AFL- website advice- will they take it.

[saintbrat]

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/a ... 34253.html

AFL urged to take back control of its website
Michael Gleeson | December 2, 2008

THE money that has underpinned football has been driven from broadcast revenue, but that money will be increasingly derived from new media and the AFL ought to regain control of its website to potentially produce a better product and generate superior cash.

That was the sentiment of Justin Shaffer, senior vice-president new media for Major League Baseball, who was brought to Australia by the AFL to address the two-day football conference last week and explain the success of the MLB's website.

Going by the MLB experience, the AFL appears to have erred in outsourcing its website to Telstra, which could never understand the product as intimately as the AFL. "I can't speak highly enough about having a go at it yourself with the right group of people," Shaffer told the conference.

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[groupie1]

As a foreign resident, I can testify the AFL website is so bad, so unruly, that despite offering memberships allowing us to access games to view, I won't do it b/c it looks incompetent - typical Telstra product, in other words.

[saint66au]

Yep...the AFL can afford to employ 200 people to work on an indepandant website like the MLB

No doubting the AFL site is crap, but we just dont have the resources and money to emply 200 people like the MLB do to work on a website.

More power to Essendon for doing their own thing. You can bleat all you like about SaintsCentral, but we arent all cashed up like Essendon to afford to do that

[Legendary]

Yep...the AFL can afford to employ 200 people to work on an indepandant website like the MLB

No doubting the AFL site is crap, but we just dont have the resources and money to emply 200 people like the MLB do to work on a website.

More power to Essendon for doing their own thing. You can bleat all you like about SaintsCentral, but we arent all cashed up like Essendon to afford to do that

But with advertising revenues increasingly moving away from traditional media and towards online content, a much faster and more streamlined AFL website would pay for itself ...

If you doubled the number of visitors through offering far superior internet content you would also increase advertising share significantly. Traditional media is losing it's share of advertising fairly rapidly, so the AFL need to realise this and capitalise on the internet and other new media.

They are not doing this well at the moment, and their bottom line will suffer as a result IMO.

[Sainterman]

I could hardly see it taking 200 people to run the AFL website. There might be some work in the initial setup but the ongoing maintenance surely wouldnt require those levels.

[Saintschampions08]

Yep...the AFL can afford to employ 200 people to work on an indepandant website like the MLB

No doubting the AFL site is crap, but we just dont have the resources and money to emply 200 people like the MLB do to work on a website.

More power to Essendon for doing their own thing. You can bleat all you like about SaintsCentral, but we arent all cashed up like Essendon to afford to do that

It wouldn't take 200 people...but anyway, i wouldn't have a problem with them outsourcing it, but please god not to telstra.

The current site is probably the worst thing on the net, its unbearably slow, has errors and is basically just useless.

[markinUSA]

I subscribed to TesltraBigpond as an international subscriber just to watch Saints games in 2008.

Frankly, it sucked and I will never again do it.

No games were loaded within 8 hours of them being played. That's not a whinge - they have a sign about it; that's their policy. That is terrible if you've paid $100 US to watch them.

Many games were SO poorly uploaded, they would stop half way through a quarter. So I would watch about 5 to 10 minutes of a game, then it would stop (I'd upgraded to the fastest download speed specifically so I could watch these) and after waiting for ages, you'd have to restart the quarter.

I can remember one game that was close - must have been fairly early in the season - and the game stopped something like 5 minutes from the end. After watching it a second time, it was just impossible to see the end of the game. After that 'tease' I never bothered again.

However, I did TRY at one stage, later in the season, to access the website. Turns out they'd changed the provider for international subscribers. Anyway, the new subscriber couldn't find me in their records.

I was only going to use this to watch highlights shows at the end of the season; so I gave up.

My STRONG recommendation to any potential international subscriber is to NEVER subscribe to the AFL's international broadcasts. You don't get what you paid for.

(So I just watched Setanta and saw the games that I could... that's what I'll be doing again in 2009).

[Moccha]

I understand that Bruce from WOM would do it - for a fee

[saintspremiers]

I subscribed to TesltraBigpond as an international subscriber just to watch Saints games in 2008.

Frankly, it sucked and I will never again do it.

No games were loaded within 8 hours of them being played. That's not a whinge - they have a sign about it; that's their policy. That is terrible if you've paid $100 US to watch them.

Many games were SO poorly uploaded, they would stop half way through a quarter. So I would watch about 5 to 10 minutes of a game, then it would stop (I'd upgraded to the fastest download speed specifically so I could watch these) and after waiting for ages, you'd have to restart the quarter.

I can remember one game that was close - must have been fairly early in the season - and the game stopped something like 5 minutes from the end. After watching it a second time, it was just impossible to see the end of the game. After that 'tease' I never bothered again.

However, I did TRY at one stage, later in the season, to access the website. Turns out they'd changed the provider for international subscribers. Anyway, the new subscriber couldn't find me in their records.

I was only going to use this to watch highlights shows at the end of the season; so I gave up.

My STRONG recommendation to any potential international subscriber is to NEVER subscribe to the AFL's international broadcasts. You don't get what you paid for.

(So I just watched Setanta and saw the games that I could... that's what I'll be doing again in 2009).

Excellent, infomative post.

For the benefit and education of Dimwit and the Mexican dude that runs Telstra, you should send them a letter......

[Animal Enclosure]

I tried to watch the draft on afl.com.au & none of their weblinks were working. It kept taking me to highlights of Grand Final week!

What do you expect when two of the biggest inept organisations join forces!

[jays]

im so sick the the afl website they need to fix it before next year cant handle another year of there crap

[Enrico_Misso]

It should be the first port of call for information, stats and historical records.
But it is so disorganised I could never find what I was looking for.
Now I don't even bother trying.