Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) launched its first Web site to support the promotion of the league, its teams, and its players leading up to the inaugural season the following year. While the website and technology platform sufficiently supported the league’s pre-season activities, it did not serve as a viable long-term option as full league operations commenced and the inaugural season kicked off. Cypress Consulting, a Sitecore partner, was selected by WPS to lead the development of the new league web platform to support both the League site and individual websites for each team.
“ We wanted a new CMS that was more robust and would better organize content and streamline the flow of putting content into the system and publishing it out. Sitecore has allowed us to just that. It’s the best CMS I’ve ever worked with. „
- Karyn Lush, Head of New Media, Women’s Professional Soccer
Challenge
Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) is the highest level women’s professional soccer league in North America. Formed as the result of the efforts of the Women’s Soccer Initiative, Inc., WPS, consists of seven teams across the country. The teams for the first season include Boston Breakers, Chicago Red Stars, FC Gold Pride (Bay Area), Los Angeles Sol, Sky Blue FC (NJ / NY), Saint Louis Athletica and Washington Freedom. WPS has added the Atlanta and Philadelphia, and continues to explore additional potential franchises for the future and beyond. Franchises are individually owned and operated by a group of investors in each market. In addition, two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash and former Yahoo! President and COO Jeff Mallett are investors and part owners in the league.
The main challenge for WPS was selecting and developing a single content management system that could support both the league and teams’ website requirements. The teams needed autonomy in developing and managing their own content but with some control by the league to maintain brand consistency and similar functionality across all of the websites. Additionally, team-provided content needed to be shared and accessible by the league site and vice versa.
A similar challenge was faced in creating shared site modules and templates that provided enough flexibility for teams to incorporate their own branding and create a unique look and feel while giving the league a manageable set of components to centrally maintain and update as needed. Additionally, with the large amount of content required for many of the site pages, WPS needed an information architecture and front-end design framework that could support their content requirements while providing fans with a user-friendly experience.
In the selection of the supporting technologies, WPS needed solutions that would work seamlessly with the selected content management system but would provide the robust functionality that the league and team sites required.
Solution
Working with Sitecore’s partner Cypress, WPS selected and implemented Sitecore CMS as the content management solution for the league and team sites. Sitecore met all of the WPS’ needs in terms of flexibility, scalability and ease of management. And, with the addition of custom components developed by Cypress, the platform solution is one that will carry WPS and all of its teams well into the future.
According to Nate Thompson, President and CEO, Cypress Consulting, “WPS sites use several third party systems that serve different parts of the site. Sitecore provides a flexible .NET framework that allowed us to tie everything together seamlessly. Our expertise with Sitecore allowed us to quickly and efficiently implement it as the core CMS platform for both the WPS League and each of the teams.”
Some of the other technologies that were integrated include thePlatform MPS as the primary video content management and publishing system for the league and team sites. Cypress also integrated statistical data from the provided STATS LLC, a key component to any sports-focused website. In addition, community is important to WPS and their web site visitors, so the WPS sites have been integrated with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace.
Result
Today, the new WPS web platform is more efficient, with each team owning their respective website. The site traffic has increased, and the amount of content on the site has grown significantly.
According to Karyn Lush, Head of New Media, Women’s Professional Soccer, “We wanted a new CMS that was more robust and would better organize content and streamline the flow of putting content into the system and publishing it out. Sitecore has allowed us to do just that. It’s the best CMS I’ve ever worked with.”
The user experience and design framework developed by Cypress allow WPS to provide a unique look and feel for each team, while adhering to a global brand standard across all sites. League content is managed on a team basis, and there is also reciprocal sharing of content.
Cypress’ design solution, with Sitecore as the CMS platform, has allowed for maximum flexibility in the construction of the team websites while allowing the league to enforce and maintain style guidelines consistent with the league’s brand. The design also allowed the teams to access a shared set of components that the league could centrally manage, edit and add to over time. Teams have options in the placement of these shared components throughout their sites, giving each team site a unique look without compromising brand consistency.
Says Lush, “The site is now rich with images, video, live game streaming, and compelling content. We’re offering our fans a way to stay on top of the action and see how teams are performing. I personally love the stats section – it’s clean and clear and gives fans a snapshot of what’s going on. Sitecore and Cypress have given us a winning solution.”
Moving forward, WPS plans to integrate with Pluck, a social networking platform, which will allow fans to create user profiles, and comment on and rate items.
Solution Special Ingredients