A data-driven approach to cricket: Yorkshire County Cricket Club's success story

About

Yorkshire County Cricket Club (YCCC) is a prestigious professional cricket club based at Headingley Cricket Ground. Hosting major matches such as England internationals, Test matches, and T20s, YCCC is also home to the Northern Superchargers in The Hundred. With a legacy spanning over 150 years, YCCC is committed to growing the game and engaging audiences through innovative strategies and community involvement.

Leading the charge in these efforts is Sam Gascoyne, YCCC's Head of Marketing and Communications. With over a decade of experience at the club, Sam has been instrumental in transitioning YCCC to a more data-driven approach, ensuring every decision is backed by actionable insights.

Challenges

YCCC faced significant challenges managing their diverse and siloed data sources, including ticketing systems, eCommerce platforms, and access control logs. The club struggled with:

Fragmented Data:  Data was scattered across systems, making it difficult to achieve a unified view of customers.

Inefficient Reporting:  Generating actionable insights required extensive manual effort, delaying decision-making.

Missed Opportunities for Personalisation:  Lack of centralised data hindered targeted marketing and engagement.

Scalability Issues:  Previous solutions were not equipped to handle the club’s growing needs, such as tracking key audience metrics and live campaign performance.

“We needed to transition from a fragmented data landscape to a unified, data-driven approach that would empower our teams to make informed decisions”

Sam Gascoyne
Head of Marketing and Communications at YCCC

Objectives

1. Establish a Single Source of Truth: Centralise all data sources into a unified data warehouse, providing an accessible and integrated platform.
2. Enable Real-Time Insights: Provide the team the ability to build live dashboards to monitor KPIs such as ticket sales, campaign performance and demographic data.
3. Enhance Personalisation: Utilise data to segment audiences and create tailored marketing campaigns.
4. Support Strategic Goals: Improve data visibility to align with YCCC’s broader objectives, including growing the game among diverse audiences.

Solution

Having explored several avenues and even considering building in house from scratch, YCCC concluded that Dot Collective’s data enablement tool was the most cost-effective solution that offered them everything they needed for a fraction of the price. Dot Collective collaborated closely with YCCC to design a solution that met their unique needs as a sports organisation.

Key steps included:

Single Source of Truth:  A central location for all data to be integrated, matched and made accessible to anyone across the organisation.

Custom Dashboards:  Provided pre-built and customisable dashboards powered by advanced analytics tools, offering real-time insights into key metrics such as audience demographics, ticket sales and campaign effectiveness. These dashboards were designed for scalability to accommodate future data sources.

Audience Segmentation:  Enabled advanced segmentation tools using machine learning algorithms to analyse customer behaviours and preferences. This allowed for dynamic segment creation based on ticket purchase history, event attendance and demographic data through our open data sources, significantly enhancing personalisation efforts.

Training and Onboarding:  Delivered comprehensive training sessions and user-friendly documentation. This included hands-on workshops to empower the team to create and modify dashboards independently, alongside ongoing support for troubleshooting and platform optimisation.

Results

Since implementing the data platform, YCCC has experienced significant improvements in efficiency and audience engagement:

1. Increased Opt-Ins:  Integrated data sources revealed 40,000 additional opt-ins, representing a 25-30% increase in audience reach. These opt-ins have been funnelled into tailored welcome campaigns, ensuring sustained engagement and reduced churn over time. YCCC are now seeing a growth in sales across their portfolio of products and memberships as a result of this uncovered data.
2. Open Data & Enhanced Personalisation:  By leveraging detailed segmentation, including demographic data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the club has been able to create highly targeted marketing efforts. This includes tailoring campaigns based on factors such as age, gender and socioeconomic background, leading to more meaningful engagement and better conversion rates. In doing so, the club has seen an uptick in open and click-through rates, directly contributing to higher ticket sales and merchandise revenue.
3. Tailored Experiences:  By analysing key demographic insights such as gender split and age demographics of attendees, YCCC can now create more personalised experiences for their supporters. This data-driven approach allows them to fine-tune event planning, optimise match day offerings and enhance overall fan engagement. Additionally, the club runs surveys to gather further insights into audience preferences, ensuring their approach aligns with supporter expectations and drives long-term engagement.
4. Time Savings:  Automated reporting processes have freed up substantial time, enabling the team to focus on strategy and execution rather than manual data tasks. For example, dashboards now provide instant updates on ticket sales and audience demographics, replacing hours of manual data collation.
5. Actionable Insights: Real-time dashboards have streamlined decision-making across departments, including marketing, operations and finance.
6. Strategic Growth:  Insights from the data platform have helped YCCC align with their ED&I strategy, focusing on diversifying their audience, increasing female memberships and improving accessibility.

“Having all our data integrated in one place has been transformative. We can now make data-driven decisions with confidence, improve campaign precision, and better engage with our supporters.”

Sam Gascoyne
Head of Marketing and Communications at YCCC

Looking Ahead

YCCC plans to further expand their use of the data platform by integrating additional data sources, such as access control systems, to create even more granular audience segments. The club is also exploring opportunities to track lifetime customer value and assess the effectiveness of targeted campaigns in increasing engagement and revenue.‍

“The platform is particularly well-suited for sports clubs that handle the majority of their campaigns and data management in-house. Its cost-effective nature ensures even resource-constrained teams can adopt a data-driven approach without compromising on functionality or efficiency.”

Sam Gascoyne
Head of Marketing and Communications at YCCC

See how Dot Collective can create the springboard for momentous organisational leaps with your data. Get in touch.