One for All....
Divisionsforeningen came to Dwarf with the task of building a modern CMS platform for a group of Superliga clubs with one login platform for all clubs under Divisionsforeningen.
The ambition contributes to Divisionsforeningen's overall purpose: "To create an effective framework for the development and operation of club football at the elite level in Denmark. Below, the association will contribute to maintaining and increasing the international competitiveness of Danish club football". Divisionsforeningen's goal with the projects is to support digital business development in the clubs for the benefit of partners and fans.
Dwarf's tasks, together with Divisionsforeningen, were to develop a digital platform that can help all clubs in the Superliga to service fans, sponsors, and collaborators. A common backend setup where each club can choose to use pre-developed design modules or freely create its own unique user experiences for its fans and sponsors.
The platform consists of three main components: a headless CMS in Umbraco with associated joint integrations for external services and an API-coupled front end built in VueJS and Nuxt.
The platform is built in Umbraco in a white-label structure, so Divisionsforeningen itself can "spawn" new clubs on the platform with a separate dataset. Each club can control content centrally – both for principality and for whatever they may have of subsites, big screens, apps, etc. We have done this by returning all content in a stacked format, making it extremely integrable on all platforms where content is to be used.
The platform is integrated with sportsinnovation.com, which is a provider of sports news, match and player statistics, as well as other sports-related data worldwide. Through this integration, clubs can build user experiences with many different live data elements.
Just as the CMS solution has been developed as a white-label solution, the frontend is likewise. This gives clubs the flexibility to develop new components for their site without having to rely on the other clubs.
The frontend is developed with VueJS and Nuxt. The solution is born with a common set of components typical of the professional soccer clubs: Squad, news, statistics, match program & fan, etc.
All basic components are built in a modular grid, so even those clubs with very limited resources can get airborne with a full-service digital fan experience by simply changing the color palette, logo, setup of the external data sources, and general content work.
Speed and availability are a priority in the project, and we have continuously optimized for Google Lighthouse. In this way, the clubs get a setup that is above index 90 in terms of performance, accessibility, best practice, and SEO. It is, of course, the responsibility of each club to maintain the score when developing new functionality themselves, inserting content, but the starting point is solid.
The platform went live in May 2021, when the clubs Horsens, Randers, and Brøndby took the solution into use. In early July, Superliga.dk also joined the platform, and then new clubs will join on an ongoing basis.
"We came to Dwarf with a task to build a modern CMS platform for a group of Superliga clubs and at the same time, we initiated a project with a common login platform for all clubs under Divisionsforeningen. We are very pleased with the collaboration with Dwarf who has been very good at understanding our needs and given competent advice and sparring during execution projects. Dwarf has been able to set the framework in a compressed project course with multiple stakeholders and at eye level get everyone involved. We felt safe and well informed throughout the project. The result speaks for itself."
