Play Sports offers top-tier streaming of major leagues like the EPL, La Liga, K League, F1, NFL, and more. Beyond streaming, we've brought world-class teams—such as the Yankees, Padres, PSG, and Manchester City—from the screen to stadiums in Korea.
These events drew nationwide attention, with tickets selling out in minutes and live stream viewership hitting record highs. Our success highlights the passion of Korean sports fans and the powerful impact of combining live events with digital experiences.
Even with exciting sports content, our app failed to engage sports fans because of a poor user experience. The app was built like a typical SVOD platform, without considering that sports fans have different needs. As a result, the sports section didn’t work well for its audience and didn’t meet their expectations.
In order to define the problem more clearly and set up the metrics, we needed to gain more context. We started with taking a look into some data points.
22% of entire play users have watched at least one sports content
10% of our users have installed our app and watched sports content as their first content
Out of the top 10 contents that made the most contribution to new sign ups,
#1 and #4 were soccer matches.
Seems like the numbers don’t look that bad here. Then what’s the problem?
We had a good number of MAU but the problem is that we had low DAU.
That was because of the spike from sports matches.
Spike users were coming in just for the sports content.
Let’s take a look at what is happening during the spike
Non Sports Fan
Only visit when there is a super popular match
Becomes interested in the match by word of mouth
Only interested in national star players
Visits to watch Coupang Play Series
Strategy
Introduce the users to our movie and TV series contents
Provide highlight videos of popular
matches and famous players
Casual Sports Fan
Users that watch matches 1,2 times a week
Has a specific team, player, or sports they like
Likely to switch the service to anywhere that provides the league or player they follow
Strategy
Send users notification
Match schedule for awareness
Provide highlight videos of league or player
Personalize sports feed
Super Sports Fan
Users that watch sports on a daily basis
Enjoys sports in general
Has multiple sports and leagues they like and follow
Switches leagues depending on season off
Strategy
Keep the feed fresh
Provide easy way to discover matches
Provide competitive sports experience
We decided to focus on Casual Sports Fan
which had the strongest potential to become DAU
Feature Strategy
Sports Schedule
Goal
Increase awareness and anticipation of upcoming matches.
Connected Strategies
Match schedule for awareness:
Central to the Sports Schedule. Clearly list upcoming games to inform and excite users.
User notification:
Allow users to opt in for notification on users’ favorite teams or leagues from the schedule.
Event Detail Page
Goal
Deepen engagement with specific matches or events.
Connected Strategies:
Send users notification:
Alert users when the event is about to start or when there’s a key moment (e.g., lineup reveal, kickoff).
Provide highlight videos of league or player:
Embed highlight reels and related content on the event page to build hype and keep users engaged before and after the match.
League Page MVP
Goal
Offer a comprehensive and immersive experience per league.
Connected Strategies:
Provide highlight videos of league or player:
Feature curated video highlights by match, team, or player to boost daily engagement.
Personalize sports feed:
Allow users to follow teams/players and have the League Page reflect their preferences—content, stats, and updates.
Send users notification:
Notify users about upcoming matches, highlight drops, or weekly match previews.