in the app.
Payment system
A payment system that helps users make money transfers. If you plan to create sports betting apps or offer some in-app purchase options, a secure and fast payment system needs to be integrated into the app.
The latest trends in sports app development
Live streaming
Live streaming is a very valuable but challenging feature. While most sporting events are streamed by media companies (including ESPN) using their own applications. You can use one of the popular live streaming platforms, such as Ustream, to access the content. Or, video replay can be a great addition to a sports app. (for those who can't watch the game live or in its entirety)
User-generated content
In addition to the traditional social media features mentioned above, you can also add the ability to post user-generated content or host live streams and Q&A sessions with famous players.
Chatbots
You can build a chatbot to complement your application. This handy feature can send live score updates or simply share interesting facts and fun information about a user's favorite team.
Ticket booking
Developing mobile or web booking apps, especially for sports, could be a good idea to drive your startup. By developing such an app, users or sports lovers can easily book tickets to watch their favorite games like cricket, soccer, tennis, basketball, etc. at the stadium.
How to grow your sports app with keyword research in app store?
Choose the most appropriate keyword for your app
Brand words
Company brand or unique product, such as company name, application name, company name plus product name, etc. It is used to push information to own users or potential users with branding tendency, and to prevent competitors from stealing target customers by purchasing their own brand words.
Searching for brand words has a high conversion rate because of the precise intention and clear intent of the customer, which is to come to the brand. And the price of brand words is not high, the natural ROI is also higher. But the brand word has a relatively fatal weakness - too little traffic. Unless you are the top well-known brand in the industry, the traffic of brand words are usually not much.
Product words are one of the mainstays of a promotional account, because it is more balanced in all aspects, the traffic is larger - click rate is higher - conversion rate is moderate - click price is not low, when a new business temporarily nothing brand and activities, the focus is on the product words. At this time around the product word expansion is very important, and the opportunity to save promotional costs of a job as comprehensive as possible, and meticulous grouping.
General keywords
Search terms that do not include brands and are used heavily by Internet users. These keywords indicate that Internet users have some vague desires and interests, and some of them are potential target audiences that can be pursued.
Industry competing words
The names of some other companies and products in the same industry are also called competing words. However, competing words should be used with caution, generating complaints that will deduct account reputation growth value points. For more information about reputation growth value, please click on the original article.
In fact, the effect of competing words varies from industry to industry, some industries if the general brand loyalty is not too high, then the possibility of forming a conversion through competing words interception is greatly increased, such as medical, education and training. So do not try to put, will not know how the final effect of such words. It is recommended to try at the beginning of the placement and have optimization for a period of time, if the conversion results are not satisfactory, can be outlawed.
Put the keywords in your app metadata
If you follow the trends, especially soccer trends, you will find that every soccer club has its sports app. So do many popular sports and major sports companies. You can quickly confirm this by visiting the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Navigating to the Sports category will display an infinite scroll of sports apps. We will use FotMob's App Store page to explain the use of keywords.
FotMob helps soccer (soccer, if you're outside the U.S.) fans keep track of their favorite teams and leagues. FotMob, like a news aggregator, is competing with apps like itself and first-party apps from teams and leagues.
FotMob's keyword list is very specific and focused. That's by design. For FotMob, having keywords like "soccer, scores" provides the necessary foundation to continue and expand its range of keywords, not to mention immediate downloads. The duplication of "scores" between the name and subtitle wastes the number of characters. You need to identify the most relevant and popular league names and include them in the subtitle.
Keyword list
Keyword list does a good job of attacking multiple possibilities at once, while still combining keywords in the name and subtitle. Remember, keyword lists are a great place to experiment with new keywords. By mixing them together, you can increase your chances of ranking better and finding more combinations.
Remember the following:
- The keyword list itself is not enough to rank for popular keywords that other apps target with their name/sub-title.
- In addition to functionality, it is possible to mix multiple topics that your audience may be looking for.
- Use the keyword list in a round-robin experiment to determine the best keywords in a category.