Flexibility Across Multiple Brands for Norsk Toppfotball

Enonic delivered a user-friendly and flexible tool to maintain dozens of different elite football brands, all in one platform.

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Norsk Toppfotball (“Norwegian Professional Football League—NPFL”) is an interest organization for all the clubs in the two highest levels of the football league system in Norway: Eliteserien and OBOS-ligaen.

Norsk Toppfotball wanted a complete relaunch of their 41 websites. Netlife was chosen as the main contractor, together with 99x. The platform of choice was Enonic, as it impressed Thomas Torjusen, Head of Media and Chief Digital Officer at Norsk Toppfotball:

Enonic did something I’ve never seen before. Instead of talking through the platform, they said ‘let’s download it now’. It took about a minute—I didn’t think it would happen but it did. And they had it set up as a demo and was working on it.

Thomas Torjusen, Head of Media & CDO, NPFL

Challenge

The biggest challenge facing the project was the fact that it involved 39 different clubs alongside the two leagues. This meant different users, different branding, and different locations all around Norway.

One club could for instance have a dedicated digital team, while another club could just have one person who did all the work alone. Flexibility was therefore an important factor.

Case Norwegian Professional Football League

Another challenge was the short timeframe of the project. The process started in January 2016 with a one-year timeframe, but the solutions partner and platform were not decided before April—and the actual work did not commence until May.

A number of potential partner candidates claimed that December 2016 was an impossible deadline, fearing that the websites relaunch would end up as a long and complicated process.

Solution

In spite of the short timeframe, all the websites launched as planned in December 2016—including two sites for the leagues in addition to the 39 clubs.

During the production process a focus group was set up, aiming to map common needs and challenges—as well as proposing concrete solutions.

Every website received a flexible design that could easily be branded to each club. At the same time the websites maintain the same look and feel, as well as functionality between the different sites and also enabling league branding.

All the professional football clubs now have one stable and user-friendly platform—with one design that fits all. The new websites have increased brand visibility and user information, giving us better foundations for sales to national partners and new media players.

Thomas Torjusen

In a similar manner, both the layout and amount of content on the websites were kept flexible and customizable.

In addition, several different modes were created for the front page of each club. Before a match, the focus is for instance on selling tickets, while during a match the live results are displayed.

Finally, after a match one can get a summary and see interviews with the players. Videos delivered by the streaming platform Qbrick are used heavily throughout the website.

Results

After the release, Eliteserien, OBOS-ligaen, and all the professional football clubs have one unified platform. The new websites have given Norsk Toppfotball a better base for sales to national media and partners.

Both local and national partners have fixed positions on the websites, providing them with greater value.

At the same time is user engagement at an all time high after the relaunch, with both internal and external engagement made easy through accessible tools from Enonic.

Finally, the website editors feel that the management of the clubs’ digital experiences went from 0 to 100—due to the old solution’s cumbersome operations and lack of user-friendliness.

Enonic’s powerful and intuitive Content Studio fits all types of users, regardless of technical expertise—and teaching new users is a fast process.

One of the easy-to-use functionalities in Enonic is the ability to pick a focal point on images, as Thomas Torjusen elaborates:

One feature that I haven’t seen in other CMS platforms is the photo function for still images. You usually have to have some kind of rule, or edit the photo externally in something like Photoshop. In Enonic I can go into the image and set a focal point. For us, we could focus on a football player for instance, or an action, and image crop would focus on that spot whether it's on a large screen or mobile.

Thomas Torjusen

From dedicated developers to content editors, creating and maintaining engaging digital experiences for football enthusiasts all over Norway has never been easier.

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Challenge

Solution

Results

Technical Overview