Designing a Football App for PSG Fans
Discover how Future Platforms collaborated with Paris Saint-Germain F.C. to create the perfect app for the club’s fans.
Client
PSG
The client
Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) is a professional football club based in the French capital of Paris. Founded in 1970, following a merger between Paris FC and Stade Saint-Germain, the team is now France’s most successful professional soccer club — having won over 40 official honours, including eleven league titles and one major European trophy.
Our brief
Future Platforms was approached by PSG to help the club rebuild and relaunch its mobile football app in React Native.
The core goal of the rebuild was to deliver the experience that fans expect from such a high-profile football club in the top division by creating the best football app. Fans expected an interactive, content-rich, and personalised experience that would grant them better access to their favourite players — all while reducing technical debt and increasing delivery efficiency.
What we delivered
In the course of a 9-month-long development cycle, Future Platforms undertook a comprehensive rebuild of the PSG app from the ground up in React Native to drive deeper engagement and interaction with fans.
We also wanted to build a more stable football app (after fan complaints about the instability of previous iterations) with the aim of leveraging the solution to grow ticket and merchandise sales through integration with their supporting platforms.
We also built native features and React plugins (where React Native libraries or plugins did not yet exist) as and when they were required.
As a result, we were able to build and launch a brand-new version of the football app, which included engaging features such as:
- Custom native integration work for video playback, which could also support relevant team news, articles, and blog posts.
- Scores, stats, and standings, as well as other relevant information regarding players and fixtures.
- E-commerce integration with the club’s online store, as well as special offers, discounts, codes and member benefits.
- A PSG app TV service to support fans viewing games through livestreams via video subscription accounts.
- Stadium notifications to support fans viewing games at the grounds.
Working alongside PSG to create the best football app, we collaborated on their tight design and layout specifications to deliver an effective final product.
Through thoughtful planning, we considered the core needs of the user and what kind of features we thought would be most important to fans. Taking high-level requirements, these were broken down into a series of Epics and associated user stories. We then worked through a MoSCoW prioritisation to identify critical features and NFRs.
“What our client says “Three years ago, the club's president, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, set out a vision of an app that would take the club to the forefront of the industry and would be co-created with the fans, and it took 18 months of creative research and development to bring this to life. The app is fan-based and has been rebuilt to focus on what fans want so they can find what they need quickly and easily. It’s a platform to power innovation and new digital experiences over the years to come.””Russell Stopford, Chief Digital OfficerPSG
Support
We had a maintenance and reporting contract in place throughout the project, which included regular reporting on the performance of the PSG app, all integrations and SDKs. This highlighted potential updates well before they became critical, ensuring they were planned and delivered in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.
The maintenance contract included SLAs covering response times and target service restoration. These are covered by service credits should we not respond or deliver to expectation and were never enacted.
To ensure well-defined and well-planned work, we use our standard process of Discover, Define and Deliver. This allows budgets to be planned and approved based on known deliverables.
Future Platforms works on Time & Materials, with regular open reporting on past and forecast burn, to ensure that resources are directed cost-effectively. Running projects using agile scrum boards ensures developers always have access to tasks. This allowed PSG to easily view what was planned in each sprint through their daily and weekly involvement in sprint ceremonies.
As a result of our partnership, PSG has since achieved:
- A 4.6 rating for Android versions of the football app, with 1m+ downloads
- Over 170k downloads on Huawei app gallery
- A 4.8 rating on iOS for the PSG app