AS Roma and Chelsea show the return of the Champions League is a good time for innovation

Barely a week goes by that AS Roma don’t do something interesting on digital media.

Ahead of their Champions League last 16 tie with Shakhtar Donetsk, it’s an exciting time to be a Roma fan: not only are the club in the knockout stages of European competition, but against Ukrainian opposition the Serie A club will fancy their chances, especially after avoiding ties like Real Madrid or Sevilla.

They’ll be especially confident after fending off interest from Chelsea in striker Edin Dzeko this January. The club’s top scorer this season, Dzeko is a man on form, having put them to the sword in the group stages, you can see why the Premier League champions were interested in his signature.

And so in an attempt to hype up their fans before their last 16 tie on Wednesday night, Roma have teamed up with Lilo Social to create an entire microsite dedicated to the Bosnian. Launched on Instagram Stories and Snapchat, the site is optimised for mobile and is an immersive experience, featuring images, quotes, an infographic timeline of Dzeko’s career, a clip of his first goals and even a quiz question.

Roma even promise that further microsites mocked up for different players “will be released in future”.

This isn’t the first time the Italian club have teamed up with creative digital companies. In the last year they’ve teamed up with the likes of Fastory and Steller to create similarly mobile-first, immersive pieces of content for fans, possibly as social media platforms alone no longer seem to be innovative enough for clubs when it comes to fan engagement.

Ahead of their group stage meeting with Chelsea, the Serie A club produced an interactive story which included games, facts and quizzes – more mixed content, and a little bit like this new microsite.

Ahead of the Champions League seems to be a popular time to try these things. On Tuesday night, ahead of their clash with Barcelona, Chelsea launched an innovative Snapchat lens for fans in the stadium.

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Chris McMullan
Chris McMullan 831 posts

Chris is a sports journalist and editor of Digital Sport - follow him on Twitter @CJMcMullan_

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