LIV Golf: From Zero to MLP in four months

Who is LIV Golf?

LIV Golf is a groundbreaking professional golf tour that's on a mission to revitalise the game and fan experiences.

Established in 2021, the league features 54-hole tournaments with no cuts, shotgun starts, and a unique team-play format.

With a global vision, and a commitment to bringing fans: "Golf, but not as you know it," LIV Golf has rapidly expanded its reach — hosting tournaments in Saudi Arabia, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Today, the league continues to build a passionate fanbase worldwide.

LIV Golf approached Future Platforms while it was still a relatively new organisation that lacked a solid digital infrastructure. The league works with multiple event management companies, each with different technical and data requirements, making it challenging for the brand to develop impactful digital solutions.

As a highly ambitious and forward-thinking organisation, LIV Golf sought a partner capable of delivering a world-class video-on-demand platform. They needed a personalised and agile approach to develop a comprehensive ecosystem to keep pace with the rapidly evolving golf industry.

Brief

Key Outcome: Reimagine LIV Golf's digital ecosystem and create an immersive app experience for fans.

Our goal was to develop a live event app that could adapt its appearance and functionalities based on the user's location: offering compelling video-on-demand content for fans at LIV Golf tournaments, watching at home, or on the move.

To accomplish this, we needed to revamp LIV Golf's digital infrastructure to support its growth and innovative ambitions. We established robust data pipelines, integrations, and workflows to ensure the app was powered by accurate, up-to-date information.

Next, we created unique features such as interactive maps, shot tracing, and personalised news feeds to help the LIV Golf app attract media attention and commercial opportunities. To expedite the app's full release, we aimed to deliver our initial Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) version in approximately four months.

Approach

Future Platforms leveraged the Flutter Framework to deliver LIV Golf's dynamic digital ecosystem.

Leveraging the Flutter Framework for the first time, we rapidly developed the core features of LIV Golf+ MLP across iOS and Android platforms. This cross-platform approach, built on a single codebase, enabled us to iterate efficiently and deliver a consistent user interface UI ahead of the full LIV Golf app launch.

We established robust data pipelines to power the video-on-demand platform's real-time features. This involved defining consistent data formats across the LIV Golf app's various third-party sources, as well as aligning stakeholders and event management companies with LIV Golf's vision.

This integration work ensured the app could seamlessly ingest and process live, up-to-the-minute information; delivering a responsive experience for users as LIV Golf events unfold.

Highlight

We created PR-worthy features to drive better commercial outcomes for LIV Golf.

Our ability to take a holistic approach, combined with our technical expertise and agile processes, resonated with LIV Golf and generated positive media attention for the app's immersive features.

Some of the LIV Golf app's standout capabilities include:

• Interactive Maps: The app's map functionality helps users track player locations and navigate the course during events, empowering remote fans to follow the action in real time.
• Shot Tracing: This feature tracks a player's performance on each hole, visualising the ball's trajectory and marking where it landed after each shot.
• LIV Briefing: The app’s LIV Briefing news feed is powered by advanced algorithmic ‘logic streams’ that analyse users’ preferences and deliver relevant content on their favourite players, leaderboards, tournament news, and more. Rather than overwhelming fans with generic event coverage, LIV Briefing helps fans stay in-the-loop with the content they care about most, boosting user engagement.
• AI Caddie: Developed in partnership with Google, AI Caddie is an advanced AI-powered assistant designed to guide fans through the LIV Golf world. Ask questions, get real-time information on teams, scores, stats, and more to enrich the fan experience.

While AI Caddie is still in development, this industry-first AI application will soon provide users with unparalleled interaction and engagement opportunities, taking LIV Golf’s digital strategy to the next level.

Outcome

We transformed LIV Golf's digital landscape and delivered a cutting-edge video-on-demand platform.

Our expertise extended beyond app development. We played a pivotal role in redesigning LIV Golf's overall data infrastructure and organisational processes, demonstrating our ability to drive strategic transformation.

We're immensely proud of our team's efforts in bringing to life LIV Golf's complex MLP in just four months and enhancing the app’s personalisation features.

The LIV Golf+ app has become the cornerstone of the brand’s digital strategy and has proven its ability to meet fans' needs, particularly at live events, where user engagement spikes significantly. With around 70,000–80,000 downloads and over 30,000 monthly active users, the video-on-demand platform has earned a 5-star rating and plays a crucial role in advancing LIV Golf's commercial and marketing goals.