Football Federation Australia Is Giving Clubs and Fans New Digital

CASE STUDY

Football Federation Australia is giving clubs and fans new digital experiences, helping raise the profile of the sport Avanade, Acquia and Drupal deliver a flexible platform, supporting speed and scale CASE STUDY Football Federation Australia is giving clubs and fans new digital experiences, helping raise the profile of the sport

Football Federation Australia (FFA) is the Business situation governing body of football (also known as soccer) in Australia and is a member FFA’s long-term vision is for football Three years ago, FFA consulted widely of the international governing body for to be the largest and most popular sport across professional and community football football, FIFA. It was established in 2004 in Australia; it is already Australia’s largest to formulate a whole-of-sport digital strategy and is responsible for launching Australia’s sport by participation with over 1.1million for the game. first-ever fully professional national football participants recorded in the Australian league - the Hyundai A-League, the men’s Sports Commission’s official AusPlay survey FFA - like other governing bodies - league - as well as the Westfield W-League, during the period July 2016 to June 2017. already provided football clubs with the top-division women’s league. The challenge for the FFA continues to digital platforms they could use to run be how to convert the immense amount their web presence. But until mid-2017, FFA aims to be the most popular sporting of people who participate in football into FFA’s entire digital function was outsourced code in Australia, and identified the digital regular attendees, fans and both viewers to a third-party provider. All FFA club sites experience as a way to reach and convert and members of the Hyundai A-league were based on a single, inflexible template. even more participants into fans. Websites and Westfield W-League, as well as The look-and-feel of the websites had not for FFA and professional football clubs were improve the experience as a participant changed in over four and a half years, maintained by a third-party provider using in football competitions. leading to an increasingly outdated digital outdated technology that was inflexible presence for the sport that was at odds and hadn’t kept up with internet standards Embracing digital technology is seen as a with its ambitions. and trends. This provided a disjointed critical way to achieve the broader FFA goal experience for fans visiting their websites. of growing the fan connection, improving FFA decided to re-platform the sites the experience for all participants across the to improve their fans’ experiences. game by providing a seamless experience across web and apps and supporting With Drupal 8 and Acquia Cloud Enterprise, the Australian community playing FFA built the Football Network giving the game of football itself. it direct control over its users’ digital experience, allowing it to offer that flexibility to football clubs and others within the football community. This control enables the FFA to respond to marketing or commercial opportunities much more quickly, for example, by rapidly spinning up microsites.

By outsourcing its entire digital function, • Generating direct revenue streams Out of necessity, FFA ran an “agile” process FFA wound up having limited control over for the program and implementing a to select both the technology it would use the digital experience that it offered to commercial framework to manage and the partners that would help implement football fans. This was happening at a time the interests of all stakeholders that technology. when digital services were identified as key to achieving its objectives of improving FFA wanted to provide an updated user When it put together its whole-of-sport the fan experience. experience for fans as well as the flexibility for digital strategy, FFA also came up with clubs to customise their sites based on their a list of “technology principles” - such as Under the new whole-of-sport digital individual digital priorities. For example, if the openness and flexibility - for its digital uplift. strategy, the decision was made to club favoured video content, this could be The governing body critiqued potential take back ownership of digital internally. made more prominent, instead of being technologies against these principles, and FFA set up its own digital team and brought restricted to just one part of the club’s found that Drupal “stacked up well”. in several partners to help it achieve its goals website. in the space. These included: Drupal also presented a cost-effective option The governing body also needed underlying • Building new websites and apps for FFA. The sport itself had limited resources technology that could scale to the needs of for fans, participants and FFA’s and could not afford to overcook its digital the entire sport, while supporting a corporate stakeholders uplift by licensing a platform and capabilities consistent, sustainable digital operating it did not require. Drupal could deliver the • Rolling out new community digital services model. same seamless user experiences that FFA to support grassroots administration, wanted for both web and mobile application including competition management, The change had to be delivered relatively platforms based on its open API technology. registration and education services quickly. The off season for professional • Supporting customer identity, data competitions is typically May to September FFA decided to use Drupal via Acquia and marketing through unification of FFA’s each year, increasing pressure on the new Cloud Enterprise, a managed service customer data assets into a single identity digital team to deliver rapid results. hosted on AWS infrastructure. The build was to enable personalised experiences and handled by a blended team of the FFA and enablement of FFA’s digital marketing Acquia-recommended partners, Avanade’s strategy Digital Innovation Studio and Codeware. Leveraging experienced partners such as Avanade and Codeware was critical because FFA’s digital team had no prior Drupal experience or the scale to tackle a project of this size. Without the help of Avanade, Acquia and Codeware, the new platform would not have been delivered in the short five-month period available.

3 CASE STUDY Football Federation Australia is giving clubs and fans new digital experiences, helping raise the prof le of the sport

The results

The FFA’s own website, as well as 19 individual There now is much more flexibility to spin FFA is now using the platform to set up sites, including the Socceroos, Matildas, up new microsites to respond to marketing more websites, including a site to support Adelaide United, Brisbane Roar, Central or commercial opportunities. Previously, its bid to host the FIFA Women’s World Cup Coast Mariners, Melbourne City, Melbourne standing up a microsite required months in 2023 and the addition of two state Victory, Newcastle Jets, Perth Glory, Sydney of advance planning, whereas now the member federations. FC, Wellington Phoenix and Western Sydney turnaround is less than a week. There is no Wanderers have been moved onto the longer a technical impediment to standing Ultimately, the objective now is to use the Acquia platform. up new sites; most of the time is now spent feature functionality of the Drupal Acquia getting the content right to launch quickly. platform to support the generation of direct Clubs were able to start with a blank canvas revenue streams and to bring on further and rearrange the “blocks” that make up their An example of an immediate need for a partners and greater customization while website designs as they saw fit. Websites now microsite was the trial of Jamaican sprinter striving all the time for an engaging fan, club have a different look-and-feel to one another Usain Bolt at the Central Coast Mariners and sponsor experience. based on the individual club’s needs, though A-League club. The trial generated fevered they share some common style elements as interest in the player, the club and the sport. The platform proved to FFA that it can well as underlying technology that is helping A dedicated microsite with “everything Bolt” support the scale and speed of FFA’s digital them to reap the best value for their was quickly spun up to take advantage functions now and into the future. sponsors. of the increased interest.

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