Written on July 8, 2009
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Submit your favorite sports business issue and how you solved it and we'll put it up online. Send to buffy@teamworkonline.com, and give us rights to publish it online with your email address. Bill ChapinBillC@SeahawksSoundersFC.comHow to create the best MLS soccer website for Sounders FC.comThe task was daunting...Joe Roth, Tod Leiweke, Adrian Hanauer and Drew Carey the ownership group of the newly formed Seattle Sounders MLS team wanted the new Seattle Sounder FC website to be the most technologically advanced and coolest website in all of soccer, bar none. No small task coming from some of the best sports and entertainment minds in the business. Our team had 12 months to put together a game plan that would create the best soccer website in all of Major League soccer by fan perception, owners perception and the league perception. The task was to identify the mission critical vision for the website, along with developing a rich feature set that would create differentiation from the rest of the MLS soccer sites. As with any new major projects, several "opportunities" were realized early:
Taking all these challenges in stride, our team headed by Kenton Olson, our Manager of Digital Media, created an international RFP that took all of our objectives and desired feature set and put the requirements in a 40 page request for proposal. This strategic outline proved to be the basis of creating the vision of the digital media platform that we had extrapolated from our ownership group. We interviewed several suitors from IMG, to a Canadian based technology firm, several firms from LA and even an Australian firm to find the best of breed technologies. We wanted to join forces, share our vision, collaborate and identify potential solutions. A digital media task force was formed and our group was tasked with the day to day collaboration of building the vision of the website and measuring these objectives versus a self-imposed deadline of February 1, 2009. After a three month interview period of over 10 firms, we selected Digitaria and Pluck to be our two digital media integration partners. While our timeframe may seem generous and lengthy, we had just finished a transfer to the NFL Digital Media platform for the Seattle Seahawks and we are building this new website from scratch while maintaining and delivery fresh daily content for Seahawks.com and QwestField.com. Tackling these "opportunities" was the baseline for creating a solution. If we could identify ways to address these 5 challenges we would have the opportunity to be successful. We worked closely with both Digitaria and Pluck to create a value proposition for our fans, our ownership group and our league. Results: Sounders FC launched on Sunday February 1, 2009 as the first fully integrated team website with community oriented tool set and functionality in the history of the MLS. Since the launch on February 1st - through March 31, 2009 - Seattle Sounders FC has the following results:
Ownership is thrilled and the MLS league office has acknowledged that these are incredible numbers associated with a website. In technology and websites, the only guarantee is change...so we will continue to create new and compelling technological opportunities for our ever present and growing and technologically astute fan base. The opening game was a hit, too, with thousands of fans showing up downtown and parading to the stadium, for a total attendance of 32,500. We are confident that the website contributed to that "buzz." [back to My Sports Business Problem and How I Solved It...] |
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