Standing on the touchline ringing round to find players minutes before a game, trying to remember who owes match fees or working out how to let 15 players know the kick-off time had moved back an hour on the morning of the match were never easy tasks back in the early 2000s when I helped manage the mighty Hoxton Casuals.
But tech has advanced: location services, peer-to-peer payments and one-to-many notifications are now features of any smart phone.
The FA’s Matchday app has been developed specifically to automate everything around grassroots football life. The app allows parents or players to submit availability and pay subs using built-in PayPal functionality. Managers can see suspensions, select players, track cashflow and submit match reports at the click of a button. Less admin, more time to train, play and hang out with your mates.
The FA asked Seven League to help them create a digital marketing campaign to raise awareness of the app and importantly to promote its benefits to key audiences - players, parents and managers.
The insight that drove the campaign was that up and down the country time is wasted collecting fees, chasing player availability and filling in paper-based match reports. This wasted time would be better used to prepare for the match, celebrate with your kids or give a rousing team-talk. Hence ‘The Matchday app gives you Extra Time for the game you love’ campaign launched this week.
A series of assets were produced which demonstrate how the time saved by the app can benefit players, parents and managers. A series of graphics, GIFs and videos were produced to visualise this.
The campaign will appear across TheFA.com, Fulltime.thefa.com, county FA websites, the FA’s social channels and as paid advertising on the main social and video platforms across the coming months.
Seven League commissioned Fully Focused Productions to help create a series of films for social and YouTube, and photographer Chris Baker to shoot imagery of men’s, women’s and youth football on Hackney Marshes and on Sutton United’s training ground. Big thanks to Sutton United for all their help.
The FA estimates a whopping 40% of affiliated football match fees go unpaid each season. That’s a lot of money grassroots clubs - the lifeblood of the game - could be losing. This campaign aims to get more clubs using the Matchday app so everyone in grassroots football can spend less time doing admin and more time enjoying grassroots football – something I still miss 20 years after playing my last game for Hoxton Casuals.
Download the app now!