In November 2021 the Australian Professional Leagues (APL), owners of the newly revamped A-Leagues launched their new website – Keep Up. “Wait, keep what up?,” I hear you say? Exactly.
When launched there was hope that Keepup.com.au would be the new centralised football hub for the A-Leagues; it would also feature links to various other aspects of Australian professional football as well as a score centre and feature pieces concentrating on overseas leagues.
I wish to remind you that this is the official website of the Australian A-Leagues, the highest professional league in Australia.
It would take the place of the previous official A-League website, aleague.com.au which now redirects to the new site.
“Our digital-first technology creates the opportunity for our fans to experience what’s happening in the world of football, both on and off the pitch,” said Ant Hearne, the APL’s Chief Commercial Officer on the website’s launch.
While the intention to create a connection to the A-League by harnessing the growing interest in overseas leagues seems genuine, it simply misses the mark. To be frank, it’s simply barking up the wrong tree.
These fans who have decided not to engage with football in Australia so far, never will. So why do we continue to target them? You know what they say about the definition of insanity!
Now I don’t want to enter a debate over whether this new website is simply pandering to the “Euro-snobs” (those who who shirk at even the mention of the A-Leagues and Australian Football, instead opting to support overseas football) and we know there is somewhat of a crossover of fans in Australia that follow the A-League, local leagues as well as overseas leagues to a similar passion. However, I’d take a pretty decent punt these fans aren’t using keepup.com.au to check the English Premier League, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 or any other overseas scores and I’m ever so doubtful the majority simply aren’t going to sign up for the website, as is necessary to fully utilise the various video features within the site.
I’d also double-down on my previous punt and strongly suggest A-League fans don’t want to have to sift through the scores of the Armenian fourth division to get the information they are looking for. Okay, there isn’t Armenian fourth division scores on there, but you get my point.
Dare I suggest it but us football fans are simple folk with simple needs – simple website access, simple layouts, simple navigation, simple match reports, simple interviews, simple match highlights and press conference videos, simple information on fixturing, tickets and matchday information.
We want as few hoops to jump through as possible. Including the ability to be able watch press conferences and videos without having to sign in to an account which, according to a few reports, has had fans decide to not even bother with the site.
If there is the desire or ever the need to create an Australian, hub-style, football website, at the expense of a legitimate official website for our national professional league (which I along with many others would argue that there simply isn’t), there are a few leagues with a few million waiting to be engaged.
They are called the National Premier Leagues, State Leagues and grassroots competitions and they are already part of the Australian Football Ecosystem.
