How automation transformed sports broadcasting: From 2+ Hours to 10 Minutes and 81% higher satisfaction

A CMS operator can automate the widget publishing workflow during key sports match events, minimizing manual effort and enhancing audience engagement.

• Sports & Entertainment
• B2B SaaS
• CMS Design

About LiveLike

LiveLike is a B2B SaaS company that empowers media organizations worldwide to transform customer platforms into immersive, communal, and interactive experiences.

Businesses use LiveLike CMS to easily publish interactive content (Widgets, Chat, Rewards, and more), offering their customers a dynamic, engaging online experience in a streaming platform. It’s all about bringing people into the action and making their time spent with the brand more interactive and enjoyable.

Project Overview

Context

It’s the FIFA World Cup final, and James, a seasoned sports broadcaster, is gearing up for a long night. 1 hour before kickoff, he’s already at his desk, logging into the CMS (Content Management System) to set up the match program and prepare interactive content — polls, trivia, and fan reactions — to keep millions of viewers engaged.

As the game begins, James is locked in, eyes glued to multiple screens. A goal is scored in the match! He quickly scrambles to create a poll widget in the CMS: “Who was the most crucial player in this goal? A) Striker, B) Midfielder, C) Assist Provider, D) Goalkeeper’s Mistake.” He rushes to publish it, and within seconds, it appears on viewers’ screens for live interaction.

But the game doesn’t slow down, and neither does James. A red card, a penalty, a VAR check — each moment demands new widgets, manually created and published through the CMS. Sitting through the entire 90+ minutes, he repeats this process over and over, struggling to keep up with the action instead of focusing on delivering a seamless, real-time experience for viewers.

This is exactly the challenge we set out to solve. Broadcasters like James shared their frustrations with this manual process.

Problem

Sports broadcasters spend excessive time manually preparing interactive content like polls and quizzes before each match, limiting real-time engagement and efficiency. There’s a need for an automated solution to streamline content creation, save time, and enhance audience interaction during live events.

Design Goals

1. Speed Up Widget Publication — Reduce manual effort to streamline the publishing process.
2. Maintain Customization — Ensure CMS operators can modify content as needed.
3. Enhance Performance Tracking — Enable monitoring of automation history and engagement data for optimization.
4. Boost Engagement — Increase interactive content usage and audience participation.
5. Ensure Scalability & Efficiency — Support CMS operators in managing multiple games seamlessly.

Success Metrics

1. Increase User Satisfaction — Achieve a 75% satisfaction rate for the widget publication experience.
2. Improve Customer Retention — Enhance workflow efficiency to boost customer retention by 30% within 6 months.
3. Drive New Customer Acquisition — Secure 2 new customers for this feature within 3 months.

Uncovering User Needs

Target Audience

CMS Operators are employees of sports broadcasting companies are responsible for managing and publishing interactive content (quizzes, polls, live reactions, and more) during live events.

Widget Publication Journey in the CMS

To verify challenges and ideas, I conducted qualitative and quantitative research. This gave valuable insights into their pain points and expectations.

How satisfied is it to manage & publish widgets in programs?

How do you feel about using CMS to meet business goals?

Insights from Research

• Quantitative research reveals a contrast between the widget publication experience and overall CMS usability. While 83% of users are satisfied with the CMS in meeting business goals, 36% are dissatisfied and 29% are neutral about the widget publication process. This highlights the need for improvements in the widget publishing workflow. Streamlining processes, and enhancing UI clarity.
• The challenge of Managing Multiple Events: Users find it difficult to handle multiple events simultaneously.
• Resource Intensive Operations: The necessity of hiring additional staff to manage multiple programs highlights inefficiencies in the current workflow, suggesting automation could reduce resource strain.
• Desire for Automation: Users expressed a strong need for an automated solution to eliminate the tedious process of manual data entry, demonstrating the demand for efficiency and time-saving tools.
• Time Constraints on Content Creation: The difficulty in generating creative content for widgets under tight deadlines emphasizes the need for a faster, more efficient content creation process.
• Time-Consuming Content Publishing: Broadcasters are spending entire game hours observing and manually publishing content for every action, highlighting the need for a more efficient, automated workflow to manage real-time content during live events.

After closely analyzing research reports, I discovered a valuable opportunity to introduce Football Live Action Automation, simplifying the CMS operator’s workflow. This approach sets the stage for expanding automation to other sports in future iterations.

Ideation

Closely worked with the product owner, and we partnered with Stats Perform, a leading provider of real-time match data. Their platform offers comprehensive live game events — such as goals, penalties, fouls, player stats, and more — across a variety of sports. This integration allows us to deliver an automated widget experience, reducing manual effort and significantly boosting user engagement.

Identifying Real-World Opportunities for Millions of Football Fans

To kick things off, I listed widget opportunities like a Text Poll for Red Cards and worked with the development team to pull relevant data points from the StatsPerform API, enabling us to automate dynamic content seamlessly. Over time, we expanded automation by incorporating additional scenarios in future iterations.

User Flow to Setup An Automation in CMS

• Select “Football Live Action” from the list of widgets and a form will show up.
• Enter “Match ID” (copied from the Stats Perform dashboard).
• Choose and customize the game actions (e.g., goals, penalties, player stats) you want to automate.
• Press “Automate” to finalize and activate the widget automation.

Solution

I refined the designs iteratively, incorporating feedback and usability insights to improve the experience.

1. Widget List

This screen displays all available widgets for an event. Users can select a Football Live Action widget under Automated Widgets to start the automation workflow.

2. Configuration Page

This screen allows users to configure automation by entering a Match ID (from Stats Perform) and optionally customizing Live Action content if needed.

3. Edit Live Action (Optional)

This screen allows users to customize beyond the default presets created by the LiveLike team. Users can reuse data tokens in their editorial work to blend dynamic content with static content. The UI looks different based on the widget type, such as Alerts, Quizzes, and more.

4. Active Automations

This screen allows users to see all active automation in one place, with options to disable or delete them. Additionally, users can navigate to real-time analytics from here.

5. Automation Analytics

This screen displays all published widgets in a program in real-time, along with each widget’s user impressions, engagement, and the average engagement rate of that automation. It enables users to easily adjust their content strategy based on the data.

Conclusion

Football Live Action Automation streamlined widget publication, reducing manual effort while retaining customization for flexibility. Real-time analytics enabled operators to refine content strategies, boosting interactive engagement. Most notably, the average time required to complete a task was reduced from over 120 minutes to just 1–10 minutes, drastically improving workflow efficiency.

From a business perspective, these improvements led to an 81% increase in positive feedback and helped improve customer retention by 29% within six months, making significant progress toward the 30% goal. Additionally, the feature successfully acquired three new customers, with more in discussion, demonstrating its market potential.