With the development of the Premier League [PL] into a global business, competition for fans has intensified off the pitch. Southampton is looking to keep up and break into the global market with a new digital strategy.
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The teams of the English league are now competing all over the world for the favors of the fans. With the horrendous rise in revenues from broadcasting fees, so far middle and lower house teams have also become wealthy players in world football, and this can be seen not only from transfers, but also from the global branding effort.
Past practice has shown that the PL teams paid little attention to their website, knowing that the fans will certainly not side with the team because of this. However, the Saints thought differently and embarked on serious branding to engage international sympathizers.
Serious business interest in a good digital strategy
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With only a fraction of mobilizable fans attending matches in the stadium from week to week, the club had to identify new sales channels. And one of the biggest development opportunities was seen in the transformation of the digital strategy.
The old website was not suitable for the club to properly present itself to its audience, and user experience [UX] also fell far short of the expected level.
With only a fraction of mobilizable fans attending matches in the stadium from week to week, the club had to identify new sales channels. And one of the biggest development opportunities was seen in the transformation of the digital strategy.
The old website was not suitable for the club to properly present itself to its audience, and user experience [UX] also fell far short of the expected level.
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The Saints have therefore started to work on introducing a platform where fans can get all the content, products and services related to the club in one hub. The implementing agency Delete, targeting global markets, also took into account the need to compete for consumers' attention with entertainment giants such as Netflix β so the standard of user experience was raised very high.
The Saints' and Delete's joint research found that football fans keep up with team-related news on weekdays and weekends, but they do so primarily on news portals and social media.
How would Southampton's website get on this list? The Saints say the answer lies in a fan-centered approach.
The result of the development was a new broadcast hub, a continuous stream of news in which content related to the club is updated quickly during the week and on match days.
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The content strategy
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During the design phase, seven different groups of consumers were identified and the content strategy for the site was built according to their needs.
The team of nine [which doesn't matter much at all in the Premier League] has created a constantly updated feed with βtastyβ content such as news, videos, tweets, pictures. Any short, informative content that the fan can grasp.
And the fan demand showed that the target group is constantly looking for information, wants to know what is going on around the club. The team's resources also had to be redesigned and to look at how the tools currently used could be used more consciously: press conferences, age-group matches, player information, training sessions were therefore packaged in multiple digital formats to extend the life of each story in the feed.
PL teams like to use statistics to measure the performance of players, but many use it only internally: Southampton have discovered the value in this too, and use the data to serve information more interestingly to the fans.
Renewal of the internal system
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The new strategy also required a new CMS, an internal control system, which Delete built on the Sitecore platform. Southampton previously used a centralised template for Football League teams, which the league made available to them free of charge in exchange for a share of the site's advertising revenue. On the one hand, it is a useful service for lower class clubs to reduce their communication costs, but on the other hand it allows for a poorer user experience. Since many teams use the system at the same time, when match day information is updated, what is happening on the pages will be displayed later.
However, with the new CMS system of the Saints, the speed of sharing and publishing information has been accelerated, so that the real-time broadcast also radiates a more enjoyable and dynamic appearance on the website. In addition, each player, match and sponsor has its own news feed sub-page, where the latest and previous events related to them are displayed thematically.
The match days
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Match days are of course the most important occasions, at which point Southampton must also deliver an outstanding user experience. Each time the page automatically changes to a new look, also representing that fans are only interested in the match on that day.
The website is then transformed into a microsite and reports on all important events with real-time information. This form is similar to the practice of news portals, but among football clubs Southampton is one of the first to apply this innovative solution. The PL teams most often inform fans about the latest developments through their Twitter channel, while Southampton, in contrast to this trend, do not include a third channel to reach fans, but are working on building their own base.
The Saints are therefore pioneering efforts to change the established news consumption routine, which is a difficult task, but the results have so far confirmed their efforts.
Since the launch of the new site:
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The next steps
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Digital transformation is, of course, more than creating a new website. The next step is less spectacular, but perhaps just as important: they will revise and renew the backend systems so that the club can track its visitors on a more advanced platform.
Southampton's ticketing and trading system has so far been outsourced to two separate companies, so visitor data is not known at the club. In addition, due to the limitation of data processing, they could not take advantage of cross-promotional sales.
The club therefore wants to have digital assets under a central system β they create an internal hub where content, tickets and the online store can be accessed in one place, and customer and fan data can be organised.
In the medium term, it is also planned to introduce a digital membership system so that, in exchange for a minimum amount, foreign fans can feel closer to the club with unique content and promotions.
Although Southampton did not invent the Spanish wax with the new digital strategy, in a huge Premier League competition they had to take this step in order to keep pace with their rivals. The transformation on the pitch is unlikely to lead the team directly to a more productive performance, yet Southampton's philosophy requires the pursuit of excellence at all levels, including in communication to the fans.
Source: econsultancy.com
