Hasta La Ideas

Poke has designed a new website for Manchester City, as the football club seeks to reinvent itself as a “media and entertainment brand”

When football clubs start to talk of themselves in such ways it makes me cringe but, with their new-found wealth, City are a club with big ambitions (if not, yet, the trophies to match). According to Poke’s Iain Tait this ambition extends to having a website that is not just the best in the Premiership but ‘one of the best entertainment sites in the world’, or at least that’s what the brief asked for.

The site is certainly a step up from most clubs’.

It make extensive use of well-shot 16×9 format video throughout the site, some of which, will be produced by Endemol.

A 3D seat selector will allow supporters to check out the view from each seat before buying.

If they are not lucky enough to get to the match in person, once the new season gets under way, a Match Day Centre will pull in live data on the game to update fans on statistics alongside live written commentary.

Most clubs treat fan sites with suspicion but the City site includes links to prominent supporter blogs and forums as well as a Twitter feed.

And, unlike most clubs’ sites, there is no display advertising (at Arsenal’s, for example, users have to negotiate an ad for a credit card before even reaching the home page).