Enhancing the Sacramento Kings merchandising

The Sacramento Kings signed up to use ScorePlay as their media organization and management system to radically change how they handled e-commerce media needs to sell merchandise to fans.

‍

Challenges & due diligence

Despite a standout year, the Kings were unable to fully capitalize on their success through e-commerce. This resulted in a loss of business opportunities, especially as the organization was building on their loyal fan base. The Kings knew the value they were missing out on and set out to fix it.

‍

The Kings spent months researching alternatives. This process involved speaking with peer NBA teams who operated outside of their previous supplier’s ecosystem, and indeed there were a handful of teams who ran everything in-house through Shopify. The team analyzed internal needs, tools, and the yield of such a process, and also put together focus groups of Kings fans to really understand what makes a fan purchase merchandise. The conclusion was clear. The flexibility of Shopify offered new revenue streams, better aesthetics (e.g., product shots all become in-house), and ultimately full control of the Kings brand.

‍

A new issue started to appear – how do you get hundreds of product images into Shopify without spending hours doing it manually? This was when ScorePlay entered the frame as a leader in tagging and distributing media content automatically with custom media workflows.

‍

ScorePlay Slam dunk

It was a match made in heaven. It became clear that ScorePlay would not only solve traditional photo bottlenecks, but also wider issues as they applied to their e-commerce tech infrastructure.

‍

"Working with ScorePlay has been a game changer for us. The team was great to work with and was able to provide us with a solution that was tailored to our specific needs,” said Nichole Amberg, Sacramento Kings Director of Interactive Design and Strategy

‍

The technical aspects of the Kings use of ScorePlay involve syncing the inventory list from Shopify to ScorePlay every second, allowing for an accurate list of products and their Stock Keeping Units (SKU). In the e-commerce tool, there is a dropdown of products that updates in real-time as their inventory details are updated or altered in Shopify. Once SKUs are attached to media on ScorePlay, the media can be synced to the exact product page where the SKU(s) are present, no matter how many variants a product may have (size, color, etc.). This is done by checking the Shopify API for a list of products and relevant SKUs on each page. With the SKUs, the media is matched with the exact product page that has the SKU present. Once a media is synced, the Product Page URL is attached to the media asset on ScorePlay in the e-commerce collection, so that the Kings team saves hours and hours of manual work every week. All while having the most updated product images in the NBA.

‍

ScorePlay worked closely with the Kings team to build a solution that scaled with their media needs. This co-construction helped us ensure we built a solution not only for their specific needs but also for other teams within the ecosystem. The Kings store went live with every product page automatically populated with content from ScorePlay, which enhanced their merchandising efforts, providing fans with a wider range of product options and a better user experience.