DPG Media organizes Fantasy Football, Cycling and Cyclocross competitions year-round
Overview
Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN) is the biggest Belgian newspaper and HLN.be is one of the most visited Belgian news websites. The populist daily newspaper is known for its elaborate sports section, both offline and online. HLN is part of DPG Media (formerly known as De Persgroep), a media and publishing company owning media assets in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.
In the early 1990s HLN was the first organiser of fantasy sports in Belgium. The various games (football, cycling) are called “de Gouden Spelen” (the Golden Games) and people can win cash money and other prizes.
Since 2018 Fan Arena has been developing and maintaining all 8 Golden Games and has been adding new features to the platform continuously.
Challenge
In the last decade Gouden Spelen transformed its fantasy sports games from paper to digital. The standalone websites were outdated and lacked proper mobile responsiveness to attract a new and younger audience. A digital redesign was needed. Tooling (data, CMS) was non-existent and games took a long time to set up or tweak if needed.
Solution
Fan Arena started with adding new fantasy games to the series: Gouden Giro, Gouden Vuelta and Gouden League to fill in the gaps in the calendar. Now everyone can play fantasy sports year-round and DPG Media ensures to have a steady and bigger additional revenue stream.
All Gouden Spelen games have been developed using the same technology. The Fan Arena Fantasy Platform allows for rapid development and setup of each game. Now all the games have a coherent look and feel to offer a more engaging experience to the end user. The top header of each game is the same and includes all other Gouden Spelen games. A user can easily switch between the games and DPG media benefits from cross-selling.
The Fan Arena Platform also comes with tools to help you manage the fantasy game and find valuable insights. The Fan Arena Admin is a CMS that the DPG Media team uses to upload prizes, add coupons and create promotions (eg. Buy one, get one free). Sports reporters use the CMS to give each player a value and position.
Fan Arena Data is a business intelligence tool to transform all user data into useful commercial and financial insights. The fantasy data is used to create engaging content for HLN.be and social media, such as Team of the Week, Most Valuable Player, Transfer Tips and many more.
1
Game switcher for a better user experience and cross-selling
2
One account for all Gouden Spelen games
3
Become a Coach. Win €10.000. Create a private league.
Success
In the past three years hundreds of thousands of teams have been created and paid. Gouden Spelen keeps on growing each year, even though the entry fee for a team was increased from 7 euros to 9 euros.
The DPG Media team could drastically decrease the time it spends on each game. Fan Arena takes care of almost everything: game setup, game rules, players, chat support etc. DPG Media only needs to send out the prizes to the winners, of which they can download a spreadsheet with all the necessary information.