You know your product inside and out. But how well do you know your audience? 

Madison Square Gardens Network (MSGN) is the radio and television arm of Madison Square Gardens Entertainment. Founded in 1969 as the first regional sports network in the US, MSGN distributes live broadcasts of New York / New Jersey professional sports teams from the NBA and NHL. MSGN offers an excellent product: live sports and a galaxy of shows surrounding those games. But where MSGN struggled was understanding their viewers’ actions so they could grow their audience.

Obstacles to Growth

In 2014, MSGN launched MSG Go, an app that was supposed to make it easier for their viewers to access MSGN content by authenticating through their cable provider. But ever since then, executives at MSGN had been alarmed by frustrating trends that could prevent them from acquiring and retaining new viewers:

• For decades, MSGN’s primary source of viewer insights had been Nielsen ratings and surveys. While these resources gave them a high-level summary of their viewership numbers, the data weren’t granular enough to inform MSGN’s growth plans.
• The number of households in the US who pay for cable has dropped by almost 35% since 2014, with steep declines coming as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The majority of their email marketing automation, not to mention all of their data ingestion processes, required manual uploads from many different team members. These manual processes were not only prone to errors, but created additional barriers to sharing valuable information with their viewers on a regular basis.

While MSGN had planned to grow their viewership through MSG Go, they soon realized this growth strategy was untenable. With only a limited understanding of their viewers’ habits, manual processes which limited their ability to communicate with their audience, and more and more of their viewers cutting the cord, they needed a new approach.

Analytics Architecture Lays the Groundwork 

For decades, MSGN had relied on Nielson ratings for a rough sense of who was watching their broadcasts and the size of their audience. With the introduction of MSG Go, they could access slightly more detailed viewer data, but it was often incomplete and prone to errors. MSGN needed richer, more accurate viewer data in order to set new growth goals with confidence. And they turned to Mammoth Growth to get there.

MSGN began working with Mammoth Growth in early 2022, and at the beginning of the project their goals were threefold:

1. Implement a modern analytics system and lifecycle marketing program that would allow MSGN to send targeted communications to the right viewers at the right time.
2. Invest in an underlying data infrastructure that could guarantee a much higher level of automation throughout their new MarTech stack.
3. Build a direct-to-consumer streaming platform which would complement MSG Go, based on guidance from Mammoth Growth on the best ways to manage their customer data. The new app would be called MSG+.

In order to achieve MSGN’s goals, first Mammoth Growth guided them through our Analytics Architecture program. The objectives of this 8-10 week project were a complete audit of their tech stack and a roadmap for improvements to managing their customer data. Our Analytics Architecture program allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of MSGN’s existing infrastructure and pain points, and gave everyone involved a chance to, “measure twice, cut once.”  

For our Analytics Architecture project with MSGN, we followed these steps:

1. Review MSGN’s current use of customer data and tools across their tech stack
2. Clarify how they measure viewer engagement with their content
3. Investigate how they use the tools in their stack
4. Understand how customer data flows through their systems
5. Prioritize gaps we should address in the next phase of our work together

Once MSGN saw the results of the Analytics Architecture project, they felt even more confident about speaking with potential vendors for new tools. Buoyed by our recommendations, MSGN agreed to a more intensive project with Mammoth Growth to improve their data infrastructure and lifecycle marketing program, so they could acquire a more engaged viewership. Mammoth Growth then organized all the projects we undertook for MSGN into our Growth Team as a Service offering: GTaaS.

In February of 2023, MSGN shifted their approach. Instead of offering both MSG+ and MSG Go to their viewers, they decided to sunset MSG Go and make MSG+ their all-in-one direct-to-consumer streaming platform. Once MSGN made the decision to sunset MSG Go, Mammoth Growth evolved our engagement strategy based on the initial Analytics Architecture project. And it was our original work with MSGN that offered continuity during this transition.

Results of a New Analytics Infrastructure

MSGN launched MSG+ in June of 2023 to make sure they had everything ready long before the NBA and NHL seasons began in the fall. And a big part of their preparations have been exploring rich viewership data they could never have accessed before. 

By launching MSG+ in June 2023, Mammoth Growth could be proactive in guiding MSGN on the types of questions they might want to ask of their new viewer data. With these new insights, MSGN could finally plan automated lifecycle marketing campaigns to grow viewership beyond the hundreds of thousands of people who currently consume their programming.

There have been two major outcomes to our work with MSGN so far:

Executive Dashboard

On the day MSG+ went live, MSGN could see how many people were launching the new app, whether they had authenticated with their cable credentials or if they were direct-to-consumer, and what video content they were viewing. Insights that would have been unimaginable for MSGN in early 2022 were now a reality. Mammoth Growth helped MSGN’s analysts set-up near real-time dashboarding in Mixpanel, data which they could then feed into their Executive Dashboard in Tableau. With a much more granular understanding of their viewers, MSGN could plan lifecycle marketing campaigns with confidence for the first time.

“Our executive dashboard in Tableau answers 10 questions for 150 people. The behavioral analytics reporting we get from Mixpanel answers 100 questions for 15 people"

“When launching a new product, the 10 answers with everyone on the same page is huge to know if the team is achieving success and keeps everyone rowing in the same direction. 

“It's the behavioral analytics tool that enables a few people to go deep into the near-real time data that helps chart a course of action.”

Lifecycle Marketing Automation 

Before working with Mammoth Growth, MSGN’s marketing program relied on manual uploads. If they wanted to email their viewers, first they had to upload a .csv list to MailChimp. If they wanted to alert MSG Go viewers to a great play in one of their broadcasts, one of their team members had to flip open their laptop and type out a push notification to their viewers every time it happened.

Now, that’s all ancient history.

MSGN relies on Iterable for email marketing automation, and they’re sending that data through mParticle CDP to Mixpanel for behavioral analytics. Now, when they create funnel reports in Mixpanel, MSGN can see how much time passes between viewers installing MSG+, signing up for the app, and watching videos. And best of all, they can trace all that activity back to their initial emails. For the first time, MSGN can clearly see the impact of their email marketing automation.

MSGN is also exploring the possibility of automatically sending in-app notifications of great plays to MSG+ viewers using an API call to Iterable. With this move, they can eliminate the need for manual uploads while simultaneously increasing viewer engagement.  

Madison Square Garden Network has been in business for decades, but this is the first time they’ve been able to understand their viewers so clearly. For years their growth plans had been stymied by limited visibility into their viewers’ actions as well as the manual processes which supported their business. With their new data infrastructure and lifecycle marketing program, MSGN is ready to get quick insights about all their viewers in the upcoming sports season and beyond.