Interview with Fraser Dickson, Head of Digital, Swansea City Football Club
We had the pleasure to discuss with Fraser Dickson, head of Digital at Swansea City Football Club, as part of our series “Digital Transformation in Football Clubs”. He shared with us the digital strategy of Swansea and how his team is leveraging new technologies to enhance the digital activities of the club.
Fraser, you arrived in February 2021 at Swansea as CRM & Marketing Assistant, and now you are Head of Digital. What was the digital and marketing situation at the time of your arrival?
As I arrived, Swansea City already had positioned themselves as a digitally forward thinking club. In August 2019, the Swans became the first club in the UK to release in-app ticketing for football matches, with multiple plans to build the App & Website.
I’m sure anyone working in a Football club would agree that having the time to plan, execute and track digital campaigns is very short. So there was a lot of work to do here in which we’ve made a lot of great progress. In Football, having key integrations/ APIs between various platforms is key to this, and a massive help when moving forward.
What is the club's digital strategy and priorities today? And how is your department organised to achieve these objectives?
I like to say that our simple objective is to ‘bring the fans & stakeholders closer to the club in the digital world’. This can come from fun fan engagement pieces across our platforms, to key functionalities that streamline the online experience, to generally improving our digital activities.
We know that digital transformation is a wide concept. How does it help your club achieve its goals from a commercial, marketing, and performance perspective?
As Swansea City has always been keen to improve digitally, I’d use the words digital progression rather than transformation… With the rate that the digital world is progressing, expectation from supporters also increases, so it’s key that we adapt and innovate in order to achieve a great online experience for Swansea City fans.
It’s also incredibly important that we can ‘keep up with the kids’ so the next generation of fans feel close to the club. With fans that are 18 and under, they’ve completely grown up in a digital world, therefore these are the fans that will gravitate towards new online innovations. It's as important that we test and trial various innovative ideas to see what our fanbase find engaging, so we can have greater insight when starting new projects.
How important is it to have modern & efficient digital platforms in a football club nowadays?
At the moment, it feels like the digital world is constantly changing and adapting, so it’s super important that we stay on the latest trends before we get left behind. New technologies always offer opportunities for us to engage with fans and stakeholders in new and innovative ways. That being said, it’s important to us that we don’t just jump on the latest trends unless it offers us and supporters clear value.
We saw that you recently extended your partnership with Ticketmaster with the objective of fully digitalise the ticketing experience. Can you tell us more about it?
Ticketmaster Sport have always supported the club extremely well and helped us innovate in the digital ticketing space. They offer us extremely valuable expert advice when it comes to ticketing initiatives and technologies. Ticketmaster’s work with various Premier League clubs has been super impressive and it excites us to see what we can achieve together moving forward.
Going further, how is Swansea approaching Web3 initiatives/technology? (NFT, Metaverse, Crypto, etc.) and what problems/challenges can be solved with this technology?
In one word, carefully. It seems that many Sports Clubs and organisations are jumping into these new technologies because there’s a lot of attention around the space, which can cause a lot of controversy amongst the fans. Most online posts from Sports Clubs I see on NFTs/ Crypto gain a lot of negative comments, and I believe this is because there isn’t any demand for the products they’re offering.
As we move into Web3, I believe it’s extremely important to create fun & engaging digital offerings with real utility, creating new and exciting experiences that the fans will enjoy. I believe Wimbledon recently created something great with their new ‘Wimbleworld’. They’ve created a virtual world where fans can connect and share their love of tennis as well as playing different games - this project offered great utility that is fun and engaging, which is a lot more valuable to fans than an ownership of a JPEG.
Can you tell us more about your future plans and projects at Swansea? Do you have specific topics that you would like to tackle first?
The Web3 space is definitely something we’re keeping a close eye on, but as I mentioned above, it’s important that when we do decide to venture in, it’s to improve fan experience and engagement with the club.
We’re also always looking at new ways of improving our current processes and offerings. We’re currently working on a new matchday programme after making the leap last year to go fully digital. The improved programme will offer a mobile-first, intuitive new platform with a great UX!
We’re looking to continue being a digitally forward thinking team, constantly testing and trialling new technologies and how they can work for us as a club. We’re lucky to have such a creative team that are always open to new ideas so the future is always exciting!
What pieces of advice would you like to give for football clubs or any digital marketing manager who wants to start their digital transformation journey?
I believe the general approach needs to be fan/customer led. With the online platforms available today, we can gain real insights into what our customers want, so analyse the data and base future activities on what proves to be working. A great idea may seem like a great idea, but without demand, it’ll be deemed as a failure.