Fueling the Weekly Rhythm of Football
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Product strategyExperience strategy
Data & analytics
User research & testing
UI/UX design
Technical consulting
The NFL dominates the American sports landscape — and it's not close. It accounted for 93 of the 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in all of 2024 (Source: Sportico), plus fans are engaged year-round across the NFL landscape, including fantasy leagues, betting, new TV shows, and millions attending training camps and live games. But the NFL app was a disjointed, static experience, lacking the vibrancy, energy and boldness of the league itself.
The NFL partnered with Code and Theory to redesign the league's app, with an emphasis on reimagining a video-first fan experience.
By elevating its mobile app experience—from design to content and functionality—we helped the NFL simultaneously drive more fan loyalty, attract a broader swath of new fans, and grow its emerging NFL+ streaming product, the NFL's D2C service for watching in-market and national games.
Impact
- 2.3B Minutes streamed in app
- 21.3 Minutes spent on average per visit
- 5M+ Users weekly
- The launch earned press in Fast Company, "How the new NFL app keeps you hooked on football all week"
- With more than 400K reviews, the app has earned a 4.5 App Store rating and is #20 out of all Sports apps
Key Takeaways
- Transformed the NFL app into a dynamic, video-first hub tailored to every fan’s unique engagement journey.
- Created an innovative modular design that adapts seamlessly across 32 teams, events, and personalized user preferences.
- Boosted fan loyalty, expanded audience reach, and accelerated NFL+ growth through a bold, fan-first digital evolution.
Bringing Fans Closer to the Game
The NFL Product and Design teams worked closely with Code and Theory to redefine the user experience from the ground up. The new direction — forget the infinite feed. The NFL app mirrors the natural rhythm of football. The week starts with hyped-up matchups on Wednesday, flows into game days with previews and live streams, and winds down with replays and recaps. It’s football’s storyline brought to life, keeping fans hooked from kickoff to the final whistle.
Giving Fans the Experience They Actually Want
Combining the NFL's proprietary research with our audience and market analysis, we evaluated how the app could enhance the modern fan experience. Fans are often confused by video services and subscriptions and frustrated with commoditized sports content. In close partnership with the NFL, we reimagined the app to deliver an easy-to-use, fast, personalized experience.
By overhauling the architecture, design, and user experience to be D2C-centric, and highlighting unique NFL features like Next Gen Stats and exclusive content, we created a refreshed, dynamic, and valuable app for all fans.
32 Teams. 33 Design Systems. 1 App.
The app’s secret sauce, which fans experience but don’t see, is a modular design system built to adapt dynamically across all 32 teams, different game days, events, and a myriad of user preferences. Using atomic design principles, the app scales seamlessly for both macro-level needs (NFL-wide branding) and micro-level moments (individual team matchups or live events like the NFL Draft or Combine).
Making Sundays Even More Special
Sundays are appointment viewing for NFL fans from early day to late night, whether you watch at home, at the bar, or on the go, with an average of 14 games being played between 1 pm – 8 pm EST. NFL+ offers the chance to get live local and national games and RedZone in the users’ hands, wherever they are, to deliver the ultimate Gameday experience. To get fans into the action as quickly as possible, the new app:
- Lands users on an immersive, watch-first experience showcasing multiple live video streams featuring NFL RedZone, live local games, national games and NFL Network via NFL+
- Makes the homepage a fan’s one-stop shop for the week’s schedule, including audio streams for out-of-market games, game highlights and pregame video previews, or see what they missed via Game Replays
Reinventing the Game Page
For fans looking for a deeper dive, we reinvented Game pages, which pull together live
and VOD video, audio, play-by-play, stats, drive charts and more. This includes new features
including:
- A seamless pinned video player that enables game video or audio to stay with you as you travel around the app, allowing multitasking across scores, reading news and following the game
- A new “game switcher” that lets fans quickly jump between games and RedZone
Built for Beyond Game Day
The habits, behaviors, and passions of Sunday Gameday were the starting point for the experience, but the new NFL app stays in tune with the rhythms of the NFL day, week, and season while always keeping the fan at the center of the experience. Throughout the week, the app's Watch & News screens dynamically adapt to the ebbs and flows of the week, transitioning from Injury Reports in the run-up to Gameday to the Game experience itself to the analysis of the week and the previews of the next one.
Beyond the season, there is plenty of enhanced action around the NFL Combine and Draft. The app includes an immersive draft tracker and an in-depth look at player performance, comparisons, projections and team needs.
