Success Stories
Falkirk Football Club
Falkirk FC was promoted to the Scottish Premier League (SPL) for the 2005/2007 season. With a new community stadium in the town to conform with SPL standards and additional new player costs, Falkirk FC had to find new sources of revenue to meet its financial commitments. Increased commercial support from fans and local businesses alike was vital.
The Solution
Spider Networks delivered. Its unique interactive web communication platform proved the foundation for Falkirk to meet its enlarged business commitments at no capital cost.
"Deploying Spider's interactive communications tools on our website has become arguably one of the most important corporate events in Falkirk Football Club's history," said George Craig, managing director, Falkirk Football Club.
Launching John Hughes' Internet Army, the club leveraged Spider's technology to open a paid-for members area from its official website. The members area was customised to give the look and feel of the club's main website with a dashboard containing all of Spider's rich online interactive communications tools.
As part of the core subscription package, fans could choose a personalised, club-branded email address for life - yourvoice@falkirkfc.net, for example. Using the online chat forum, they began to interact in real time with manager John Hughes and his players. Fans also created fan groups to share files and photos, began to build personal websites, and were given access to the club's diary.
The club also used Spider's toolset to build an online media centre containing a library of audio and video streaming content from press conferences, training sessions, radio broadcasts and more. Today, fans access the media centre at any time, and can replay favourite match highlights and post-match interviews whenever they wish.
ROI and Next Goal
Falkirk FC realised a return against its Spider solution within three months of launch. Further cementing the relationship between club and fans, and with the goal of further increasing revenues from its website, Falkirk FC now plans to further exploit the Internet Army channel by bundling Spider's solutions with other new media services and products.
Summary
All pre-launch testing, design, marketing and press coverage was conceived, managed and co-ordinated by Spider against a tight timescale of only three weeks. It delivered all the required objectives prior to launch, and provided the flexibility and support to react to the changing demands of the Club and their supporters post-launch.