U17 Football Tournament
Revamped U17 Football site boosts ticket sales and lures top clubs. Custom features and focused SEO strategies deepen fan engagement globally.
Industry
Sports
Location
Lille, France
Services
The Brief
COTIF, the Comité Organisateur du Tournoi International de Football based in Lille, France, has been organising the U17 Football Tournament since 1997 to boost local sports engagement and elevate the region's global profile. The tournament has hosted over 100 teams from more than 25 countries, including top European clubs like Real Madrid, SL Benfica, LOSC Lille, and Atlético Madrid, and has showcased world-class players such as Ferran Torres and Vincent Kompany.
Having successfully developed the previous version of the tournament's website, Glush has been entrusted with the task of reimagining the website once again. The updated version needed to be both modern and inclusive, with a priority on user-friendly navigation that showcased all matches and team details to keep users engaged within the website. Additionally, we were requested to heightened focus on search engine visibility to not only elevate the tournament's brand awareness, but also yield tangible benefits like sustaining the interest of elite football teams, reducing the costs of hiring football agents by facilitating direct contact with the organisation, and increase ticket sales.
The Process
As this was a revamp of the website we had initially developed, we were not only well familiarised with the tournament's rich and impressive history but also with the high calibre of teams participating in the event. Our goal was to harness this wealth of data and present it in a visually compelling manner.
To achieve this, we developed a custom WordPress website featuring Custom Post Types for each team and individual match. We also implemented Custom Content Types to connect all players across teams using One-to-Many relationships. This setup enabled us to create individual pages for each team, where fans could familiarise themselves with players, staff, match dates, and even learn about the team's academy and the notable players who have emerged from it.
We didn't stop there; we also designed a fixtures page with various filters, allowing users to find their favourite matches by team, date, stadium, or tournament stage. Additional pages were developed to consolidate all relevant information, such as Rules, Structure.
Once the website was fully developed and optimised for speed and responsiveness in one language, we translated all the pages into English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese to cater to a global audience.
After the site's successful launch, we shifted our focus to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). We conducted extensive keyword research and performed On-Page optimisation to maximise the website's visibility across all languages. The impact of these SEO efforts and website traffic was analysed on a monthly basis. This data was compiled into a comprehensive report, which not only helped us identify areas for improvement but also serves as a valuable asset for increasing sponsorship fees.
The Results
Not only is the tournament getting more requests from teams all over the world that want to participate in the following edition, but COTIF also managed to increase their revenue from sponsors and sales due to the website's popularity.
127.43 %
Sales of the 3-day pass
87.94 %
Website New Users
4355.56 %
Organic Keywords
when compared with the same time on the previous event.
Before
