The reimagined NFL app, developed by NFL and Code and Theory, won Gold in Digital Experience Mobile at The Drum Awards. This modular app scales across 32 teams, adapts to fan behavior, and powers NFL+, the league’s first D2C streaming product, transforming the outdated app into a seamless, personalized, and engaging digital home for football fandom.
In this session, NFL and Code and Theory unpack the reimagined NFL app, a modular marvel that scales across 32 teams, adapts to every fan behavior, and is the heartbeat of NFL+, the new D2C offering.
The NFL app had become a relic—a clunky, slow mobile expression of its website. In today's fragmented media world where football is streamed, bet on, clipped, and debated in real time—the app was not serving the needs of the most obsessive fan base in the US (maybe the world). The stakes grew higher with the launch of NFL+, the league's first D2C streaming product. Outdated experience patterns were limiting engagement, growth, and subscription conversion. The league didn’t need a Hail Mary. It needed a game plan.
For football fans, the game is never off. They’re watching Combine highlights in March, tracking Draft picks in April, and trash-talking friends on Sunday night (whether in-season or not). Proprietary league research revealed fans wanted one place that matched that rhythm: seamless streaming, personalized feeds, and a frictionless experience across every moment of fandom. The NFL realized the app couldn’t just deliver content—it had to embody the culture of the game.
How do you create a digital home for the NFL—the world's loudest, largest, and most obsessive sports league? By building an app as electrifying as the game itself. That started with redefining the NFL app as the always-on home of football fandom, with a clear, intuitive video-first experience. The app would be rewired to anticipate fan behavior instead of reacting to it, and rebuilt as a platform that's as fast, fluid, and fan-obsessed as the game itself.
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32 teams. 33 design systems. One app—The app’s secret sauce, which fans experience but don’t see, is a modular design system built to adapt dynamically across all 32 teams, different game days, events, and a myriad of user preferences. Using atomic design principles, the app scales seamlessly for both macro-level needs (NFL-wide branding) and micro-level moments (individual team matchups or live events like the NFL Draft or Combine).
Making Sunday Appointment Viewing—Sundays aren’t just game days—they’re marathons. With 14 games spread across time slots, fans need more than a TV remote to keep up. The app’s ‘Game Switcher’ lets users jump between matchups and RedZone with a tap, while a pinned video player ensures fans never miss a play, even while scrolling stats or catching up on news. Picture-in-picture and audio-only options cater to every fan, whether they’re glued to their screen or multitasking through the day.
Reinventing the Digital Gridiron—For fans looking for a deeper dive, we reinvented Game pages, which pull together live and VOD video, audio, play-by-play, stats, drive charts, and more. This includes two bold new features; first, a seamless pinned video player that enables game video or audio to stay with you as you travel around the app, allowing multitasking across scores, reading news, and following the game. Second, a first-of-its-kind ‘game switcher’ that lets fans quickly jump between games and RedZone.
Inclusive by Design—The team behind the NFL and Code and Theory represented diverse backgrounds across gender, race, and cultural perspectives. Inclusive hiring was prioritized in strategy, design, and engineering with key contributors spanning different communities. That group built accessibility into the app—high-contrast palettes were used across team branding and color kits to be accessible in light/dark modes and across type sizes for broad comprehension. DEI and a11y principles were engrained into the interface design, making the tool intuitive for consumers of all backgrounds, levels of education, and language fluency.
The NFL app evolved beyond a simple game-day companion to become an experience that fuels the rhythm of the game—every play, day, and week, on and off-season. It’s not just about watching football; it’s about living it. And it's working.
Fast Company Innovation by Design Honoree in User Experience
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