Industry: Sports
Time: Concept
Project Type: Concept
Completion: 2023
Legion FC is Birmingham's professional soccer club. Their app had a real problem: the moment a fan tried to do something like buy a ticket or grab a jersey, the app pushed them out to a third-party site. Broken links, unfamiliar checkout flows, and no way back. Fans were dropping off before completing purchases. I used the app myself, hit the same walls, and decided to redesign it as a concept.
Ticket and shop purchase sheets
TL;DR
Legion FC's app pushed fans to third-party sites to buy tickets and merch. They dropped off. I redesigned it as a self-initiated concept to keep the full purchase journey native, put a live match ticker where fans actually need it, and cut secondary content out of the main navigation. Research came from using the app myself, talking to fans online, and auditing Premier League club apps as a baseline. Concept only, no live data, but the problem was real and the decisions are defensible.
The research
I started by using the app the way a new fan would. The frustration was immediate. Redirects broke the flow at the two moments that matter most, buying tickets and buying merch. I talked to fans I found in Legion FC communities online to pressure-test whether this was just my experience. It wasn't. 35% reported issues with ticket purchases, 40% with merchandise. The drop-off wasn't an edge case, it was the norm.
I also audited Premier League club apps like Arsenal, Chelsea, and Liverpool to understand what a mature fan experience looks like. Not to copy them, but to establish a baseline. What they got right was native purchase flows, consolidated club information, and navigation built around what fans actually do rather than what's easiest to organize. I used that as a foundation and adapted it to Legion FC's scale and context.
Wireframe
The three decisions that defined the redesign
Native ticket and merch purchasing. The entire case for this redesign rests here. Keeping fans inside the app through the full purchase journey removes the single biggest drop-off point. The competitive analysis confirmed this is table stakes for clubs at this level. Legion FC's app just hadn't gotten there yet.
Live match ticker on the home screen. Fans open a club app most often on matchday. The home screen should reflect that. A live ticker gives the app a reason to exist in the moments when engagement is highest, and it's a pattern Premier League apps use effectively. Putting it front and center was an easy call once I mapped when and why fans actually open the app.
Secondary content moved to a hamburger menu. Club history, contact info, and administrative content had equal weight with fixtures and shop in the original navigation. That's an organizational decision, not a user decision. Fans don't open the app for club history. Moving secondary content out of the main tabs keeps the core experience focused without removing anything.
View of Live Match Ticker and detailed matches page
Prototype made using Swift and CursorAI
What this project is and isn't
This is a concept. There's no shipment, no post-launch data, and no client relationship. What it represents is the ability to identify a real usability problem, validate it with real users, look at how the broader industry has solved it, and make defensible design decisions from that foundation. The work Premier League apps had already done on native commerce made the direction clear. The fan research confirmed the problem was real. The design is where those two things meet.
What's missing
Usability testing on the redesigned flows. I made logical decisions about the purchase journey, but I didn't put the prototype in front of users and watch them complete a transaction. That's the gap. The next version of this project validates the checkout flow specifically — that's where the most complexity lives and where assumptions are most likely to break.
Concept
Current app