Take your website back AFL, says MLB

Sometimes it takes an outsider to tell a company the bleedingly obvious, what I've been saying for years. 

The Australian Football League (AFL) should stop outsourcing its website, afl.com.au, and the official websites of its member clubs to Telstra for profit.  They should take control of it and start actually reaching out to its fans instead of selling themselves and their fans short.

That's the message that Major League Baseball is selling to the AFL.  Really a polite way of saying "AFL - your website sucks".  And they ought to know, they didn't pull 78 million fans through the gates in 2008 for no reason ....

As a marketing exercise, I personally agree with the MLB that the Telstra AFL websites are a failure.  They fail to connect with the key audiences - fans and potential fans - in any meaningful way, if anything it simply gives them a brutal old heave ho.  In truth, it would take a near miracle to repair the bad reputation of years of poor Internet service.  It is ironic that most of the people who would be the most likely to complain have already left for other sites.  Our own philosophy is to get it right the first time or fix it - quickly, and not by trial and error, the main reason is because Internet users are unforgiving and will rarely give your website a second chance after a stuff-up. 

It is a ludicrous situation that, quite frankly I am astounded could continue so far into the Internet age.