Commonwealth Sports

If you are a fan of sports, then you've probably seen their inspiring story in the headlines of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Athletic, Financial Times, and national TV live on NBC Sports.

In May, 382 crowdfunding investors on the Commonwealth App were able to not only enjoy a spot in the owners' box at the Kentucky Derby - but celebrate inside the historic Winners' Circle as well. Their thoroughbred racehorse, Mage, ran to win "The Most Exciting 2 Minutes in Sports” in front of a record-setting 14.8 million viewers. 

With this victory, Commonwealth will be able to award unprecedented ROI to its equity crowdfunding investors who have purchased ownership shares in Mage, one of the athletes within its impressive portfolio. 

The visionary founders of Commonwealth aspire to make the world’s most exciting investments and experiences available for all. With its most recent initiative, the firm aims to provide access to investment opportunities in professional athletes such as professional golfers and thoroughbred racehorses. Commonwealth partnered with Scalio to transform its concept into reality by designing and building a multi-sport investment platform.

Outstanding Metrics for The Commonwealth Crowdfunding Platform

• 500% increase in average users year-over-year
• 15,000 new investor accounts created
• 800% increase in transaction volume year-over-year (since first offering)
• Successfully scaled portfolio of alternative assets from 1 to 12
• Sold out the initial investment offering of $250k within 24hrs
• Over $1M transacted and shares sold
• 30,000 visiting users in one weekend (May, 2023)
• 3,000% ROI to investors on Mage
• 1st Place Winner of The Kentucky Derby as one of the investment assets offered
• 5th Highest earning racehorse of all time as one of the investment assets offered
• 800% ROI to investors on Country Grammer
   

Business Challenge

Historically, the alternative asset class of professional athletes has been inaccessible to most common consumers/investors. Retail investors have not had the capital, network, time or expertise to acquire and manage these talented individuals throughout their professional - and often lucrative - careers.

Contemporary investors and professional sporting fans aspire to have greater digital access and influence with the athletes of their favorite sports, with visibility to training, behind-the-scenes content, and the thrill of ownership in competition.

As an experienced product development agency and investor in Commonwealth, Scalio was able to partner with the Commonwealth Team and offer product strategy, design, and product development experience in fractional share investing to connect a new generation of athletes with highly-engaged investors of all backgrounds. Scalio supported the transformation of a vision into a best-in-class investment platform complete with proven digital 3rd party integrations and a fully customizable CMS (content management system) for the Commonwealth business teams.

Now for as little as $50, common retail investors can invest and join some of the most exciting athletes in the world on their competitive journey - all while potentially sharing in the winnings.
 

Create a robust athlete profiling system that is controlled by an intuitive content management system (CMS)

Empowering the Commonwealth Team with full control of their content, imagery, copy, and assets was built from day-1 with a robust content management system (CMS). From the ever-evolving metrics and stats of the athlete to the exclusive behind-the-scenes content, product owners and asset managers can make adjustments to their assets in real-time.

Scale the portfolio of athletes to expand into different sporting categories

As the platform and population of investors grew, so did the portfolio of offerings. Proving the successful stability, scalability and value creation offered by the platform, the Commonwealth Team expanded into a second sporting category that required unique adjustments to the content discovery, athlete background, career metrics, and even the presentation of newsfeed content.

Engage and retain investors with a customizable newsfeed

Honoring the mission to award unprecedented athlete access to all investors, the product required an engaging user experience that offered a real-time newsfeed of all athletes within the product portfolio. Offering the latest news, updates, and behind-the-scenes content acts as an inspiring engagement & retention feature for investors while increasing the LTV of the athlete contextually within the platform.

Reduce the marketing & customer acquisition cost

FinTech products by nature have a very high customer acquisition cost (CAC). A key go-to-market strategy for the Commonwealth platform was to include an incentivized referral program. By offering the early cohort(s) of investors a meaningful incentive to refer others within their network - such as a share credited to their investment accounts - the product and marketing teams are able to successfully reduce that CAC, and earn higher yields on their overall return on ad spending (ROAS).

Offer investors a digital wallet experience to maximize monetization and re-investment

As the Commonwealth portfolio began to yield investment ROI to its investors, a secure and intuitive third-party digital wallet was implemented. Now, users can easily link a bank account or credit card, while receiving funds or even re-investing into new athlete offerings with one click or tap.

Create the perfect experiences for web and mobile

A FinTech platform with this ecosystem of robust features required experiences designed and optimized for mobile and web, respectively. The Design Team at Scalio created wireframes, high-fidelity mockups and interactive prototypes to relentlessly test, validate, and improve the user experience based on evolving platform requirements while optimizing the conversion of new users toward the purchase of shares.

Technical architecture and product experience designed with key 3rd party integrations

Scalio uses carefully crafted, modern architecture featuring a combination of industry-leading technologies and third-party integrations. Our infrastructure is composed of cloud components from both Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. This ensures our product will be easily scalable, secure, and compliant with both SEC and FINRA regulations.

Full third-party platform integration ecosystem

Our customer engagement solutions have been thoughtfully added to monitor product performance and observe user engagement. We couple these tools with analytics to optimize conversions within the user funnel, inspire investor transaction activity, lift retention, and maximize user LTV (lifetime value). Usability and A/B testing are also extensively used to inform and confirm overall product decisions. Our primary goal can be encapsulated into a single idea: ensure users have a simple, pleasant experience when using our product.

What We Did

• Strategy
  • Brand Strategy
  • Product Strategy
  • Content Strategy
  • Project Planning & Roadmap Definition
  • Competitive Research
  • Risk Analysis
• Design
  • UI/UX Design
  • Art Direction
  • Wire-Framing
  • Accessibility
  • Web Design
  • Design System Setup & Maintenance
• Marketing
  • Copywriting
• Engineering
  • Front-end Development
  • Hosting
  • DevOps
  • QA

About Scalio

Scalio is a global digital product agency driving digital success in over 30 industries. Through expert engineering, strategy, and design, we build and scale platforms and digital experiences for global brands.

Learn more about our expertise in FinTech & Blockchain.