Streaming platform doubles-down on catering sports experience to customers

SlingTV set out to partner with a vendor capable of filtering their business challenges and turning them into tangible, and workable solutions. Given TribalScale’s work with previous companies, we provided Sling with the necessary skill-set and members to get in touch with their audience. We understood the challenges as followed:
- Sports users are not as engaged in Sling after playoffs for their favorite team and sport
- Sports is consumed virtually now more than ever, users have took to the screen for their entertainment
- Attract attention and retention to sports content on Sling
- Understand the motivations, behaviors and pain points of current sports enthusiasts on Sling
Personas surrounding current sports watchers of Sling
Feature implementation roadmap
Alternative areas of opportunity
Sling sought out a team equipped to help them pinpoint what makes their user-base tick. Given TribalScale’s involvement with streaming services, we worked with the Sling team to identify significant business metrics, accounting for where they are now, and where they want to be. By recruiting various cohorts of Sling users who love sports, we were able to provide Sling with a vision of what those users did and did not value.
R E C R U I T M E N T
We worked with Sling to understand in what ways their current product was under-serving. Organizing our criteria under three different cohorts, we defined them as: current sports enthusiast Sling users, sports enthusiast Sling users who have unsubscribed, and sports enthusiasts on other platforms. By recruiting the relevant cohorts, this would allow us to disassociate the user from the product – allowing us to be problem-centric versus solution-centric.
R E S E A R C H
After interviewing our users by cohort, we synthesized our findings via affinity-mapping, clustering themes that were noticeable based on: behaviours, motivations and pain points. The next stage of filtration consisted of a journeymap. This journeymap put into perspective the touchpoints, feelings, thoughts and pain points of a sports enthusiast after their favourite game series was wrapping up.
- Proto-personas
- User Interviews
- Journeymapping
- Personas
While our work with Sling is ongoing, the engagement allows us to put into practice our tried and true methodologies when it comes to user-research. How might we work to understand what makes sports enthusiasts tick these days? Sports venues are still adjusting to post-COVID-19 conditions and many sports enthusiasts have taken to streaming applications to watch their favourite teams – often cutting the cord on cable.
We continue to work with the Sling team to provide relevant solutions to their business needs. Fascination during this engagement stems from the unknown – letting users’ voice’s be heard helps tailor future features to their needs.
- Customer: motivations, pain points, and behaviours
- Updated user-persona
- Areas of opportunity

shruti gupta
Product Designer @ TribalScaleSee how TribalScale is solving problems today for the entertainment industry
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