"TEC: Agency is an extension of our team; we work so closely with TEC that they feel a part of our team. We have so much trust and faith in TEC. Their experience and what they bring to our team at The R&A is invaluable."
Like any official website, www.theopen.com, is the digital hub of the tournament – popular with golf fans all year round but, during the week of the championship, the website attracts millions of unique users and generates billions of server requests.
When building their website, to deliver the flexibility and scalability they needed, we chose Sitecore as it provided our team the possibility to separate the content management from content delivery on individual machines. We, therefore, created on Amazon Web Services multiple machines to serve the wide selection of services required to maintain the platform.
Since The 150th Open at St Andrews, we were tasked with providing real-time scores through a new platform on both TheOpen.com site and The Open mobile apps (IOS, Android). A chose serverless approach was our designated choice, after carefully considering all its advantages and key features.
We are using Azure Functions as an independent solution, capable of managing and distributing new messages independently while keeping their order (Azure Service Bus).
We implemented and integrated a new ticketing system, provided by Secutix, that enabled the R&A to achieve a sell-out Open for the first time in history. Working on The Open’s ticketing platform gave us complete control over the user journey – this profound digital transformation allowed us to create and deliver different experiences for the R&A’s users. The conversion rate from ticket landing page to purchase confirmation increased by 126%.
- The fastest ever start to sale in The Open’s history
- Sold out of Championship Day Tickets, 6 weeks after going on sale
- 200K+ tickets sold
- 50K+ tickets sold in 2 days
As teams come together into one common project, there are bound to be challenges with coordination. We were able to foster a clear and common purpose across The Open’s digital transformation by establishing constant communication across all teams. To do this we:
- 1Clearly assigned roles and responsibilities from the beginning of the project
- 2Split teams throughout the 16-18 hours in the office, following shift patterns, ready to solve issues rapidly and efficiently
- 3We chose to work Kanban style:
- • Continuous project monitorization through physical or digital project boards;
- • Technical Leadership, from both the Event room and the Media Centre, monitoring all activities;
- • Clear Path to Production strategies.
- 1 Data capturing: 260.000 emails during event
- 2 Content personalization for the UK
- 3 Content personalization for the US
- 4 Implemented DFP Banners
accessed pages
www.theopen.com/leaderboard
www.theopen.com/
www.theopen.com/highlights
www.theopen.com/teetimes