Bally Live
Free, social streaming platform
My Role
Product Designer
Brief
Develop an accessible streaming service that offers complimentary content, incorporating a unique incentive program designed to encourage user engagement with additional Bally offerings.
Team
Dom Lobban - Product Designer
Sina Miri - SVP Next Gen
Sam Miri - SVP Sensor Technology
William Eaton - Project Manager
Suresh Cherukupalli - VP Engineering
Platforms
Web, iOS, Android
Overview.
This project was about reconstructing the concept of free sports streaming through a rewards-driven platform. The objective was to provide a communal, enjoyable and free platform for users to connect with sports content in novel ways.
I was a co-leader throughout the design process of Bally Live right up to the MVP release, working cohesively with various international teams and closely liaising with the chairman as a major stakeholder. Bally Live was a highly ambitious venture, and our goal was to mirror this ambition in our designs.
The platform brought up some unique design challenges and user experience choices that wouldn't typically surface in conventional mobile apps. Having to reproduce designs 1 for 1 in a landscape format proved to be a difficult, yet rewarding challenge.
Outcome
The app peaked at #36 in the Apple Sports charts and now has a regular core user base of about 1,000 daily users. The rewards incentive has proved to be key to establishing a loyal user base.
1
Create a social, free live streaming platform for like minded individuals
With the launch of the 'Ballyverse' a suite of products from Bally's including a sportsbook offering and online casino experiences. Bally Live was viewed as an integral piece to help foster a sense of community for users across our digital products.
Being free to use meant that it opened the door to a whole suite of new customers who would not have previously interacted with Bally's products.
2
Retain users through innovative rewards programs and incentives
The introduction of 'Bally Live' also saw the pioneering of a revitalised rewards system for the company, including the introduction of 'Bally Bucks'. A virtual currency designed to keep players engaged with the application by offering the currency for completing a range of activities.
3
Upsell users into the additional Bally products promoting an omnichannel experience
The ultimate aim was to integrate our universal onboarding system to allow users to seamlessly sync their accounts between the different Bally products, turning free-to-play customers into paid customers was key to the products success.
Atomic design was an essential concept to any large projects at Bally. In order for me to be able to build effectively at scale, it was important to have a robust system of components that were reproducible and consistent.
Using a design system to manage our components and page templates allowed for timely changes across all breakpoints and platforms, and ensures a level of quality and consistency in our components.
Crowd Zone was essential to the core principles of Bally Lives' inception, creating communities and exploring rivalries. We were keen to create an open forum for like-minded individuals to form communities and earn rewards together.
Whilst forming communities was key to the principles so was forming rivalries. We wanted to create a playful, safe but unmistakably competitive environment for users to go back and forth over hours and hours of sports content.
At the forefront of any social experience is chat. Ensuring that users have an efficient way to stay up to date with friends was essential to the applications success.
We really drew inspiration from messaging services like Telegram and Discord who pay great attention to detail ensuring a joyful experience for the user when staying in contact with friends.
We wanted the chat functionality to be part of the experience but not noticed, as unobtrusive as possible, whilst maintaining the full functionality of other native chat experiences.
With social interaction and community being pivotal to the apps core principles, a watch party feature made a lot of sense to elevate the connections that individuals could form on the platform.
We really drew inspiration from messaging services like Telegram and Discord who pay great attention to detail ensuring a joyful experience for the user when staying in contact with friends.
With all these other social features in mind the 'Friends' section really linked all the social features together making it as easy as possible for people to stay in contact and see what other members of their community are up to.
With rich presence and quick access to friends currently in the same stream as you we made it as easy as possible to stay in contact with the people who are most like-minded.
This project is still being built
Please check back soon to see new updates!