Arsenal spent £450m on move to Emirates, but how much went on the website? - UPDATED
Posted by Martin in Arsenal, Arsene Wenger, HOT Topics | 19 February 2007
According to a recent article by Gary Flood of Computing Business, Arsenal spent £16m on the clubs new IT systems at the Emirates.
UPDATED : Humble pie I originally I said £450m on IT alone, it should have said £16m - apologies!!
Apparently the money was spent on 560 servers, 440 HDTV video relay screens and a new hospitality and ticketing application. No mention was made of any investment in their website which must be used by thousands of fans (that’s customers) every day.
In an article I wrote back in August, I moaned about the site and a few readers commented that they’d had similar experiences.
Having seen how much Arsenal have invested in IT, it puzzles me as to why the site is still so poor and there seems to be little improvement in recent months.
So if Paul Farmer (Head of IT) or anyone else from Gunners pick this rant up, here are 4 simple suggestions that would make life easier for me :
1) When it comes to purchasing tickets, please don't tell me that I have to wait in a queue even before I can login. With today's modern technology it should be a simple case of entering the site, selecting the seats, entering credit card details and logout.
2) Please don't tell me that you've sold out of tickets if the site is showing that there are spaces. This was my experience when trying to get tickets for the West Ham game and it was very annoying.
3) I recently tried to find out how to get a junior gunners membership for my son. Because of the inconsistency of the site layout I completely missed a promotion box in the middle of the memberships page that provides the links to the area I was after.
I ended up creating an on-line account which was of no use. You can only get Junior Gunners memberships over the phone. Why this is I have no idea. And you can only do this between the hours of 9:30 to 17:00 Monday to Friday. I've yet to make the call!
4) Using colour on a site is good. But the Arsenal site is so full of banner ads and pictures of Arsene Wenger, it becomes very difficult to find what you’re looking for. Please design the site with the customer in mind, not the senior managers who think having images and graphics all over the place is going to be good for business.
If you have had similar experiences to me, or if you think the site is great, please let me know.
If I get enough un-happy fans, this time I’ll try and get the comments to Paul Farmer and see what he has to say.
Comments
Read the article again, the move to Emirates cost us 450 mil, not the IT budget....
Read the Computing Business article again. It does not say Arsenal spent £450 million on IT. £450 million - as most Arsenal fans know - is the suggested cost of the entire Emirates development.
I understand where your coming from with your concerns ref the site but, seriously, how can you be so stupid as to think that the club spent 450m on IT. If you read the article you quote from you will see that it says AFC spent 450m on the whole stadium project! The IT part of the budget will have been significantly less.
Read the article properly, you muppet. The budget for IT at the Emirates is £16M!
I had no trouble, on separate occasions, registering my sons as Junior Gunners. There is a form to download from the Arsenal website that you then complete in pen and send off by post with a cheque or credit card details. It takes about a week to receive the card back.
I couldn't get tickets for the Family Enclosure for the West Ham game by 10.10 on the day tickets went on sale but I think they only had single seats and I was trying for three and then two seats.
I have no experience of any other club's website but I quite like Arsenal's site.
Gents - Thanks for pointing out the error in my post, more attention to detail needed!
However, I think the point of the post still stands regardless.
I think the site is class. It's much better than Chavski, ManUre and Spuds' website. None of this flash bollix, just the stories you want to read about.
How can you say the Arsenal website is poor? It is renound as one of the best club websites in world football and has won prizes along these lines. Have you been on the arsenal website? I am a subscriber to Arsenal TV online and my job is concerned with website usability and marketing - it is a fantastic website. Are you just making this up so you have something to write about!?
I think it is much better than those generic premium tv websites, they are rubbish. Arsenals website has also been up for awards in the past
Arsenals website is run by granada media, just check out the source.
The constant failure of the Podcast to be ready. The link will be posted up in the Match menu but the podcast will not be there, (Blackburn being a case in point). I wrote to Arsenal about this, but 2 months on and I am yet to receive a reply. It is a shame when supporters websites are better than the clubs.
I agree with the writer that the website needs improving especially when it comes to buying tickets.
1. Why does the site crash when Arsenal are fully aware of home many people will (try to) log on 2 calander months before a game. This results in a huge waste of time for those trying to buy tickets. This seems like a lack of desire to spend the required amount of money on IT and a disregard for fans as the club know that they will wait and pay up.
2. Why do we have to suffer Ticket(tout)Master and their fees? The club could do this themselves for no extra charge as tickets cost enough already (too much to ask these days I know..)
3. Why can we not select an exact seat. Why do we have to select an area and then be given a seat. Even the Sperz website allows you to do this.
This is just another example of the club fleecing us for all that we are worth and providing a poor service.
The website is far better than that if other teams. Yes, you have to wait in a queue for tickets but that is because phone customers do too. It all goes into the same ticketing system and it would be ridiculous to have thousands of customers waiting to get into the ticketing system on the phonelines when the website just goes straight into it. If I'm honest I don't know much about IT but that's what I've always assumed the reason is anyway...
I don't think the website is poor, but I do question the wisdom of having the Premium "TV Online" subscription. Chelsea is releasing all their stuff for free on YouTube (god who would watch that crap!). At the pittance they must make on it, wouldn't it make much more sense to support the worldwide fanbase of 27 million Gooners and make the interviews with Arsene, the players, etc. available for free?
My main gripe with the site is that Arsenal TV online doesn't work on a Mac and there seem to be no plans to make it available to Mac users - very annoying.
i find the website generally good and well laid out but as im a gold member i've never had to experience the full flow of ticket demand only when having to buy tickets for the carling cup game and the brazil game where tickets have been reserved and and also some away games. I've only had a couple of problems. As i'm in the no mans land that is the cannon club, neither adult nor child they dont seemed to have put the facilities to select this for non season ticket emirates matches and some away games. Also tberes no way to check your away credits which is insanely annoying when trying to buy away tickets with restrictions. other than that its not too bad
Man - this is so horribly amateurish. Stick to your day job you illiterate monkey.
Rating: F-
I agree with this post. The site is too cluttered, to difficult to navigate, often has false or misleading information (I distinctly remember being able to buy an 06-07 shirt with "Gallas.3." printed on it, until someone actually realised that Gallas was wearing the 10 shirt this season.
I care not that Man U, Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool, etc's websites are not as good as ours, if we claim to be best the club in England, then it needs to be in everything we do.
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.reallifenews.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/815