As Glory Kickboxing rapidly approaches its 50th event, slated for February 2018, its meteoric rise and desire to satisfy fans’ demand for information gave rise to the need for a complex online presence. Glory needed a content management system that allowed flexible content models and provided essential power features, all without the overhead or cost of high-end solutions. Elegant CMS delivered on each of those requirements ahead of schedule.
Glory is the world’s premiere kickboxing league with six different weight classes and a worldwide fight card. Glory’s success is evident from a rapidly growing fan base and wide acclaim across the world. By early 2017, the UFC recognized this success and entered an agreement for Glory to provide exclusive content, which the UFC promotes on a number of online platforms and at live events.
Glory’s online presence is owned by Nadim Tannous, the VP of Digital.
Glory’s rise to the top came with growing pains, the biggest of which was how to satisfy its passionate fan base with more content. While unique website visitors were skyrocketing, they did not stay on the site long.
Glory needed more engaging content to satisfy its fans’ thirst for information. Nadim, tasked with defining and managing Glory’s online presence, closely listened to Glory’s fan base, who wanted more detailed content on fighters and more timely event information. Nadim needed a site that delivered rich content, which refreshed often, to keep fans coming back. Blending fighter content with a busy event schedule meant that he needed a CMS that could handle complex content relationships and pull data from multiple APIs.
Familiar with solutions like WordPress and Symphony, Nadim knew that their imposed workflow, which made them difficult to use, was not the right solution for Glory. He also did not want to bear the cost of more expensive solutions. In addition, Nadim was not quite ready for the cost and management overhead of a custom-built solution.
Knowing what features he really needed, such as scheduling, mobile access, a flexible content model and ease of use, Nadim turned to Adept Mobile to see if there was anything out there to satisfy his requirements.
Gabe Smallman, founder and CTO of Adept, which is a website application technology company that has delivered world-class applications for the likes of the New England Patriots, UFC and other leading national sports brands, instantly related to Nadim’s situation. He shared with Nadim news of a product that they had used to power many professional sports team applications. After a quick demonstration of Elegant CMS, Nadim instantly knew that he had found his solution.
Nadim proceeded to describe Elegant CMS as the “essential power features” required to run a complex integrated online presence.
Nadim recognized that the headless CMS architecture would allow him to define his own content model that would easily integrate with the custom website he envisioned.
This was a win-win for both his web developers and his authors. His web developers would be able to use a RESTFUL API and a standard JSON format to deploy the content; meanwhile, his authors would have full flexibility of managing content.
Since going live with the new site ahead of schedule and at an extremely affordable price, Glory has continued to boost unique visitors exponentially as well as the time spent on the site.
His team reports significant time savings due to the ease of use of the decoupled content management approach. Both his web developers and content authors have an environment where they can successfully perform.
Want to see how easy it is to manage your online presence using Elegant CMS? Check out our FREE version to get started and see for yourself.