A Blueprint For ‘Exceptional Fan Engagement’ and Unique Sponsored Content Ideas: How Opta Data and OptaAI Studio Accelerated Ekstraklasa’s Growth in 2025
Across broadcast, digital and gaming, Stats Perform's OptaAI Studio and official Opta data is helping Ekstraklasa Live Park reach more fans of Poland's Ekstraklasa, with more engaging content, whilst also unlocking new commercial opportunities for the league and its clubs.
Andy Cooper
Since the start of the 2024-25 season, Poland's renowned top men's football league, the Ekstraklasa, and its in-house broadcast production operation, Ekstraklasa Live Park, have integrated advanced Opta data and tools from the OptaAI Studio portfolio into virtually every touchpoint in the league's fan ecosystem.
Opta data, insights and OptaAI Studio content elevate Ekstraklasa coverage from across fan engagement channels, including:
- Pre-match video previews and post-match highlights produced by Ekstraklasa Live Park for official video channels, which helped grow YouTube subscribers by nearly 20%;
- Expanding sponsorable inventory and attracting major sponsors in new consumer grocery categories;
- Powering the LOTTO Fantasy Ekstraklasa game, as well as accompanying content, to attract and more deeply engage fantasy players, helping it reach 30 million pageviews over the season;
- Attracting more eyeballs to every game in the league's live match centre, in the advanced statistics section on the official league website, and across the official mobile app; and
- Enabling Ekstraklasa to communicate 'specific, insightful stats' in over 1,500 data-rich social graphics more efficiently and effectively across multiple social media channels, helping fuel double-digit growth in followers.
The partnership between Ekstraklasa Live Park and Stats Perform has become a blueprint for how a professional sports league can leverage high‑quality sports data and AI to boost audience numbers, create new revenue streams and enrich the fan experience.
Unique Data-Led Content Doesn't Just Stand Out: It Facilitates Double Digit Social Growth
Since August 2024, Ekstraklasa and Ekstraklasa Live Park have been using OptaAI Studio to source and share data-driven facts with its social followers, generating over 1,500 social graphics to accompany their posts using the tool's Opta Graphics feature.
The impact of embracing data‑rich content is evident in the league's social‑media surge since the beginning of the 2024-25 season.
The impact of Opta data in supporting the league's social growth is corroborated by Ekstraklasa Live Park's Chief Operating Officer, Marcin Serafin, who says:
"Several factors have contributed to this growth, with the use of advanced Opta data being one of them. We've noticed that content pieces built around specific, insightful stats, such as a player reaching a milestone or a team breaking a record, consistently rank among our most engaging posts."
In addition to utilising data-driven graphics, Ekstraklasa's social team also use Expected Goals (xG) from Opta to identify and share clips of stunning goals, providing additional context to followers about the quality of a player's finish to make it even more memorable.
Overall, Ekstraklasa now ranks 9th in Europe for total social‑media following, surpassing leagues such as Turkey's Süper Lig, Scotland's Premiership and Belgium's Pro League, with a combined audience of 1.74 million.
Stats-based Stories to Attract New Commercial Partners
Opta data and OptaAI Studio's storytelling tools have proven to be a catalyst for both activating existing Ekstraklasa sponsors, and attracting new ones.
Ekstraklasa secured a partnership with a local isotonic drink producer, Dr Witt, who became the league's official match stats partner. The partnership sees the Dr Witt brand displaying prominently on all league stats published on official channels, with the league and the brand collaborating to create engaging fan content, all powered by OptaAI Studio's rich data-infused context, stories and graphics.
In addition to official league channels, all Ekstraklasa clubs also have access to the same comprehensive Opta data feeds, which can be displayed directly on their own websites through an API.
The feeds are also empowering in-house media teams at these clubs to create more sophisticated content for their own fans and deliver tailored assets to their sponsors using the data.
30 Million Page views & Reaching Younger Demographics Through Multi-Angle, Opta-fuelled Gamification
The league's official fantasy game, LOTTO Fantasy Ekstraklasa, relies entirely on Opta data for its scoring algorithm, as well for accompanying content. This creates a seamless experience: the same statistics that appear during live broadcasts are used to calculate fantasy points, whilst advanced metrics on the official website empower players to make data‑informed transfer decisions rather than relying on intuition alone.
LOTTO Fantasy Ekstraklasa now attracts over 50,000 players per edition and generates more than 30 million page views. As Serafin explains, the game provides the league with a crucial avenue to reach younger fans and deepen their engagement with the competition.
"For many fans, the game has become a powerful gateway to deeper engagement with the league, encouraging them to follow matches beyond their favourite team as they have players spread across multiple clubs in their squads. Importantly, a significant share of the Fantasy community falls within the 18-29 age group - a key demographic for building long-term popularity of PKO BP Ekstraklasa."
Expanding Ekstraklasa Sponsor Inventory Through Creative New Uses of OptaAI
Beyond Opta's on-ball event data, Ekstraklasa and Ekstraklasa Live Park have embraced predictive OptaAI metrics including Momentum and Live Win Probability in a highly innovative way.
Before each matchday, the win probability of every game is displayed across official league channels. During broadcasts, graphics powered by the models are displayed on-screen to illustrate real-time changes to the likely outcome, after major events like a goal being scored or a red card.
Pre-match probabilities are also presented alongside the final scores after the final whistle has been blown during every match, to provide an indication of which game resulted in the biggest upset.
The resulting content has created an authentic, high-reach and distinctive sponsorship opportunity for major Polish food producer, Duda, across both social media and in TV graphics - pre-game, in-game and post-game.
Ekstraklasa Live Park's Serafin believes the predictions have proven a valuable asset in the league's wider social content strategy, particularly during last season's run in, as well as getting fans to register and engage with the league's official app, saying:
"Predictive metrics have added a new dimension to our matchday storytelling. Displaying Live Win Probability during broadcasts adds a narrative element, highlighting the dramatic shifts in a match as they happen.
This approach also proved highly effective on social media: posts showing title-winning probabilities in the final rounds of the last season generated exceptional engagement. In addition, the posts have been a great fit to promote the use of the official league app, as it offers a Predictor module where fans can make their own match predictions."
In Summary: Six Ways Opta is Supporting and Enhancing Ekstraklasa's Proposition to its Partners and Fans
OBJECTIVE |
OUTCOME |
|---|---|
| Elevating digital storytelling | Opta-powered posts are producing some of the league's most engaging content, with over 1,500 Opta Graphics images produced since the start of 2024-25. |
| Growing audiences | Ekstraklasa now ranks 9th in Europe for total social‑media following, with 19% growth on YouTube and 13% on TikTok. |
| Monetising partnerships | New stats partnerships with an isotonic drink brand and a grocery brand have generated additional revenue for the league and its teams, authentic storytelling value for the sponsors, and richer game narratives for fans. |
| Boosting fantasy participation | 50k+ players and 30 million page views, with strong reach in the 18‑29 demographic. |
| Enhancing TV broadcasts | Ekstraklasa Live Park has embedded OptaAI predictions and visually engaging shot and pitch map visualisations to deepen viewer understanding of the game, and drive their enjoyment of broadcast coverage. |
| Empowering clubs | Central data feed access empowers clubs to create data-powered content and expand their own sponsorship inventory. |
The Ekstraklasa Live Park‑Stats Perform partnership demonstrates how a smart, data-centred, fan-first, and AI-enriched strategic content partnership can help drive growth across audiences and revenue, as well as lift the overall profile of a league and its teams.
"We are committed to working with the best and most professional partners to enhance how we present the league - both through TV broadcasts and across all digital platforms. Stats Perform has an excellent reputation built over many years of delivering fast, reliable, and engaging football insights and by using a mix of [OptaAI Studio] products such as Opta Live, Opta Search or Opta Graphics, in-house teams can deliver high-quality content very quickly and efficiently."
- Marcin Serafin, Chief Operating Officer, Ekstraklasa Live Park
Related Articles
