Bradentucky Bombers Roller Derby League

The Bradentucky Bombers are the “original flat track roller derby home team of Bradenton, Sarasota, and Venice, on Florida’s Beautiful Gulf Coast.” Currently a league of 40 skaters and three teams, the Bradentucky Bombers are ranked 132 against nearly 500 teams around the world and play local and away bouts monthly throughout the year (with a short off-season period in the winter) to crowds of fans with a passion for the game.

Problem

Roller derby has come a long way since the 1970s spectacle of mock fights and skating fast and the Bradentucky Bombers wanted a new site to reflect that. Their demographic was shifting to a younger, more sports-focused group, and they needed a modern site that was responsive.

Solution

One of the challenges of the new site was keeping the content current. I wanted to create something that was easy-to-use from a content standpoint, so a custom Wordpress site was created. This enabled the team to keep their game stats current, events updated, and the skater profiles rotating.

Many details were put into the design and user experience to create a modern and colorful website. With the navigation, I put the two most important call-to-actions front and center; Buy Tickets and Meet the Team. The homepage announces the next event uses advanced image blending concepts that allow the imagery to be changed out easily, all the color overlay and design features to be applied on the fly. This means that the team can focus on the content and the design of the site is as self-managing as possible.

For fans who might have missed a game, the complete history of the season is available with a scoreboard for each bout. With a click of the Bout Stats, the fans can find out who the MVPs from each team is. Scores are quickly updated after bouts and easily show the winner of the bout with a star.

The Bombers are a great team through the collective of their individual players working together. I wanted to make sure the team had a place where they could highlight each of their players, discuss their history in the game, and talk about their individual talents. Fans can find their favorite players and read about what got them into the game.

Results

Since the redesign of the Bradentucky Bombers website, they have seen a significant increase in ticket sales, an uptick in engagement with community partners, such as appearances at major events in town, and fans using the site just to get more information on their favorite roller derby team.