World Cup Match Hub


FAW

Data, Strategy, Website Design & Build

The first action of our rethink and reconstruction of Welsh football’s digital home was to deliver a data driven, dynamic World Cup match hub.

With Cymru off to their first World Cup finals for 64 years, can you imagine being given the task of transforming the digital experience for thousands of players throughout Wales, fans (that’s us too!) and volunteers, starting with a hub for all news and game info coming out of Qatar.


Imagine it we did. The match hub is the start of a long-term project to overhaul the Football Association of Wales’ multiple websites, to give users a singular digital entry to all of Welsh football’s programmes and activities.

Our vision was for a content-led, data driven site that would bring users back to the site time and again, increasing opportunities for e-commerce and other commercial streams.

When you have the potential to pull together over a million annual online visitors, it’s essential that the website offers the same, if not better, high quality experience as others who are competing for Welsh eyeballs. Not literally eyeballs, of course.

Having already developed a curated media and streaming platform, we were in a great place to show how our thinking and way of working would create the go-to Welsh football website [Read on below].

Massive thanks. Amazing work

Digital Engagement Officer, FAW

But first the match hub. The goal (pun intended) was to have a dynamic match hub ready for the start of Wales’ campaign. We spent the first few weeks working on some prototype tech; testing match data feeds and manual commentary updates, photo and social media uploads.

With just 4 weeks to go we received access to the live data feed API, had to rebuild a number of the end point calls, work around varying data formats and then tweak server set up for the expected traffic spikes.

We made it to kick-off, and despite the results on the pitch, the client was happy with the results online. You could say it was a game of two halves.

Through 2023 we’ll progress the match hub to cover more of the domestic game, as well as the next National Men’s and Women’s team fixtures.

You can take a look here