BOOST leverages Contentstack to foster community with the power of connected data

Known as an innovator within college sports, BOOST delivers revolutionary digital engagement across the sports landscape. The business works closely alongside partners such as the Big Ten Conference, the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. 

To support clients and partners in modernizing their legacy websites and other personalized fan engagement platforms for the digital age, BOOST was looking to adopt a headless CMS. They required a solution flexible enough to augment with their own Intellectual Property and integrate with a complex and growing tech stack, while providing editors with an intuitive, easy to use interface. 

The legacy technology that supported the website originated about 20 years ago, and our goal is to migrate it to a new, modern digital stack.” Inga Nakhmanson, Chief Technology Officer, BOOST, said. 

Working alongside the Big Ten Conference, BOOST was tasked with enabling automated content for the fans as a short-term goal, and looking ahead — wanted to adopt a tech stack that allowed for personalization and one-to-one connection with fans in the future. “I realized when we were rolling this thing out, in the earliest iterations, I remember [Big Ten’s] eyes lighting up when they realized everything we could bring to the table with Contentstack,” Tim Mitchell, Chief Commercial Officer, BOOST, said. “There is so much information to handle, 28 sports, 18 different schools, overlapping seasons, and Championship events to cover — it’s a constant barrage of information, and the more it can be organized and managed, the better.”

Today, Contentstack is an essential element of BOOST’s tech stack, and powers a critical part of a new, relaunched Big Ten Conference website. The Big Ten communications team works within the platform daily. All of the content that the Big Ten communications team needs to disseminate is powered by Contentstack, including articles, archives, player of the week summaries, announcements, tournaments, and information about the company and about the Big Ten itself. “Contentstack is the centerpiece of consolidation of all the information related to an event,”  Leonid Belyaev, Director of Engineering, BOOST, said. “This is an important building block of the overall fan experience.”

Behind the scenes, leveraging headless technology has streamlined operations and increased efficiencies for the business. “Contentstack supports the entire administration system for content authors, and because it’s headless — it’s entirely flexible,” Belyaev said. “We’re starting to work with multiple clients, and to support the multi-client situation, we know that we can update content once on Contentstack, and it will be accurate and up to date everywhere.” 

As a technical partner in the Big Ten’s success, BOOST can provide the tools necessary for growth and success. “Creating and editing content is much cleaner, much faster, more user-friendly, and we couldn’t have relaunched the website without this CMS,” Nakhmanson said. “We want to roll out more advanced features soon, like Workflows and delayed publishing, we can see those will be really beneficial.”

One of the main benefits is automating the data pipeline, and providing clients with access to this data about their fans. Unlike other technical partners, who often cannot share the data they gather, BOOST can allow clients to actively participate and use data insights to learn more about fans, opening doors to personalization and engagement. “We have deep analytics for Bigten.org, and we want clients to benefit from the fruits of this research and the insights we gather,” Nakhmanson said. “The more we know about the fans, the better we can serve them. This is empowering our sport entities to have their own voice in communication with their fans.”

Moving forward, BOOST is planning to increase their use of federated media, where they can support individual page creation for each athlete, providing a space for fans to engage with them directly. Also on the roadmap is localization — enabling multi-language capabilities for certain clients, and augmenting the opportunities for personalization through multi-channel communication and data analytics. 

Key wins with Contentstack include: 

• Simplified collaboration: BOOST automates the data pipeline, and Big Ten and other clients can transform that information into publishable content, with Contentstack seamlessly merging the experience. 

• Easy onboarding: As a technical partner offering solutions to multiple different clients, BOOST has benefited from the Contentstack Academy, including documentation and tutorials that reduce the learning curve.

• Always-on support: Sport never sleeps, with games taking place on the weekends and evenings, and seasons running throughout the year. Contentstack’s 24/7 support team has been vital in enabling zero downtime and always-on guidance.