Romain Lhote, L’Équipe’s Head of Data, ran data analysis on a site with 2.8 million users a day and 1.5 billion page impressions, monthly. “We used machine learning to define a scoring system for articles from zero to 100, which we used to understand user behaviour better.” This scoring system helped sharpen the content strategy in terms of coverage, space and formats, and refine a personalised subscriber experience.

It led to a 30-fold increase in push notification open rate and a 27-fold increase in email open rate, compared to non-personalised campaigns. Journalists who initially were unconvinced now refer to the data.

Today, Lhote’s team is customising the site homepage, using a subscriber’s unique profile to personalise recommendations. But even with the technological advances, Lhote insists the news agenda will always be set by editors. “The first five articles on the homepage should be an editorial choice. We need to offer basic information. Even if the reader doesn’t like tennis, if Federer wins Wimbledon, we’ll tell them.”