The Client
A-Leagues is the premier soccer federation in Australia, managing competitions for men’s, women’s and youth professional teams
The history of the league is somewhat complex, but from our point of view the key moments happened when Australian Premier Leagues (APL) took over commercial and operational control of the league in 2020, and when private equity firm Silverlake acquired a 1/3 stake in APL a year later.
The brief
The new A-Leagues brand had reworked its digital presence for the 2021-22 season and launched a new website, Keepup
However the site had not been well received by the fans. Traffic was down and the chatter on social media was largely negative. Consequently the APL broke relations with its incumbent design digital agency and engaged Deltatre to review the service offering and website design, and to propose a strategy to reinvigorate the brand and re-engage fans
My Role
I headed up the Deltatre side of project delivery, with part-time support from colleagues in our Sydney office
This was a scope-as-you-go type of engagement - the terms, process and outcomes were not well-defined when we set out. So my job was to first understand what needed to be done, then create a plan to deliver that, and finally to implement that plan
First steps
I ran a series of workshops and uncovered the key challenges:
Platform. The new site was slow and the publishing workflow was complex. APL had discharged their original technology partner and were starting the process of replatforming onto a new technology stack with a new agency
Stakeholders. The client-side organisation was complex. The main financial stakeholders were largely sleeping partners, but they would require input into any key decisions on strategy and overall design. This meant that my key contact, although a highly capapble and experienced programme manager was somewhat disempowered and changes would take time to approve
The service. The vision of the Keepup site had been to create a go-to resource for all fans of soccer in Australia and New Zealand by including syndicated coverage of domestic European leagues and international tournaments. However social chatter suggested that this plan had backfired and fans felt that the A-Leagues coverage was lost among content that they could get elsewhere
The delivery set-up. The time difference between London and Sydney made for a difficult situation. Even with me starting at 6am and Asutralian resources staying on into the evening had a very small window in which to fit Scrum ceremonies, stakeholder updates and design meetings
“
I was actually starting to like the KeepUp site haha. But this is still a good move. So now the A-Leagues website has news for A-League men’s and women’s, and KeepUp has news for Socceroos, Matildas, Aussies Abroad, AFC Champions League/Cup, Australia Cup, NPL, and the A-Leagues section as well.
Nice design too. Good to see the club logos at the top, and pop-down menus for the leagues.”