Case Study: National Rugby League achieves 72% user growth with OneSignal

The National Rugby League Achieves 72% Increase in User Growth

The National Rugby League (NRL), Australia’s premier rugby competition, faced a build‑vs‑buy decision after launching a centralized digital platform in 2017: their internal push system only supported basic match alerts and couldn’t scale to deliver personalized, multi‑platform messaging across 19 organizations. To solve this, the NRL partnered with OneSignal, adopting its core messaging features—push notifications, in‑app messaging, geolocation targeting and intelligent delivery—to add audience segmentation and real‑time, personalized communications without rebuilding and maintaining an in‑house service.

OneSignal’s integration enabled automated, targeted campaigns (including rich in‑app media and site‑based alerts) and machine‑learning delivery optimizations, freeing NRL engineers to focus on content strategy. The result was a 72% increase in user growth, sustained engagement with over 1 million monthly active users and 1.4 million subscribed users, improved message relevancy and timeliness, and a scalable cross‑platform messaging pipeline powered by OneSignal.

National Rugby League

Domenic Romeo

Head of Technology