Dancing with the Stars Finland  App: Engagement Beyond the TV Screen

Dancing with the Stars is a vibrant international TV show format. It is one of the most successful reality TV formats in the world, and it is licensed to more than 75 countries. In Finland, the show is produced by Banijay Finland.

In the glamorous world of Dancing with the Stars, celebrities join forces with professional dancers to begin their dance journey. From enchanting waltzes to sizzling cha cha chas, these couples showcase their skills, competing for the ultimate victory.

A panel of professional dancers serves as the jury, reviewing and scoring each performance. Meanwhile, viewers become active participants, casting their votes to shape the fate of the dancing couples, determining whose waltz continues towards the Grande Finale and who takes their final bow.

We teamed up with Banijay Nordic in 2022 to create a high quality TV show companion app for the Finnish rendition of the dance show, called: "Tanssii Tähtien Kanssa”.

The app and how it was built

In the inception of our collaboration, Banijay sought an app that could host automated content feeds and foster audience engagement – an ideal match for our versatile No Code app builder.

The Dancing with the Stars Finland app in co-operation with the Banijay team in less than two months during the summer of 2022. So far, the app Powered by Choicely has been used for two seasons of the show.

Dancing with the Stars is a strong example of using an app to augment the TV show experience. The app offers the audience of the show exciting features such as:

Star Panel

This is a new way for the audience to interact with the show, and it saw its world premiere on 9th of September 2024!

In Star Panel, the viewers can rate the dancers on five different qualities – choreography, immersion, music, costume design and makeup – using the TV show’s app. The ratings are great talking points after the dances on a behind the scenes section, where the host highlights some of the standout ratings.

The ratings from Star Panel were also discussed the next day on the morning show Huomenta Suomi (“Good Morning Finland”).

The fans gave five stars to this dancing couple for immersing themselves into their dance.

Votes that affect the show

Voting is a big part of the show: the viewers decide who will continue their dances in the competition.

The standard way of voting for the show have been premium phone call votes and SMS. During the 17th season beginning in September 2024, a third way for purchasing votes will be introduced: In-App Purchases, natively through the mobile app.

The show has also been experimenting with polls that affect the course of the show in other ways. In each of these instances, the app has witnessed a surge in user engagement, reaching peak numbers of usage. Dedicated fans of the show have participated in voting for:

• Their preferred past dance performance for each star. This led to the dancing couples showcasing encore performances based on the audience's favorite numbers.
• In one of the last episodes of the 2023 season, app votes played a pivotal role in contributing to the total votes, and affecting which dancing couple would progress further in the competition.

Creative audience engagement

Every week the viewers of the show can apply to be a part of the audience. Additionally, viewers get to cast their votes and share their thoughts on various captivating topics, such as:

• Their favorite dancing couple
• Their favorite dances
• Their favorite horror movie they’d like to see performed as a dance
• Their favorite quote from Jorma, a legendary figure in the Finnish dance and media scene who’s been in the jury of the show since the first season

Exclusive content from the “Dance Bubble”

The app treats its users with exclusive "Behind the Scenes" content, known as "Dance Bubble." In the Dance Bubble, viewers can watch video footage capturing moments in the dance studio, where the dancing couples practice their moves. This Dance Bubble gets its premiere in the app.

Making the most out of the platform with social media style stories and themed visuals

The app showcases integrated video content presented in a format reminiscent of popular social media channels such as Instagram and Snapchat. The feature has been developed by Gobi, and fitted seamlessly into the app with Choicely app builder. In stories, users can find the latest short behind the scenes clips of the show.

One example of making the most out of the flexible No Code features of the app platform, was changing the app’s appearance for the “Roosa-nauha” charity episode, which spread awareness for breast cancer.

Regular Push Notifications

The Dancing of the Stars production team shows great example of sending regular push notifications to the users of the app, activating them to use the app and watch the show:

• Every Monday and Friday, there’s a reminder that a new episode of “Dance Bubble” has been published
• There’s a weekly on-going competition to win tickets to the live audience
• On Sunday’s, there’s a push notification on the program’s airing time
• Regular audience activations are shared through push notifications
• A live stream for hearing-impaired

The show also experimented with a live stream for the hearing-impaired, so they can follow what is being said during the broadcast. This stream was integrated to the side menu of the app.

Results

The Dancing of the Stars show has used the app built with Choicely for two seasons so far, and the experiences have been positive. There have been a substantial amount of app users on the two complete seasons so far (2022, 2023), and the average engagement time for the season has been over 13 minutes.

The app serves many purposes in delivering the latest exclusive content, and engaging the audience. The app has seen the biggest engagement numbers when the audience have gotten a chance to affect the course of the show directly with the app.

The teams at Banijay and Choicely are eager to continue developing the app, and the story continues.

"With the help of Choicely, the app allows the Dancing With The Stars universe to expand and lets the audience really dive into an exclusive world of content and engaging features."

- Rasmus Liestøl, Digital Producer, Nordisk Banijay

Learn more about TV show apps.