Creating history for more than 150 years
The world’s best golf players are facing one of the most challenging events ever – The Open, golf’s oldest and most international Championship
Project intro
The Open is the most prestigious championship in professional golf worldwide. Its outstanding and iconic history make it the place to be for world’s finest golfers. Each year, for four days into the summer, The Open is creating legends and stories which will last forever. TEC Agency is proud to be part of this amazing adventure.
What services we provide
- Software Architecture
- Development
- Application Management
- Partners
- Event mode
- Communication
- Live scoring
- Ticketing
- Marketing
- Testimonials
- In press
The Open – One project, one digital transformation.
4.000
Man-days put into this project
33People from different agency teams in
7Countries
Event Mode
During the week of the Championship, the official website, www.theopen.com, becomes a hot place. Its audience becomes global, receiving millions of unique users and billions in server requests.
We chose Sitecore for its flexibility and scalability. 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.
Here’s a translation into numbers:
During the 4 days of the championship
7M +Unique visitors
850+Pages accessed
180KHours of video & audio content
Communication during the event
As teams come together into one common project, challenges are inherent. Dilemmas are inevitable. The all-time secret to get things done is constant communication. Besides that, overcoming difficulties throughout dialogue, structure and a strong set of rules are other relevant key points to have in mind. That is why:
- 1Roles and responsibilities were clearly assigned from the beginning of the project
- 2Teams were split throughout the 16-18 hours in the office, following shift patterns, ready to solve issues rapidly and efficiently
- 3
We 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.
Live scoring
2bLeaderboard requests
under250msResponse time
For The 148th Open at Royal Portrush, we provided a new real-time scoring engine – for both TheOpen.com site and The Open mobile apps (IOS, Android). A serverless approach was our designated choice, after carefully considering all its advantages and key features.
Azure Functions was the designated independent solution, capable of managing and distributing new messages independently while keeping their order (Azure Service Bus).
Ticketing
We implemented and integrated a new ticketing system, provided by Secutix, that allowed us to achieve a sell out Open for the first time in history. We now had complete control over the user journey – this profound digital transformation allowed us to create and deliver different experiences for our 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
Features for the marketing team
The marketing team needed numbers, customer behavior data and real time insights in order to create real, empowering connections with the Open’s end-users. Our input was to provide and deliver:
- Data capturing: 260.000 emails during event
- Content personalization for the US
- Geo-Targeted live stream access
- Implemented DFP Banners
Testimonials
Entrusting the technical integrity of TheOpen.com isn’t a decision taken lightly. The website sees a significant increase in traffic during the week of The Open and this offers its own unique set of challenges. The R&A required an agency that could ensure the business-critical infrastructure is managed flawlessly as well as one that can offer a scalable service offer to manage our needs. TEC is an extension of the R&A’s team and work seamlessly to deliver a scalable, robust and reliable service when it’s needed most.
TEC is an extension of our team; we work so closely with TEC that they feel like part of the team. We speak constantly through different messages tools and I guess we just have so much trust and faith in TEC, and their experience, what they bring to our team at the R&A.
The Open in the press
An Open that will make its mark beyond the game and the course
After a 68-year wait Royal Portrush may prove one of the major’s more exciting backdrops scenically and politically
British Open 2019: Shane Lowry wins Open by six in dominant performance at Royal Portrush
From the end of the third round, the fate of the 2019 Open Championship would first.
The Open 2019: Shane Lowry’s Royal Portrush win seals first major
Lowry started the celebrations early, his arms aloft as he squeezed through the crowds who swarmed the 18th fairway at Northern Ireland’s Royal Portrush.
The most accessed pages
Our 16 people team worked in 2018 and 2019 for theopen.com a total of 1692 days