Case Study: The Football League

CLIENT 

The Football League is the oldest professional football league competition in the world and features professional association football clubs from England and Wales. It was the top level football league in England from its formation in the 19th century until 1992, when the top 22 clubs split away to form the Premier League.

The League's official website, www.football-league.co.uk, was originally launched in the winter of 1999, providing basic information about the member clubs. Over the following years the site developed in partnership with the Press Association to list fixtures, results and the latest league tables. With an ever increasing demand for content, Final Third Sports Media were appointed by The Football League to manage their website in autumn 2006.

SOLUTION

Final Third's role is to provide the majority of the editorial content and look after the general day-to-day running of the site, consolidating and publishing information provided by the League's offices in Preston and London. We are also responsible for managing and editing content supplied by third parties to ensure continuity and balanced coverage.

The key objectives for the website are to maximise the exposure of the Football League's competitions, to promote the work of their sponsors and commercial partners and to widen the coverage of the activities of all 72 member clubs.

Having developed a style guide and content plan with the client we were able to identify areas to improve the website to meet these objectives. Consequently regular news and features have served to improve the all round reader experience and most importantly, ensure 'stickability' which has seen an increasing number of visitors return regularly.

As well as compelling written content the website has progressed in recent years to incorporate exclusive video features, centred around the League's showpiece cup finals and a weekly podcast, the successful launch of which we managed on iTunes. The audio show was quickly established as one of the most downloaded weekly football programmes in the UK.

RESULT

Just as our involvement has grown considerably every year so has the number of page impressions and unique visitors. With traffic figures now measured in millions, over the last four years the total number of page impressions has more than doubled and last year was up 54% on 2008/09.

The number of visitors to the site has also grown beyond expectation with two and a half times as many people visiting the website last season in comparison to 2005/06, the season before we got involved.

Further recognition of the site's ability to engage came in the form of a 2009 SportBusiness Ultimate Sports Website Award for partner activation. Confirmation that we had not only succeeded in helping the client meet one of their main objectives but that we had done it in style. What better recognition than an industry award as the best in category across all sports websites?

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