Crowdfunding first for new official AS Roma web site

Italian Serie A club AS Roma has unveiled what it describes as the world’s first crowdsourced official football club website, asroma.com. The new site was designed and built based on feedback and ideas put forward by the club’s supporters. In a first for a professional sports team, Roma used Reddit, the social network news site and independent fan forums, to directly involve supporters in the development of the club’s new official website.

“This new website is an integral piece of our media platform strategy for the club,” said AS Roma President Jim Pallotta. “As a club we want to provide a platform to facilitate interactions and foster the creativity of our fans all across the world. This is an important step in creating the most connected club in football.”

The club’s most creative fans, many of whom played an active role since the beginning of this massive undertaking, have now been brought onboard to create content that will ultimately be consumed by Roma’s millions of supporters around the world. The new site is already utilising some of these fans as photographers, graphic designers, writers and columnists and aims to provide further opportunities and training to allow supporters to develop and showcase their skills to a global audience.

“My mandate as Head of Digital at AS Roma is to provide an online destination that not only informs and entertains supporters but one that also serves as a platform for our fans to play an active role in creating and sharing content,” said Paul Rogers, who joined Roma from Premier League club Liverpool in January. “Based on the feedback we received from fans, we have created a site that attempts to serve as a bridge between how people use social media and what they expect of an official club website. From a content perspective, this is much more than a football site. From food and drink to music, style, shopping and sightseeing, the site celebrates everything that makes Rome such a unique and aspirational city.”

To develop the new website, AS Roma partnered with Omnigon – a digital consulting firm that specialises in developing creative solutions for leaders in the sports, media and entertainment industries. Together they have created a one-stop destination for Roma fans around the world.