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A white-label technology solution for companies and charities to launch their own branded virtual challenge application.
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Teams
The Melbourne Marathon launches virtual race to help the running community maintain their fitness goals
Particpants
6,500
Distance Travelled
300,000 KM
Countries
32
One of Australia's premier running events, the Melbourne Marathon has been held annually since 1978, the iconic race starts at the Melbourne Cricket Ground ,and sees 35,000 participants complete in a variety of distance categories. District launched the first Virtual Race for this iconic event.
Challenge
With the Covid 19 pandemic, IMG, the organisers of the Melbourne Marathon, had the challenge of keeping their community of runners engaged, active and fit, whilst also delivering key benefits for commercial partners, and driving revenue for their business.
Not wanting to to provide a dry virtual race experience, they turned to the District virtual race platform to help.
Solution
Built on our white-label enterprise platform, District provided a virtual race application to run a multi-month engagement campaign, that began by building the community in a training program leading upto the 'Virtual Race Event Week'.
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The virtual race experience itself, integrated all of District's great engagement features, recreating the physical route, with a series of audio clips outlining the cities iconic land marks, and providing participants Augmented Reality medals once they crossed their finish line.
Results
The Virtual Race Melbourne Marathon App saw almost 7,000 participants take part from 32 countries, raising vital funds for charity, and kept the community engaged and connected through a period where they were otherwise isolated.
“As the pandemic evolved through 2020, unfortunately we were faced with the difficult decision to cancel the live Melbourne Marathon event. After an extensive market analysis on virtual race event tech solutions, we found District to be the best fit to achieve our aspirations in this space. The District team built a customised virtual race solution for us, re-creating the Melbourne Marathon route through audio clips, while delivering finisher medals in augmented reality. The app developed created an enjoyable and enhanced user experience as it allowed participants to sign up for their category, train for the event, and connect with the Melbourne Marathon community through team and event feed functionality.
The District team were always responsive and strived to go above and beyond. Our team thoroughly enjoyed working with the District team to bring this virtual solution to life and we look forward to exploring the evolution of virtual events alongside district into the future.”
Brad King
Event Director, IMG