Football in Australia has a brand new digital presence.
This week, Football Federation Australia (FFA) launched the first stage of its new digital network. Stage one of football’s new digital home includes two new websites – a fan hub at myfootball.com.au and a corporate site at ffa.com.au – while giving a complete makeover to its sites for the Hyundai A-League and Westfield W-League and its Clubs, the Caltex Socceroos, Westfield Matildas, Pararoos, the Foxtel National Y-League, and the Westfield FFA Cup.
FFA’s Head of Commercial, Digital and Marketing, Luke Bould, said the new and rebranded websites are just the first part of a larger digital investment undertaken by FFA to ultimately provide a superior user experience for fans and participants of football.
“Right now people who play and follow football are getting information and services from a range of places,” said Bould.
“Our digital project will eventually bring everything together so that the individual experience will be much enhanced and seamless.”
“As the Australian Sports Commission’s figures show, football has the largest participation base of any sport in Australia and it’s growing all the time. When you add that to our fan base and bring everyone under one digital umbrella, working towards a single identity for each of our fans and participants, you have a very powerful network,” he said.
What’s new across the network?
- Fresh design with news, video, match centres, fixtures, results, ladders and fan engagement
- Greater flexibility for Clubs to ‘personalise’ their sites
- New hub sites which make it easier to find relevant information by separating the fan experience from FFA corporate information
- Rebrand of Hyundai A-League and Westfield W-League
- A greater emphasis on introducing new fans to the game
- More opportunities for partners to interact with fans
FFA worked with Melbourne companies Codeware and Loud & Clear on the build.
The next stage of the program will embrace football’s great strength, its huge participation base, with improved websites for players, referees, coaches and club administrators, and a new competition management system to be delivered in December 2017.
Overall, the program will see football invest in its digital infrastructure to also deliver a new participant registration system, new apps, and new data infrastructure to better service its customers.
The aim is to refresh the Australian Football Family and create new insights that allow FFA and its partners to better service football’s seven million fans across Australia. Soon, FFA will also announce new partnerships that will enhance its content offering and also its commercial proposition in market.
“Our digital program is at the heart of our objective to convert more participants into fans,” added Bould. “It’s a strategic investment by the game which will allow us to better connect our point of difference as the most played club sport in the country, to the clubs in our growing national leagues.”