Overview

Manchester City Football Club is an English football club based in Manchester, UK. They compete in the Premier League, the highest level of English football. The team was founded in 1880 and recently won the Premier League championship in 2018. In 2019, the club also won all four domestic trophies in England – an unprecedented achievement.

Despite being the first football membership to focus on digital channels, the Club’s fan platform “Cityzens” had a low engagement rate, especially with international supporters. Research led to the concept of a global fan platform that rewards fans’ loyalty while empowering them with a social tool to create and connect an active, global community. Method and GlobalLogic worked hand-in-hand to define, design, build and launch this vision in less than six months.

Our partnership resulted in an understanding of fan loyalty and engagement at a global level, reaching roughly 1 million fans in the first month in the market. Cityzens continues to be a key component for digital fan engagement for the club.

Offerings

Data Strategy
Experience Design
Product Design
Prototyping
Research & Insights
Software Engineering

Designing for a global fanbase

COMMUNITY FIRST

By taking a strategic, user-centered design approach from the start, we distilled the business’ objective into a clear value proposition for fans. Cityzens took the shape of a global fan platform that rewards fans’ loyalty while empowering them with a social tool to create and connect with an active, global community.

On the back end, Cityzens’ admin console provides Manchester City FC teams with tools to analyze engagement and behavioral analytics, empowering the club to continually optimize the experience for users – the first football club to do so.

Accelerating time to market, together

In under six months, the product went from definition to launch, serving a million fans worldwide in the first month. This was made possible by bringing together Manchester City’s Fan Engagement, Digital and IT teams, and Method Design and GlobalLogic Engineering teams; utilizing a weekly cadence for in-person team synchronization.