What is the "Triple Win" that accelerates the J.League's digital marketing?

In this series, I—specializing primarily in digital marketing outside the advertising sphere—will introduce the growth potential I've identified within the sports industry and the strategies to leverage it.

Last time, using the J . LEAGUE official app " Club J.LEAGUE" —co-developed by Dentsu Inc. and the J.LEAGUE—as an example, I introduced app design strategies focused on the sports fan perspective. This time, from a more macro viewpoint, I will discuss the following two themes.

• The Positioning of Club J.LEAGUE within the J.LEAGUE's Digital Strategy
• Creating a win-win-win for fans, sponsor companies, and content holders

Advancing Service Integration and Data Consolidation Through the Practical Implementation of "J.LEAGUE ID"

The J.LEAGUE has now completed the development of "J.LEAGUE ID," a unified member ID service usable across various J.LEAGUE services.

Currently, you can log in to the following digital services using your common J.League ID:

Official smartphone app " Club J.LEAGUE "
Ticket e-commerce site " J.LEAGUE TICKET "
Merchandise e-commerce site " J.LEAGUE ONLINE STORE "

From the J.League's perspective, this means we can now separately collect a user's "match attendance data," "ticket purchase data," and "merchandise purchase data." By integrating this data under the J.League ID, we have established an environment enabling appropriate marketing based on this unified information (we also hope to integrate "viewing data" from DAZN in the future).

Furthermore, by enabling clubs to utilize data collected under J.League leadership, the initiative aims to invigorate club-level marketing activities, which in turn will generate even more data.

Figure 1: Digital Services Centered on the J.League ID

The J.League ID can be considered the foundation of the J.League's digital strategy.

However, for the "digital service ecosystem" centered around the J.League ID to function effectively, sufficient data accumulation is essential. If each service remains small-scale and inactive, it will only result in "fragmented data accumulating across services" or "data accumulating only for a core group of fans."

Therefore, scaling each service is an essential requirement.

Among the "official app," "ticket e-commerce site," and "merchandise e-commerce site," the official app "Club J.LEAGUE" is expected to serve as the "entry point for acquiring a J.LEAGUE ID" because it is the service with the widest reach. For this reason, "Club J.LEAGUE" must be scaled up to become a sufficiently large-scale service.

Achieving a win-win-win for "fans," "sponsoring companies," and "the J.LEAGUE"

How can we scale "Club J.LEAGUE" to accelerate digital marketing through the J.LEAGUE ID?

Our solution was to aim for a "win-win-win service."

This means realizing a service that provides "delightful value" for each of the three stakeholders supporting the J.League: "Fans (Supporters)," "Sponsor Companies," and "J.League (Content Holder)."

Figure 2: Club J.LEAGUE Service Concept

The "value" we want to provide to each stakeholder through this app is as follows.

Value Provided to Fans (Supporters)
・Providing information and content that enhances the stadium viewing experience
・Offering rewarding experiences through activations with sponsor companies
・Offering special incentives for continued match attendance

Value Provided to J.League (Content Holder)
・Leveraging existing fans to attract potential fans to matches and increase new fans ( see Part 2 of the series )
・Preventing existing fan attrition and maximizing LTV (Lifetime Value)
・Enriching customer data

Value provided to sponsor companies (partners)
・Contribute to calculating the "return on investment" of sponsoring the J.League
・Integration with companies' existing digital marketing efforts
・Efficiently executing customer activation starting from the J.LEAGUE

And with "Club J.LEAGUE," we aim to scale the service by creating a positive cycle like the one below.

Fans... Positioning fans as "ambassadors" to make them key drivers in scaling the service ( see Part 2 of the series )

J. LEAGUE... Scales the service primarily through PR leveraging owned media and content capabilities

Sponsor Companies... Positioning this as part of regular marketing activities leads to scaling the service toward potential fans

This "triple win" model is a concept applicable not only to the J.LEAGUE but also to various sports organizations, governing bodies, and teams. More broadly, it could be adapted to content industries beyond sports.

How can content contribute to sponsor companies' marketing?

The key to realizing the "triple win" we've discussed and scaling the app lies with the sponsor companies.

This time, we aimed to create "a new form of collaboration between content holders and sponsor companies" through the app. To achieve this, we developed the app in close cooperation with J.LEAGUE sponsor companies from the conceptual stage.

Therefore, next time, continuing with the example of the J.LEAGUE Official App "Club J.LEAGUE," we will introduce "how the content provides benefits for sponsor companies' marketing."

We also plan to explain elements touched upon briefly this time, such as "measuring return on investment" and "customer activation" for sponsor companies.