Mobile Development Kit
Building a reusable mobile development toolkit enabling Planet Sport to launch apps across all their sports media brands.
Capabilities
Technologies
Executive summary
Planet Sport wanted to expand their sports media business into mobile apps, but a previous offshore build had left them with an unmaintainable product and little confidence in the approach. We designed and built a Mobile Development Kit (MDK) - an opinionated toolkit of reusable modules - that enables their teams to spin up new branded apps quickly and consistently. We also delivered Tennis365, a production-ready app that proves the pattern works.
The challenge
Planet Sport runs several popular sports news brands including Tennis365, planetF1, Football365 and Love Rugby League. Their websites drive significant traffic, but relying on Google for visitors meant relying on Google for revenue. Mobile apps offered a way to build direct relationships with readers and diversify their income.
The problem? Their first attempt at an app - Team Talk - hadn’t gone well. Built by offshore teams without deep mobile experience, it took too long to ship and proved brittle and hard to maintain. Planet Sport needed a different approach: something that would let them build multiple apps across their brands without repeating the same mistakes.
They came to us with an idea: what if we built a development kit? A set of building blocks their teams could use to construct apps without starting from scratch each time. The kit needed to be opinionated enough to enforce good practices, but flexible enough to let each brand maintain its own identity.
Approach and methodology
Team composition
We embedded dedicated mobile development expertise within Planet Sport’s team. While they maintained their existing web capabilities in-house, we became their entire mobile development and delivery function - working closely with stakeholders to shape both the technical approach and the product itself.
Proving the concept
Before committing to a full engagement, we ran a two-week proof of concept. Could we build something genuinely useful in that time? We chose React Native with Expo - technologies that would be approachable for Planet Sport’s existing React developers and easy to hire for in future. By the end of the fortnight, we’d demonstrated that the modular approach could work. Planet Sport were convinced.
Building the toolkit
Over three months, we built out the MDK as an npm package with comprehensive documentation. The ‘lego brick’ approach meant each module could be used independently or combined with others. Every app built with the MDK would automatically be set up with Planet Sport’s preferred tools:
- Authentication via Stytch, with Apple and Google sign-in
- Push notifications through Firebase
- Analytics and user tracking via Mixpanel
- Marketing data collection through Iterable
- Theming that lets each brand apply its own colours, fonts and visual identity
- CI/CD workflows using EAS to automatically build and publish to both app stores
That last point is significant. Automated publishing pipelines are genuinely transformative in mobile development - removing manual steps that slow teams down and introduce errors.
Tennis365: proof it works
Alongside the MDK, we built the Tennis365 app as both a proof of concept and a reference implementation. This wasn’t a demo - it’s a production-ready sports news app with monitoring built in, ready for real users. It shows exactly how future apps should be structured, from empty directory right through to app store submission.
Working together
We ran fortnightly show-and-tells and demos at each milestone. Stakeholders were set up as internal testers, receiving new features directly to their phones as work completed. When we hit blockers or needed backend services built, we raised them immediately and collaborated with Planet Sport’s engineers on solutions.
Results and outcomes
A toolkit for the future
Planet Sport now has a Mobile Development Kit that their teams can use to build apps across all their brands. The modular approach means developers unfamiliar with mobile can get up to speed quickly - the documentation covers everything, and the opinionated structure leaves little room for bad practices to take root.
Each new app starts with authentication, analytics, notifications and theming already wired up. The hours saved on boilerplate alone are significant, but the real value is consistency: every Planet Sport app will work the same way under the hood, making them far easier to maintain.
Production-ready delivery
Tennis365 is ready for release. It’s a fully functional sports news app with user authentication, push notifications, analytics tracking and automated CI/CD pipelines. It serves as both a product and a template - showing exactly how to build a Planet Sport app from the ground up.
Enabling in-house capability
The goal was never to build apps indefinitely - it was to give Planet Sport the tools and patterns to do it themselves. The MDK, the documentation and the Tennis365 reference implementation together form a complete handover package. Their teams can now build out apps for planetF1, Football365 and their other brands with confidence.