by Matt Riley
2nd June, 2014
Plenty of football fans were impressed at the launch of the website www.thaipremierleague.co.th. Excellent graphics, an English option and match highlights all sat in a well designed and modern front page. But, after the initial excitement, one small problem emerged: most of the site doesn't work or, if it does, is updated as often as a McDonald's menu. Shiny and pretty but without substance. Now there's an image to conjure with when reflecting on the glories of the FAT.
Like dealing with the FAT, if you press the site's English language option you get precisely nothing. As is often the case in Thailand, there will be English language headlines and snippets to tease you, but then nothing else available in the world's language. There is also no English language Facebook or Twitter page (which are surely within the realms of possibility). If Thaifussball and and Thai League Football can regularly translate Thai content to English without pay, surely the Thai Premier League FAT cats can.
It's also telling that the site is a .co.th address,not a .com. From the outset they choose to be unhelpful to the larger English speaking world. Several weeks ago came the message that they were "working on" getting dual language facilities operational. Whilst having a soft launch of a site and upgrading it makes sense, there is simply too much unfinished business here to make it a viable alternative to the betting sites slipping through the net of the Army censors that provide bang up to date data.
Individual clubs can get highlights uploaded and out to fans minutes after the game has finished. On the one hour journey back from a Suphanburi home match I will normally have seen the key moments from Chonburi, Muang Thong and Suphanburi's just completed matches before reaching my front door. For the organisers of the league, who control access to all content, it will be several days before you see the highlights of a game that has, by then, become ancient history and superseded by another round of fixtures. Online content is all about energy and speed. This website would struggle to keep pace with an asthmatic tortoise carrying a large bag of shopping, despite having first hand access to more information than anyone else.
The error made by this website is the very strength of its design and supposed functionality. Its professional appearance only serves to highlight the ineptitude of those collecting handsome sponsorship to run a site that spends much of its time dormant. Like a bloated politician buying the latest sports shoes, what's inside the latest piece of design technology is more important than what surrounds it. The stories that populate every match day should be shared globally and create a wave of support for the game here. Instead, like the site, too much of it is drowned in colour and light which signifies nothing.
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