Case Study: The R&A achieves record ticket sales and enhanced fan engagement with Sitecore

The R&A tees up engaging new site for The Open

The R&A, organizer of The Open Championship, faced a challenge: its long-standing Sitecore-based site had become static and championship‑centric, missing opportunities to engage fans year‑round, streamline ticketing and hospitality sales, and prioritize a mobile-first experience. Working with Sitecore (including the Sitecore Experience Platform and xDB), The R&A set targets such as selling 50% of tickets by January, selling out before the event, doubling active club members, and increasing mobile engagement.

Sitecore’s partner UNRVLD rebuilt theopen.com on Sitecore XP 9.0.1 and xDB hosted on AWS, adding personalization, SecuTix ticketing integration, a high‑performance ticket builder, live scoring, and streaming. The results were significant: ticket revenue in the first 30 minutes exceeded the prior year’s full first‑day total, 10% of the annual sales target hit by 4 p.m., conversion up 126%, 47% of tickets sold on mobile, sessions per user +15.5%, page views +24.1%, session duration +55.8%, 250,000+ live‑stream sign‑ups and over 20 million ad impressions — showing Sitecore delivered measurable engagement and revenue gains.

The R&A

Kevin Bain

Head of Data and Digital Infrastructure