League-wide digital platform
A multi-year product partnership powering the digital backbone of Europe’s top ice hockey club competition — the public website, native iOS and Android apps, the admin and CMS the league operates from, and the real-time data pipeline that delivers live game updates to fans across the continent.
Client
Champions Hockey League (CHL)
Zug, Switzerland
Platforms
- Responsive web
- iOS
- Android
- Internal admin
Core users
- Hockey fans across Europe
- CHL operations and editorial team
Engagement path
Technical audit → Modernization & cost reduction → Multi-year product evolution retainer
Business context
CHL is Europe’s top-tier club ice hockey competition. The digital platform — public website, native apps, the admin and CMS the league operates from, and the live-data pipeline behind everything — is the primary way fans across Europe follow the season.
That platform has a particular operational shape. During match windows it has to deliver live scores, ticker, and stats with very low latency, scale up under heavy concurrent traffic, and stay reliable when fan attention is at its highest. Between games it should fall back to lower-cost steady-state operation. Across a season it should keep evolving as the product, the league, and the fan base change.
Running that kind of platform is expensive and operationally demanding. CHL needed a partner that could keep it reliable through peak match windows, evolve the product across seasons, and keep infrastructure costs proportionate to the value delivered.
The challenge
CHL’s product carries a specific set of constraints that compound on each other:
- A multi-surface product — web, iOS, Android, admin — that has to evolve in step, without an enlarged in-house engineering team
- Real-time live-game data delivered to thousands of concurrent fans during matchdays at consistently low latency
- Heavy seasonal load spikes during match windows that can’t be allowed to scale infrastructure costs linearly with traffic
- Continuous evolution across multiple seasons — new features, language coverage, operational improvements — layered onto a live, in-season product
- Reliability that holds up at the moments fans care most about, when there is no good time for something to break
Have a live product that needs an evolution partner?
If you have a live software platform that needs ongoing product, design, and engineering support — or focused modernization to reduce cost and improve reliability — Numatic can help identify the right next step.
How the Engagement Began
CHL didn’t start as a multi-year retainer. It started with one focused question: could the platform be made meaningfully cheaper and more reliable without rebuilding it?
Numatic answered that with a technical audit. The audit looked across architecture, infrastructure, the live-data pipeline, and the platform’s operational profile, then identified a set of high-value improvements that could be made on a live, in-season product without disruption.
The execution phase that followed produced two clear outcomes. Infrastructure and hosting costs dropped by approximately 3x — without a rebuild. Reliability and performance improved alongside the cost win, especially during peak match windows when fan attention and concurrent traffic are at their highest. From there, the engagement extended into the multi-year product evolution retainer that has supported the platform across multiple CHL seasons.
What Numatic delivered
Numatic acts as CHL’s product evolution partner, supporting the platform across seasons and continuing to evolve it as the league’s needs change.
- Technical audit and modernization: entered the engagement through a focused audit that produced approximately 3x reduction in infrastructure and hosting costs and meaningful improvements in performance and reliability — without rebuilding the platform
- Multi-year product evolution: ongoing delivery covering features, fixes, and improvements across web, iOS, Android, admin, and the real-time data pipeline
- Live-data infrastructure: continuous work on the data pipeline that powers schedule, standings, live scores, ticker, statistics, and milestones across the season
- Multi-platform feature delivery: synchronized feature work across the responsive web platform and the native mobile apps, so fans get a consistent experience regardless of device
Outcome
A multi-year product partnership running across multiple CHL seasons.
Reduced infrastructure and hosting costs by approximately 3x through the initial modernization work
Maintained that lower cost baseline across the seasons since
Significantly improved platform performance and reliability, particularly during peak match windows
Acted as CHL’s single product partner across web, native mobile, admin, and live-data operations — covering platform health, feature delivery, and ongoing evolution across multiple consecutive seasons
