Global Fútbol

Athletic Club have recently unveiled the new look of their official website, which has undergone a complete revamp in image (UI) and usability (UX). This is the result of more than eight months of work, in which the user experience on mobile devices has been given absolute priority. The percentage of users who consume the content on the website via mobile phones is already approximately 80% of the total number of monthly visits.

David García, director of Athletic Club’s digital department explained: “The last major overhaul of the official website was in 2017, so this project was essential. Since then, the contents and services offered by the club have not stopped growing, so we needed to update the fan experience on the site, which is increasingly focused on mobile consumption, through the technological renovation of a platform that was modular and scalable. We put a lot of emphasis on reorganising the information architecture to achieve a more user-friendly navigation.”

The new website seeks to strike a balance between the information and content consumed by fans and the monetisation of services, such as the sales of tickets for matches, the museum or the stadium tour. There is also a club that fans can subscribe to, while the website provides details of new business ventures launched in recent months, such as training and consultancy at Lezama, the world-renowned youth academy.

The live blogs covering the team’s games also have a new special treatment on the website, with a personalised home page on matchdays for the men’s and women’s first teams. These include past content, statistics and video highlights of the latest clashes against whoever the opposition is. This will be developed further, with more sections added to capitalise on the way many fans follow matches with a second screen nowadays. The statistics section – for player and team profiles, and especially historical profiles related to players, coaches, opponents, matches and goals – has been completely renewed, becoming one of the most complete databases among all official team websites in Europe.

In addition to the public-facing website, another major development is seen with the private area for members, called ‘Txoko de Socios/as’. It has been completely overhauled to bring the club even closer to the members who run it. On this, the club stated: “In April, we consulted with our members to understand their experience of using the private area, thereby obtaining insights that would help us in this remodelling and confirming the improvements that we had already detected. Although the overall feedback was quite positive, the thousands of opinions collected in that survey were key in the work of reforming the area. This is the path we must follow, that of responding to the needs of our members in their online relationship with the club.”

From this private area, Athletic Club members can now check up on their attendance at San Mamés and the details of their membership card transfers, a section in which the club has been investing heavily in recent years to boost the number of people attending games at the stadium. The success of this is reflected in the increase of spectators at San Mamés by nearly 10% since the return to stadiums after the pandemic. Members can now transfer their tickets to the club or to another person via the private area of the website, an action that until now could only be carried out via the official app. Furthermore, fans can access other new online services, process registrations, consult all corporate information and carry out all the procedures related to elections, both for the presidency every four years, as well as the annual elections for delegate members.

The relaunch of the club’s official website and new private members’ area fulfils one of the objectives set out in the club’s strategic plan, called the Plan Estratégico AC Aurrera 2023-2026. The club wanted to increase the level of satisfaction and sense of belonging among the members. The website will continue to develop in the coming months, with the consolidation of all the contents and services and the development of new sections and functionalities.

A club going digital

The revamp of the official website and private members’ area is part of a wider renovation of Athletic Club's digital channels, which has been taking place over the past four years and which began with the launch of an official app in 2020. This has already become well established, with close to 50,000 active users in recent months and with it becoming in itself a method for accessing San Mamés via the digital membership card. Some of the channels most directly related to the services that the club monetises have also been renewed in recent times, such as the official website of the San Mamés stadium (with its VIP and events areas), the official website of the Athletic Club Museum and San Mamés Tour or the page for Club Athletic, through which members can be registered to gain access to various benefits for an annual fee of only 50 euros.

It is clear to see that Athletic Club have made a firm commitment to digital development in recent times. This was also seen at the end of 2019, with the creation of an internal team for social media management, an area where they have experienced spectacular growth. This has been seen both in engagement, as Athletic Club are permanently within the top seven LALIGA teams, and in the total number of followers, as the club experienced growth of more than 115% in the last year to close in on 11 million followers, placing it among the top 40 European clubs for total number of followers on their official channels.