Kaizer Chiefs football club in Africa uses technolgy to reach 14 million fans

KAIZER Chiefs, one of Africa’s leading football clubs, has through the assistance of Boost Communications, introduced a full set of mobile services in a move aimed at connecting with its 14 millions fans.

The South African glamour club now offers a mobile portal with editorial content and news as well as match schedules, results, statistics, player profiles, quizzes and fun downloads, among others.

Speaking at the launch of mobisite on Wednesday, Kaizer Motaung, founder, chairman and managing director of Kaizer Chiefs, said, “We see this as a big opportunity to emphasize our focus on distributing the club content via as many platforms as possible.

“Kaizer Chiefs has a strong brand in South Africa, and the country also has a very well developed mobile network, so launching a dedicated mobile portal will provide real time and rich news and information to our fans – something they have been anticipating for a long time.”

The club’s marketing director, Jessica Motaung, said they had tapped into the mobile phone to connect with their fans because of its key role in everyday life.

Motaung sees several additional aspects, “Mobile phones are becoming an important part of our everyday life and our fans are increasingly asking for mobile content. We recognize that in Africa, where more people have mobile phones than PCs, the mobile phone will become the central means of connecting with our fans, hence the launch of our mobile portal.

“We see this as an important development in the football world. By making football accessible via the greatest number of channels, we believe that we will reach more people and this will enhance our relationship with our fans.”

The mobile portal is a version of Kaizer Chief’s website that is especially fitted for the mobile phone. Fans will also be able to receive SMS news alerts. In each SMS message there will be a WAP link that the supporter can click to enter into the mobile portal for the full news article and access to the wide variety of content.

There are plans to extend the services to offer video clips of goals and other match highlights, along with the possibility of viewing video clips from the club’s everyday routines such as training sessions.

Boost Communications, which offers technical assistance to the service, is a leading provider of mobile services, and helps major brands when taking their content to mobile. It delivers mobile services to a large number of soccer clubs, and also has a strong presence within the media sector delivering mobile platforms to brands such as Al Jazeera and The Times—ITNewsAfrica.