Website Profile: AFL - Building global appeal through the web - November 2004  

In the latest sports website profile, S&T pursues its new-found passion for Aussie Rules Football (Footy) by catching up with Ben Amarfio, broadcasting, publishing and new media manager for the Australian Football League (AFL), at SportelMonaco. The league's partnership with Australian telecoms giant Telstra, is one that has already benefited visitors to the club's official website considerably, and there are improvements and new features yet to come…

The official website of the AFL (www.afl.com.au) has been produced by Telstra since 2001 when the telco secured the broadband and wireless rights for the code in a five year deal and became the AFL's official telecoms partner. Telstra was initially interested in the deal according to Amarfio, because footy "is a truly national sport, unlike NRL [rugby], which is only found in three Australian states, although Telstra is involved in that sport too. Our fan demographics were also of appeal, being a near 50/50 split between males and females, and our sport is very family-oriented." Telstra's other sports interests include the Australian leg of the World Rally Championship and sports/entertainment venues - Telstra Dome in Melbourne and the Telstra Stadium in Sydney.
Through its internet group BigPond, Telstra controls the day-to-day running of the AFL website and has expanded upon a range of features including a daily news service during the season, scores updates, wrap-ups and video clips footage. The most popular areas of the site according to Amarfio are "news, scoreboards, ladders [league table of rankings] and fixture information."
During the footy season in Australia, five matches are typically shown on free-to-air television and a further three on pay-TV (Foxtel) on matchdays. "As 77% of Australians don't have Foxtel, that audience is of appeal as they want to follow - via the web - the matches they can't watch on TV," says Amarfio.

Video as a driver for new overseas fans

Whilst fans in Australia are unable to watch complete matches online due to rights issues, the AFL is considering allowing international fans to access live games in the future once the blocking technology has been developed to the satisfaction of all parties. With 12% of the website's traffic coming from outside Australia, and the UK and US comprising half of that, the AFL is keen to provide content that will appeal to its non-domestic audience.
Video footage is currently available free of charge to BigPond customers who receive video news reports of every match, quarter by quarter, match replays (24 hours after the end of a game), player interviews, highlights packages and specialty pieces. "If you're not a BigPond customer, you don't get these features," explains Amarfio. "It's as simple as that."
The AFL monetises the website in several key ways. "We derive income through the licence fee Telstra pays us," says Amerfio, "and also through e-commerce - merchandising, ticketing, photos and auctions - of which Telstra gets a slice. Advertising and sponsorship are also revenue streams on the site." With wireless products and applications growing in popularity among its website users, the AFL is monitoring the gaming and gambling situation with interest - legislation permitting. "We are particularly following what has been happening in the UK regarding legal issues." Perhaps we'll see an AFL online gambling operation based out of Gibraltar before too long? Watch this space!
As far as sponsors are concerned, the AFL's main sponsors receive branding on afl.com.au as part of their offline deal. "Toyota is very good at leveraging its association in particular," says Amarfio, "using online competitions and links."

One big, happy family

So, how do all the individual club websites fayre under the afl.com.au umbrella? "The Telstra-run site is the main, official website and the club sites sit beneath it, with other leagues in stages below that," says Amarfio. "Essendon is unique in that it is the only club not involved in the deal and has a standalone website operated by the club itself. We have a separate agreement with them in terms of how they use the AFL's IP etc." The AFL will be renegotiating its contracts with the clubs over the next 12 months but with economies of scale in place through being part of the umbrella arrangement, it will make a lot of commercial sense for the clubs to stay on board. Through the present arrangement, the AFL clubs get to keep 100% of their membership revenue but Telstra receives a cut of other revenue generated through their sites.
Looking ahead to the 2005 season, the AFL and Telstra will be introducing a range of new features and improving the website. "As well as launching a dedicated AFL newsletter, we'll be redesigning the homepage and creating a greater synergy between the textual site and the rich media content. There will be more competitions, more surveys, more unique content and more coverage of events," explains Amarfio.
And on 20 November, Telstra will be streaming live on the site, coverage of the AFL Draft for the first time, because it will not be available on television. "This will be a good test for Telstra and a good test for us," says Amarfio. "Although our Draft is not on the same level as the US Draft system, it is very popular and eagerly awaited by the public. Meanwhile, Trade Day is our busiest day for website traffic," concludes Amarfio.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the Atlantic……

Rob de Santos, chairman of the board of the Australian Football Association of North America (AFANA) tells S&T how technology is helping to grow awareness of the sport in the US.

"AFANA was formed largely over the internet in early 1996 (www.afana.com). To this day, the only permanent 'office' we have is the one I work in. We embraced very early on the concept of 'virtual' business and we still believe in it. Our servers are in the UK, our staff are scattered across the US, Canada, and Australia. We believed then and still do, that the internet is the best way for us to leverage our relatively small resources and compete with much larger and better funded competitors. By contrast, we have developed much of our web presence internally, often using customised software or open source software. We've never tried to be 'bleeding edge'. The demographics of our customer base are very broad and diverse so it has been our philosophy to adopt new features when we feel they have reached 'critical mass' in the marketplace. We eschew the latest and greatest web gimmicks in favour of a high degree of compatibility across browsers and personal computer types. We also want our site to be family friendly and safe from many of the myriad of security risks out there.
From a promotional standpoint, we've tried to stick to the basics: maintain a high ranking in the search engines, provide good customer service, and use our site as a means to reach fans across the entirety of North America. Our goal is to expose potential fans to Aussie Rules in the belief that if we can get eyeballs on our website and more importantly in front of the television, the game itself will bring a high percentage of new fans. Behind the scenes, we try to work with television networks and the AFL to improve TV coverage, distribute schedules, and keep the concerns of fans in front of the decision makers.

Growing the sport and making money

I believe that we are the most popular website worldwide on the sport not associated with a major media organisation or the AFL itself. Whilst our primary emphasis at afana.com has been to raise the visibility of the sport we do use the site to generate revenue. We are entirely funded by memberships, advertising, and commissions on merchandise sales and the web site is at the heart of that. E-mail newsletters are also a key marketing tool. We are neither endorsed by the AFL nor do we receive any funding from them.
We have an on-going relationship with the AFL at several levels, most importantly with their media deptartment and with their international television staff. Those contacts are critical to our ability to report on AFL matches, on the TV coverage situation internationally, and to lobby on behalf of fans.
Since we started in 1996, AFANA believes the active fans of the sport have doubled in the US and Canada and we think we've been a key part of that. We've also played a major role in assuring the continued TV coverage of footy in North America. Internally we've seen 25 to 50% year over year growth in web traffic which reinforces our feeling that the sport continues to grow."

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