After months of gathering improvement ideas on Reddit, AS Roma announced the launch of their new website on December 7th. AS Roma was inspired to redesign their old website after being voted 6th worst out of all the Champions League team websites. Instead of closing its doors and working on the website in seclusion, Roma enlisted the help of the most important audience, the fans who view the website.
As we saw in October, AS Roma posted a thread on Roma’s subreddit asking for suggestions to the new site. The idea worked, and writers, website graphic designers, and fans helped to establish productive dialogue between the team and the public.
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The AS Roma press release highlights the idea that the new website was designed and built on the feedback from the club’s supporters that responded to the Reddit thread. Roma also praised the teamwork as being the first professional sports team to redesign a website using crowdsourced intelligence.
Jim Pallotta, AS Roma President, embraced the work of his organization in a statement to the fans, “this new website is an integral piece of our media platform strategy for the club. As a club we want to provide a platform to facilitate interactions and foster the creativity of our fans all across the world.”
In addition to the fans, the development of the new website also involved the help of Omnigon, a digital consulting firm that specializes in developing creative solutions for leaders in the sports, media and entertainment industries. The new enhanced, mobile-responsive website, contains new features such as:
- Card-based content feed that helps fans consume content quickly on the go
- Tagging system that allows users to surface the content that interests them
- Roma TV+, a new video platform that gives fans extensive access to Roma videos
- In-game player and team statistics for every game powered by Corebine, Omnigon’s proprietary real-time data delivery network
- Social feeds to make asroma.com a one-stop shop for everything connected to Roma
Head of Digital at AS Roma, Paul Rogers, was instrumental in bringing the crowdsourced information from Reddit to the new website. Rogers said that, “based on the feedback we received from fans, we have created a site that attempts to serve as a bridge between how people use social media and what they expect of an official club website. From a content perspective, this is much for than a football site.”
The new website is Roma’s latest effort to develop the club’s overall media strategy to “position the club at the forefront of how sports teams engage with supporters – a strategy being driven from the very top of the club”. Bringing in help from professionals and fans alike shows that the club is truly dedicated to delivering the best content on the best possible platform they can produce and other teams should take note.