How the FFR's conversational agent guided future rugby players all the way to their club

At the start of the 2026 season, the French Rugby Federation (FFR) launched its « Je choisis le rugby » ("I choose rugby") campaign around a simple idea: make new players want to sign up for a licence, then help them find a club near home.

The setup

To support the campaign, the FFR set up a conversational agent reachable on WhatsApp and through a chat module built into its website.

Roles were clearly split. The federation, which knows its ground better than anyone, designed the journeys and chose the topics the agent needed to cover with the general public. Mookee handled the launch and the follow-up: validating a local French phone number, getting the WhatsApp account verified by Meta, configuring and testing the agent, building the onboarding journeys, collecting and qualifying contacts, supervising conversations and, of course, reporting.

To get the word out, the FFR ran a broad campaign aimed at families, teenagers and adults drawn to rugby, with a direct invitation to ask the agent their questions. Every conversation was therefore started by the user, in response to that campaign, which is exactly what makes these exchanges so rich in marketing insight.

What the conversations reveal

Three topics account for most of the exchanges. Families and future players first want reassurance on access and safety (minimum age, equipment, supervision), then to understand the steps to become a licensed player (registration, licence renewal, federation calendar), and finally to find out where the nearest club is.

You might expect these families to simply turn to ChatGPT or Gemini, which draw on what the FFR publishes on its website and social media. But those tools build their answers from sources found online, with no guarantee that they reflect the rules specific to the 2026-2027 season (such as mandatory mouthguards), or that they actually come from the federation.

On topics like children's safety or coaching suited to the youngest players, parents want an answer from the FFR itself, with no middleman. The agent speaks on behalf of the federation, and that is where its legitimacy comes from. The FFR also knows the name and address of every one of its clubs: in nearly half of all conversations, the agent pointed the user to the club finder (ffr.fr/trouver-un-club-de-rugby).

Another lesson: the exchanges rarely stop at a single question. Users clarify their situation, react to the answers and come back to points raised earlier. This is where an AI agent really earns its place: a FAQ page can't handle that back-and-forth, and no "player relations" team could keep these conversations going around the clock, day and night, answering within 5 seconds.

A model for other federations and sports organizations

Every federation already holds the information most of its future players are looking for (club locations, age requirements, equipment, licence calendar), and they all see the same questions pour in at the start of the season. The whole challenge is making that information available on the channel people already use.

The same agent that makes people want to sign up can then support licensed players throughout the season, right up to renewal time. The federation keeps a single voice, consistent from one end of the year to the other.

It can also help with other missions: recruiting referees, coaches or volunteers, or answering supporters' questions at the major events the federation organizes (stadium access, ticketing, kick-off times).

And for the clubs themselves

In a club, amateur or professional, the questions are even more concrete and just as regular: training times by age group, documents needed to register, membership fees, whether you can try a session before committing.

Very often, volunteers answer them in the evening from their personal phones. With an agent, they can hand off those answers without losing the club's tone, and focus on welcoming new players once they walk through the door.

In a professional club, the scope changes but the logic stays the same. The club knows its season-ticket holders, their stands and their ticketing habits, and it's the club supporters turn to on match days to find out how to get to the stadium, where to collect their ticket or what entertainment is planned. A conversational agent can handle that flow of practical questions, and also support the season-ticket renewal campaign or the on-sale of a highly anticipated match.