The Sacramento Kings new entertainment and sports center is the
first digital coliseum of the 21st century. Given the mission – to deliver a truly connected experience
– the Kings needed to ensure the arena, app and anything under the hood remain
‘future-proof’ by delivering continuous innovation and upgrades to the overall
experience for years to come. A seamless and frictionless fan experience that
begins long before you get to the arena and last beyond the final buzzer.
The
Solution Phase I
The first step was to build an app for the 2015-16 season –
the final year at the Sleep Train Arena – to provide the best experience
possible and test future integrations in an app. With features like realtime
stats, experience upgrades, in-seat food ordering, merchandise browsing and
Uber integration, the app has already provided Kings fans with an invaluable
experience leading up to the opening of Golden 1 Center. It also allowed the
Kings to deliver an updated app even before the new Golden 1 Center opened for
the 2016-17 season.
The Solution Phase II
To this end, they needed a highly scalable platform to power
their mobile app, bring together many different services and also demonstrate
the ability to be constantly updated. In addition, the app environment needed
to facilitate the testing and deployment of yet-to-be-released features for the
upcoming season. However, connecting the world’s most technologically advanced
arena and making it work effortlessly with a mobile app was a daunting task.
The Results:
The app’s connected infrastructure supports
everything from realtime stats and play-by-play updates to the ability to order
an Uber, giving fans a reliable means of connecting with the team in the
buildup to the opening of the new arena. Continual advancement has been the
cornerstone of the Kings, and will assure the Kings App stays ahead of the pack
even after Golden 1 Center opened.
“The new platform provides us with a nimble and
robust technology foundation. We’re able to test and iterate innovations with
fans on demand. We can try out new services at any time and if our fans like
them, incorporate them into the mobile app. Or, if we come across a better offering,
we can unplug the existing service and plug in the upgrade. Having a dynamic
platform allows us to foster an enhanced fan experience that continually
evolves” said CTO Ryan Montoya.
Using a combination of advanced flow and integration products is
hailed as an enterprise-grade best practice by the Kings team for the following
reasons:
- By investing in ‘products as a service’, the Kings
ensure that adopting new technology is seamless and does not require
continuous in-house maintenance and upgrades.
- The platform auto-scales and is highly synchronous, so
no one has to do anything to keep the app running and deliver the latest
game details. Under the hood, the apps runs 1,500 flows, or automations,
per game across 10 different APIs spanning the NBA, Urban Airship and
PubNub. This automates a realtime game experience with up-to-the-moment
scores, play-by-play details, shot charts, team and player stats, as well
as daily news and multimedia updates.
- This combination of products is the backbone that
accommodates the massive number of integrations (30+) that will be present
in the updated Kings App to be released prior to the opening of Golden 1
Center.
Net; Net:
The new infrastructure has put the Kings in a position to
achieve the objective of a worldwide fanbase. The fans are really pleased with
the experience no matter the outcome of the games.
This Case study was powered by Built.io https://www.built.io/
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