Hockey is one of the fastest-paced sports in the world, with goals, penalties, and momentum shifts happening in seconds. To keep up with this speed, HockeyTech — a subsidiary of FloSports acquired by the company in 2021 — delivers real-time transactional sports alerts through Pushwoosh. Since 2018, the strategy of lightning-fast live game notifications paired with next-day editorial updates by HockeyTech has helped maintain a highly engaged audience. Up to 2 million push notifications are sent daily at peak times.
🎯 Challenge: Deliver timely, relevant game updates to fans across 50+ apps
The hockey season in Canada runs from October to April, followed by the intense Stanley Cup playoffs until June. During this period, fans demand instant, reliable updates on every play.
🛠 Solution: Consistent transactional push strategy across all apps
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Send real-time push notifications about game start, goals, penalties, and final scores
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Follow up with editorial content, like game recaps, the next day to keep fans engaged
For example, on June 21, 2025, the AHL (American Hockey League) app covered a match between the Checkers and the Canucks — from the pre-game build-up to the post-game summary sent the next day.
Similar messaging runs in each app on every game day.
- This strategy is seamlessly synchtonized across 50+ apps through Pushwoosh
Pushwoosh seamlessly integrated into our existing app infrastructure. Integration was very quick; we swapped out an existing service and replaced it with Pushwoosh with minimal infrastructural changes.
✅ Tactics to maximize fan engagement
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Allow fans to subscribe to during-the-match alerts for live updates
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Deliver post-match summaries and next-day articles to broaden reach beyond live viewers
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Make real-time alerts a signature feature of each app, reinforcing value with every game
🏆 Results: Fan base more active than the industry average
In the most popular AHL app:
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Up to 2M push notifications sent daily across apps
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iOS MAU: 38% (vs. ~19.5% benchmark for sports apps)
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Android MAU: 46.5% (vs. ~31.7% benchmark)
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Max CTR: 5.56% (vs. the average 0.19–1.46% benchmark)
The numbers show that HockeyTech is doing a great job keeping its audience more active than the average sports app.
Having a fast and reliable communications tool like Pushwoosh enables our apps to deliver timely, exciting updates, which keeps fans engaged and enhances the professional feel of our sports apps.
⚙ Why choose Pushwoosh for real-time fan engagement?
- Reliable delivery at scale during peak moments (match days)
Pushwoosh continues to perform at a high level, even under peak traffic periods, delivering consistently to our customers.
- Unified API and dashboard to orchestrate real-time alerts seamlessly
Pushwoosh API was straightforward to implement and scale across our apps.
We have a growing portfolio and use both tag-based and single-recipient targeting to reach our customers. Even during the period of rapid growth, scaling has not been an issue.
- Trusted partner ensuring consistent fan engagement season after season
We’ve been using Pushwoosh since 2018, because it just works, and it continues to meet our needs year after year.
