Reimagining a Sleeping Giant
The story of the Indian Super League, and its struggle to stand out - A case study through design.
for
Some details in this project have been withdrawn to maintain client confidentiality.
Chapter 1. The "Super" League
Talking about a "Super League" within the realm of association football - especially after April 18, 2021 - brings about a fairly hostile reaction. However, back in 2013, in a country like India, it had no meaning. Not to the normal spectators anyway. The first division was I-league, a dwindling albeit historic league, with twenty of the country's strongest teams. I-league was weathered, tired, old, mismanaged, and fledgling. The Indian football scene definitely required a major overhaul. And the federation decided to establish a brand new league - one that would serve as the new first division, a premier league if you will - that would showcase the very best of Indian footballing talent. To generate genuine interest and investment, ISL was formatted as a franchise based league - much akin to the MLS in the US - with initially 8 teams, each with a marquee player, based out of their respective home stadiums. The first season gained considerable media attention, and had an average match attendance of 26,000 - the highest being 65,000 for a league match between Atletico Kolkata and Mumbai City. ISL had arrived, and the country that FIFA had years prior referred to as a 'sleeping giant', had finally been nudged into a partial awakening.
​
As the league grew, it gained more teams, more attendances, and higher media coverage. And with 2020's arrival of Mohun Bagan and East Bengal to the league - arguably the two most historically significant clubs in the country - the ISL official needed a makeover. This started from general branding to a complete overhaul of their website and match center. The ISL needed to look like what it was claiming to be - cutting edge, young, and revolutionary.
​
I worked with a developer friend of mine to prepare a pitch to present to the league. Then Covid happened. We never got to pitch, and as of April 29, they've indefinitely postponed the idea of an overhaul. So here's what we did.
The Revolution
Our pitch was three-fold, new branding, architectural and visual overhaul of the website, and transforming a bland website into a match center, complete with a Fantasy league. The pipeline also had a mobile application, focused on the Fantasy League side of things.
​
Here's how we laid our pitch.
Part 1
Top to bottom rebranding of ISL - the brand.
Part 2
Architectural and Visual Overhaul of the website
Part 3
Website becomes the match center, with its own fantasy league.
Part 1. The Rebrand
ISL’s logo is generic, filled with corporate signatures, and just bland. The same can be said for their website. For a league that is so cash-rich, it’s appalling that they could not invest more in having a strong iconography and web presence. By contrast, we pitched a new logo - cutting edge, young, new, and revolutionary - attributes that should form the ethos of the league.
The Watch Interface
The idea behind the watch interface was to unify the page where the screener is being hosted across all platforms. It acts as the fulcrum of the entire viewing system. Once we had our personas in place, we decided to draw journey maps for them, trying to estimate how they interact with the flow.
​
Note. We didn't conduct any practical user research in this regard. The way users engaged with Indee has always been for a very specific purpose. The previous versions of Indee was also built around the importance of getting the user to their screener - and nothing more. That fact has remained unchanged in the new version.