The Open

The R&A came to UNRVLD with a clear ambition: to build the digital strategy and platform that would push The Open to the forefront of the world's leading sporting events by re-engaging existing fans and capturing a new generation.

Heritage events like The Open still pull crowds, but the in-stadium audience is a small fraction of the calendar-year audience, and the digital relationship is where the next generation of fans is recruited. The off-season is the harder problem. An event without a year-round digital relationship is trading on accumulated brand equity that needs constant replenishment, and replenishment increasingly happens digitally.

Younger audiences who form their relationship with sport through their phones don’t separate the championship from the rest of the calendar; if the relationship goes quiet for eleven months, the brand goes with it. The brief was to change that by building the platform, the content architecture and the fan membership product that would make The Open a year-round relationship, rather than a four-day event.

UNRVLD designed and built a platform that treats the full calendar as the product. We integrated the story of qualification, ticketing and hospitality sales, merchandise and the live event itself into a single connected experience. Live championship mode lets millions of fans engage in real time, with live scoring, an always-on video hub, player tracking and dynamic data feeds.

The Open TV delivers multiple live on-course channels, configured per market for TV rights compliance, alongside hundreds of highlight clips available throughout the year. Off-event, enhanced editorial, player profiles and a multi-event content approach sustain the relationship across every month of the calendar.

The One Club membership product, built into the same platform, gives The R&A a direct, owned relationship with fans for the first time. The platform was built on Sitecore, integrated with Secutix for ticketing, Stream AMG for video and Akamai and AWS for global delivery at scale.

• 250k

  One Club membership sign-ups post launch

• 56%

  Average session duration increase

• 100m+

  Fans engaging annually

• 72%

  Uplift in revenue generated through the platform

The platform transformed how fans experience The Open across the full calendar year. A single destination now connects qualification, ticketing, hospitality, merchandise and the live event itself — supported by a membership product that gives The R&A a direct, owned relationship with its global audience for the first time

Revenue through the platform grew 72%, average session duration rose 56%, and the One Club Membership platform attracted 250,000 new sign-ups after launch.

Around 100 million fans now engage with The Open across the calendar year.

The work has taken the Sitecore Ultimate Experience Award (2019), Website of the Year in 2019 (The Drum) and 2020 (Prolific North), and the Sports Technology Awards in 2020.