According to a 2019 SSRS/Luker on Trends Sports Poll, there was an all-time high of 30.2 million Hispanic NFL fans living in the U.S. in 2019, up 5% from the previous year, with Mexico having the largest NFL fan base outside of the U.S. It’s not just due to geographic proximity, but also to the fact that television programming has a lot to do with Mexico’s love of the American sport. Mexican TV stations have been broadcasting NFL games since the 1960s.
Steeler Nation is a global phenomenon, with Pittsburgh Steelers fans in every country, in every city in the world.
Keeping their global fan-base in mind, the Steelers have developed a comprehensive international strategy for their digital products, with their mobile app offering content in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, and more recently, German.
Reagan Berube, Jeff Brown, and Melanie Harris of the Steelers creatively leveraged our cards-based architecture to offer a rich, media-focused hub, Steelers in Español, with native Spanish content of different types:
- News
- Videos
- Photo galleries
- Audio
- Push-notification category for Spanish content
It is noteworthy that this content is unique original material that the Steelers create for a Spanish audience. These are not simply translated versions of English news/video content in the app.
The Steelers have already established a German section in their app, as well as the ability to do push-notifications to German content. Starting this summer, they plan to begin producing a regular schedule of original German editorial features that are educational and historical in nature.
“We are always thinking of ways to improve how we engage our fans through our content — in a number of different languages,” said Reagan Berube, the Steelers Director of Content. “Our mobile app is always a critical part of those considerations.
The Steelers have made optimizing push notifications a priority — including those in Spanish and German. The team has tracked pushes to non-English language content within the app to both those who have opted in and geo-targeted pushes to a specific country or region.
For the 2021 NFL Draft, the Steelers in Español hub contained a range of items tailored to the Draft, including special features discussing the Draft and the picks.
