Case Study: Sydney FC sees match day revenue increase of up to 370 percent

Sydney Football Club's (Sydney FC) digitisation work at the Allianz Stadium led to a 228 percent attendance uplift and match day revenue increase of up to 370 percent. 

The club undertook the work to build out productivity and efficiency by enhancing service to members, fans and stakeholders. 

Sydney's FC’s, head of consumer business, marketing and content Jeremy Butler explained to Digital Nation how the organisation developed a full-service experience for its supporters. 

“Sydney FC have played from their inception in 2005 at Allianz Stadium, which is a 40,000-seater stadium at Moore Park in Sydney. 

“The government, as a part of the stadium upgrade across the city undertook massive renovations, effectively took down the old Allianz Stadium, and created a brand-new fantastic stadium, which is probably the best stadium in Australia for playing sporting.”

“That meant that as a club we had to go on the road for four years,” Butler said. 

Butler said as the club moved back into the stadium it was soon apparent that the stadium “was not the same as the one we'd left.” 

“What we were very conscious of was to allow our members and our supporters to understand the opportunities for them when they came to choosing their memberships and seating for the new season. 

From here, the organisation identified the new stadium “was also a great opportunity for us to create a one-stop shop.” 

“We were the first sports team to enter the stadium, so no one had been on site. 

“When we launched the website, we were aware the stadium wouldn't be finished at that point. 

“There were a lot of questions we needed to answer for our memberships, our members, to allow them to understand what the opportunities were, where the seating situation was and how they could enjoy a great experience at our new home,” he said.  

After a tender process, Sydney FC landed on a solution it found matched its requirements as the club was keen to source “someone to create our digital presence for the new stadium”.  

Sydney FC wanted to create an experience that allowed people to find their seats, according to Butler.

The club also wanted to educate website visitors about the new stadium however the Sydney FC “website was locked into a suite of websites owned by the APL who run the league.”

This made it difficult to find “flexibility within that site to deliver the products that we wanted” and were “very conscious that there will be a lot of learnings as we went through the process and potentially a lot of changes.”

“How do we find an innovative solution that allowed us to upscale quickly, that allowed us to jump in quickly in terms of changing content, especially as we knew that we would be taking feedback on this journey and we needed to interact quickly.”

Eventually, the tender process led Sydney FC to independent digital solutions consultancy Herbert Digital and its Storyblok content management system (CMS).  

Revenue and attendance touch down 

Since going live in February 2022 Butler says one uplift noticed was an attendance boost of 228 percent and a match-day revenue increase of up to 370 percent. 

“We saw a huge uplift. We had a million-page events… so that told us that the website was getting good use. 

 Butler says these results have led other sports companies to inquire about the work plus customers can now make more informed seating choices.

“We've had many sports clubs come to us and ask us how we built this project and are very interested in the process we use.

“In the past, you tended to go into a website and just see a flat map and say, okay, I want to sit on this seat, then view the price. 

“What we built was an experience selector. You said where you wanted to sit in the stadium, who you wanted to come with, the kind of experience you wanted to have.”

Once this information was input by the customer the site could produce a “primary option, but also two secondary options as well.” 

The work has added flexibility and has helped bring people back to the stadium.

“The best way to describe it was we built the website purely to bring people back into the Allianz Stadium. It's gone from that process to being our go-to website.”