Q&A: Umberto Righetti, Commercial Director, SportingPulse - August 2007  

This month, S&T talks to Umberto Righetti, commercial director of SportingPulse (pictured right), a system currently used by rights owners such as the Australian Football League (AFL) for incorporating fixtures, ladders, statistics, online results and clearances, websites, online registration and maintenance for participants, plus demographic and geographical data. In the case of Aussie Rules Football, the SportingPulse system (Footyweb) helps the AFL, state leagues, regional leagues, clubs, and the volunteers to manage Aussie Rules competitions more efficiently, reducing costs and saving time. The AFL believes that being able to track and manage each and every participant in football will lead to greater efficiencies and better communication. This will, in their view, result in increased membership of the sport nationally and internationally. The AFL aims to have every single football participant registered on Footyweb by the commencement of the 2009 winter season.

Please explain what Footyweb is….

“Footyweb is the AFL’s online community for Australian Rules Football participants, provided by sports technology company SportingPulse. Now into its third successful season, Footyweb already links over 300,000 participants, 70 leagues and 2,500 clubs in 20 countries, delivering an online network across the globe. Footyweb also provides them with SportingPulse’s comprehensive competition, communication and membership management system, the combination of which is expected to save the sport well over $1m a year.”

How easy is your system to implement and how does it save clubs money?

“Our systems can be as simple as a single website or as complex as national registration systems with participant tracking, competition management with full game statistics and IOC standard accreditation.  Even our most complex systems can be implemented fairly easily by sports. The key to our implementations is that they are scalable and designed for the average sports administrator who may not have great knowledge of IT.  Under agreements we have with national sporting organisations, our suite of sport administration software is provided free to affiliated associations and clubs saving them the cost of software and website hosting that they would otherwise incur. Compared with manual systems, savings are made in postage and telephone costs in communicating with members. An unseen cost in grassroots sport is the millions of hours that volunteers spend in managing clubs and associations. By automating many of the processes we drastically reduce the time spent making it easier for sports to attract volunteers.”

What are the typical revenue streams that your member sites employ?

“Revenue comes from sponsorship and advertising across the entire network.
Sponsors can provide branded content throughout our network as well as sponsoring specific sections such as photo galleries, leading goalscorers, etc. As well as display advertising, companies can brand e-mail communications (weekly game reminders, results notifications) sent to members. By aggregating the sites across our network we are able to offer brands a massive reach.”

Can your system be adapted for other sports?

“SportingPulse works with over 60 sports internationally. Having provided software solutions to large multi-sport events such as the World Masters
Games our software is easily configurable to meet the specific rules of many sports. As well as the AFL, sports governing bodies including the ARL, Touch Football Australia, Hockey Australia and The Oceania National Olympic Committee have all helped to make SportingPulse the third most popular website network for sport in Australia.”

What would you say to any grassroots clubs not currently using your system?

“Through the agreements we have with national sporting organisations, SportingPulse offers free tools which allow clubs to build an inventory of membership data, a web presence, a communication platform and financial tracking through a single login.  We can confidently say that by using our systems clubs can save costs, save volunteer hours, improve communication with members and generate new sources of revenue.”

Can your system be used by a club to protect its assets and if so how?

“We are helping clubs create digital assets that can generate new revenue for them.”

What would you say is the biggest challenge for a grassroots club looking to go online?

“With more and more households now connected to broadband internet club, members are expecting their club to have a good online presence.  It is essential that clubs keep their website content fresh and communicate useful, timely and relevant information to members. We help clubs by ensuring the information on fixtures, results, tables and statistics can be published quickly and easily.”

Righetti has secured major sponsorship opportunities that will see brands, including the members of the Australian Sporting Goods Association, direct their marketing spend online and contribute to the funding of grassroots sport. Before joining SportingPulse, Righetti held senior executive positions within PwC Australia, leading Strategy, Innovation, IP Management and Business Development. Righetti was born and educated in Scotland, graduating from Glasgow University and qualifying as a chartered accountant before moving to Sydney in 1988.

For further information visit: www.sportingpulse.com

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