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One of the highlights in the cricket calendar nears its climax as the Women's T20 World Cup Final takes place this weekend in Dubai. After a host of big names were knocked out, including England and reigning champions Australia, away from the pitch the big-name sites run by organisers, rights-holders, and broadcasters point to some of the challenges faced by modern sports media, and how best to tackle them.
We love sport. We've reported on events around the world, been as fans in the stands to just as many, and worked with sports owners and media for decades. It's why we continually look to make the technology we build work harder for owners and users so fans can get more from the things they love. This series Excellence in Action looks at some of the best ways sports owners and publishers are talking to fans - whatever the sport, and wherever they are. In this edition, we look at The ICC Women's T20 World Cup.
The crack of willow on leather. The roar of an enraptured crowd. The screams of victory amid the groans of defeat. Good sport never fails to move.
When South African batter Anneke Bosch swatted Australian bowler Megan Schutt's full-toss to the midwicket boundary for four, not only did it send home countless dejected Aussie cricket fans in one of the upsets of the tournament, it also lit the touchpaper for a flurry of action in response to the result and showed again why sports events provide some of the biggest challenges for those who cover them, and those who build the sites and apps which fans depend on.
Reports are to be filed, conferences attended, interviews edited, galleries assembled, reaction gathered, summaries compiled, opinions written, and a sea of content packages created.
Publishing tools and countless platforms will be stretched to their limits - and sometimes beyond - to push reportage as quickly as possible to the outside world and in readiness for the traffic surges major sports and publishing sites will experience as news breaks that six-time and reigning champs Australia are out, and perennial underdogs South Africa are in the Final to face either India or New Zealand. And the flood of ticket requests coming in from South African fans too!
Whoever wins, a new name will be etched on the trophy for the first time.
Meanwhile, at least some journalists in the Press Room are crossing their fingers that some ancient CMS running a website somewhere don't spring a leak, and the teams responsible for keeping countless websites and apps on the road are staring at their analytics screens with equal hope!
A test of speed and endurance
The World Cup has been a test of endurance as much as skill for the elite of women’s cricket, with evening temperatures in Dubai and Sharjah regularly hitting over 35 degrees centigrade. As Aussie all-rounder Kim Garth said: “It’s obviously very hot and humid but it’s not until you actually get in it and start exercising in it that you realise how zapping it can be.”
It isn’t just the players feeling the heat with a demanding schedule of 23 games over three weeks. The world’s media and rights holders are in town, backed by an army of support staff in newsrooms and production facilities on-site and worldwide, all bearing the expectation of millions of fans that everything works seamlessly and instantly.
In the UK, the conclusion of major sports events used to be measured by how many kettles were simultaneously turned on to make a cup of tea after a match ended. In the world of digital sports media, it's how many users hit the site per second which can soon let you know when something truly epic has happened. When your measure is tens or hundreds of thousands of fans on a site concurrently it's critical not only to plan your coverage well, but also to have the right tools backing you up on the ground and in the cloud where it matters.
In this part of a regular series looking at the best of sports media, we look at some of the coolest things the best sites have brought to fans this month to help them get the most from the Women's T20 World Cup.
For the absolute removal of doubt: we do not work with or on the sites below... we just think what they are doing is great and are prime exemplars of the challenges that great sports coverage presents to media and digital teams.
The official website Match Centre of the T20 Women's World Cup
The major players
In Dubai, the International Cricket Council’s official microsite for the tournament takes up the challenge of not only being a hub of coverage, but also of being the official site for all news and background for fans worldwide - requirements which ramp up enormously the workload facing the delivery teams behind it all.
To say its coverage is broad would be an understatement and we have little doubt that behind the log-in and members area are additional microsites for media, partners, and organisers. All need their own management and support.
But, we're here for the fans! Bringing the action to the fore, a stand-out feature we love is the impressive ball-by-ball text commentary in its Match Centre, a comprehensive section which also hosts the scorecards, stats, latest video, and even a fun and engaging interactive predictor game.
Given the results of the week and their status in the sport, you could forgive Cricket Australia for being solely concerned with their own world champions but its site too has been the epitome of servants to the sport with a slick match centre for every game, updated with a detailed report at close of play regardless of who has been competing. Hat tip to that and the web team's excellent coverage across the board.
Cricket Australia manages to make its rolling match coverage of Women's T20 Cricket World Cup fixtures highly engaging and personable.
Speaking of the team - the media team that is - we like that their match reports buck an increasing trend of relying solely on AI, choosing to use only bylined journalists and news agencies to compile their coverage.
We know there is a place for AI in parsing data but if you follow our coverage on general AI trends, you'll know we are big fans of humans being at the centre of the action.
In the UK, TV giant Sky Sports hold the broadcast rights and it's no surprise to see its site jampacked with video and clips to enrich their written content. When it comes to TV sport, Sky have been one of the benchmarks for decades and it remains a wonder to see how they blend their broadcast coverage with site and app content.
Their engaging match report for England’s opening win over Bangladesh is enhanced with video stacks of highlights from the game, together with embedded social media posts and reaction too - a proper 'in the moment' experience for fans coming to the site after the action.
Sky Sports uses video embeds really well in its coverage of the Women's T20 Cricket World Cup
What the fans want
Fans now expect to see a rich variety of content from these stellar events and - whatever their sport - they hope to find some if not all of the following:
A one-stop shop offering all of the above is a supporter's dream but for media site owners and rights holders it can present a world of pain, often requiring several content management systems [CMS] or other platforms to coherently bring all this content and data together.
We at Glide have done the hard yards, furlongs, and laps in the world of journalism and sports sites, and know first-hand about the demands that have to be met in the sports arena. It's why we have a sports-ready CMS.
We have worked extensively on cricket sites in the past, so know well the impact of a match-winning six or a century by a big name superstar can have on sites and infrastructure: where gaps exist is where things can break, and no doubt all the sites above have spent months or years building seamless systems that minimise the possibility of slowdown.
Glide: not stumped by sports
What can we learn from them and our own experiences?
Our own solution is a headless CMS that has been created to handle easily the varying expectations of media owners and sports fans alike. A headless CMS, where the content production and management is separated from any delivery channels - i.e. the sites, apps, newspapers, newsletters or wherever else the content is destined to go - meaning that even the largest surge in traffic to a page causes no slowdown or disruption to the CMS itself, or vice versa.
Not only is this great for peace of mind, it's good for budgets too, as the supporting infrastructure can always be 'right-sized' for the task it is responsible for.
Live Blogging is another of those very particular challenges synonymous with sports coverage which can actually present quite a significant challenge to the technology behind the pages.
There's lots of systems out there which can be bought in to manage Live Blogging or Live Reporting - that's not the problem.
The issue well out of sight of fans but which weigh on site owners is that typically those specialist systems live outside the organisation's main CMS - meaning a separate workflow, separate logins, separate screens, an integration somewhere between the two systems, and/or additional front-end work to combine the content on the site itself. And that's not even going into the extra costs, or the nuisance of having a second store for content. It explains why so many sports and news live reports rarely feature many of the best bespoke elements the 'main' site will have: they are limited just to the commonest embeds and standard functions.
Understanding this set of problems is why Glide offers an event blogging facility within its standard offering, Live Reporting, which tackles all the above issues as well as eliminating any secondary costs or integrations. All this means live reporting is easily handled - by individuals or whole teams distributed around the world - and can be instantaneous from a laptop in the stadium using our secure and performant cloud-based system.
Being collaborative with multiple contributors in the stadium and an office-based editor ensuring every aspect of the game is covered really helps publications to orchestrate coverage in a super engaging way, blending pitch-side reporter insights with the latest action shots and social media memes, leaning on Glide to drive posts back into those social conversations.
Why should your PR teams and social staff not get as much from Glide as your writers? Its ability to blend all the content in your estate, and power any part of the features which fans expect on sites, means they can drive traffic to what you want with pinpoint accuracy.
At its best at pace
Sport places greater demands for "smooth speed" than just about any other form of breaking news.
Even something as basic as cropping a picture for an article can eat up valuable time and delay hitting the publish button for vital seconds in the battle to attract Google’s attention, or simply to outpace everyone else fighting for your audience's engagement. While there may be great loyalty in sport, when it comes to seeing the latest headlines first, fans are easily appealed to by whomever breaks the news first.
Glide’s approach to pictures is simple: throw the picture in, and let the system do the work. This means captions, credits, metadata, other IPTC data, and - most importantly - any cropping and resizing is done instantly and automatically, such that all the vital information for SEO and image management is taken care of, and every picture is cut as intended for mobile, website, landscape, portrait, or any other placement or channel, all while your writer or photographer gets on with the important stuff: capturing the action.
Making edits to highlight a specific part of the image is the work of seconds too, perhaps making sure to bring the ball to the centre of the image or to ease a background element out of view.
That winning feeling
As content teams evolve to keep pace with new technology, new features are often bolted on to ageing pre-existing tech which was never originally designed to do the things they are increasingly being expected to do.
It reminds us of some of the charming but creaky old stadiums we have been in as reporters or fans, which sprouted new wings and extensions and periphery buildings which sent occupants round the bend literally and metaphorically, before they were eventually replaced with a glittering new venue which was purpose-built for what modern sports venues need.
With Glide CMS for Sports you are effectively combining multiple traditional CMS and other systems into one - for web, mobile, newsletters, live reporting, and even print and other channels - all mediated by a platform view which is designed to leverage the other vital systems which sports sites rely on, such as ticketing, stats, merchandising, membership areas, and more.
Behind that is a deep knowledge not just of the tech, but also the challenges of the sports sector.
We at Glide CMS know why event-specific support is vital for right-holders and teams, because matchday fans don't care if it's a weekend or a different timezone, and why easy integrations with the common media suppliers are to vital to publishers. We don't ask you who Getty Images is - we ask you which key you want to use to connect your account to Glide so you can browse your library instantly.
Sports is a very particular language. If you want to know about a CMS for Sports that speaks it fluently, contact us to talk more.
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No matter where you are on your CMS journey, we're here to help. Want more info or to see Glide Publishing Platform in action? We got you.
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