Over three years ago, Hong Kong China Rugby (HKCR) began working with GameDay. 

With the management software provided by a previous supplier deemed not fit for purpose, HKCR turned to GameDay to provide a more user-friendly functionality for their users and haven’t looked back since.

HKCR is the governing body for rugby union in Hong Kong. Founded in 1952 and since 1988 an affiliate of World Rugby (formerly the International Rugby Board), the union organises the world-renowned Cathay Pacific/HSBC Hong Kong Sevens, as well as its own domestic leagues across all age groups, genders and standards of play.

Domestically, Hong Kong Rugby has flourished in recent years, with 57 men’s teams playing in seven divisions and 24 women’s teams in three divisions.

A key tool utilised by HKCR is GameDay View, our business intelligence platform for real-time insights to support decision making.

Although the union are in the early stage of inception, GameDay View provides them with an easy-to-use platform and the ability to generate reports and gather details about their membership with ease.

“We’ve got a couple of slightly more advanced users who are now using [GameDay View] to generate income and collect fees,” said Rocky Chow, HKCR chief community officer.

“We had two or three large-sized clubs who were able to jump on, and with the support of GameDay, we were able to use them as pilots.

“It was an eye-opener for them. They were able to get real-time transaction data coming through as members paid fees, and also the ease of fees transferred from the platform to their bank account.

“Everything was seamless and smooth, and we’ve got a few advocates out of that.”

How can GameDay View help you?

GameDay View gives organisations the opportunity to learn more about their sport, members and participants, organisations and events – providing key insights, trends and predictive analysis on retention, participation, competitions, events, demographic data and more.

GameDay View also enables organisations to dive deeper into the data by benchmarking and reviewing growth or decline trends across sub-organisations, leagues, associations and clubs.

These types of insights allows decisions to be made based on real-time analytics, allowing users to start understanding and taking action sooner.

GameDay View presents key data and metrics – including age, gender and different associations – in an easy-to-read-format, and the union are excited to see how the data can be used to support the wider growth of many of their clubs moving forward.

“The beauty is that the raw data is in the system,” Chow said.

“As long as you know how to slice and dice, you can provide as little or much information as clubs need. Once they become a more experienced user, they can get that data themselves and it will help them tremendously.

“The GameDay reporting system is very powerful, but it does require someone to understand the data and the system to generate the reports properly.

“GameDay View provides a really easy, real-time snapshot of the key metrics which we can easily plug into presentation decks when talking with sponsors.”

Embracing technological changes

Understanding changes in technology is a factor which can sometimes deter organisations from embracing systems which could benefit themselves and their clubs in the longer-term.

This was a challenge faced by HKCR, but they were pleased to see how willing their clubs and members were to adopt the GameDay platform, and the enhanced analytics which came from the use of GameDay view.

“From the Union’s perspective, it was easy for people to embrace because it was providing additional support and a more user-friendly functionality,” Chow added.

“The important bit for us was getting our members and users from the community to embrace it and use it.

“We’ve used semi-digital and manual systems in the past, and a lot of the local clubs have their own system, so getting that transformation was a bit of a challenge for us.

“Initially, users in the community were a bit sceptical – you know, ‘Big Brother’s watching’. Data privacy is important to a lot of people and they wondered why we collected all this data.

“In the past 2-3 years, we’ve stuck to our guns by supporting the clubs and providing data insights, which the clubs are starting to see benefits from.

“It’s a one-stop shop for a lot of the bigger clubs and they’re starting to see the benefits of it.

“We’ve been able to provide key data about the rugby community and the game in Hong Kong. It now provides a good platform for a lot of clubs to use it as their own club system.”

Photos courtesy of Hong Kong China Rugby