For Melbourne City FC, the brief was simple: replace an old, slow, all-in-one membership and merchandise system with a modern experience that matches the club’s ambition. The new City Store runs fully on Shopify – online and in-stadium – with a membership-aware checkout that recognizes who you are, how long you have been a member, and automatically rewards that loyalty with the right discount and benefits.
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Client
Melbourne City FC
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Services
Engagement, Loyalty Programs, Revenue, Technology
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Links
The Challenge:
- Legacy platform combining membership and merchandise, slow and inflexible for fans and staff
- Disconnected loyalty logic, making it hard to recognise long-term members at checkout
- Limited ability to personalise product discovery around players, collections, and campaigns
- No unified commerce stack across online store and physical retail environments
The Idea:
Melbourne City wanted a store that feels like the digital home of the “City family”: fast, intuitive, and built around membership. The vision was to migrate everything to a single Shopify-based theme, then connect it directly to the club’s loyalty tiers so that First Year, Bronze, Silver, and Gold Members see their benefits – from 10% to 15% merchandise discounts – applied automatically, whether they shop online or in person. On top of that, the store needed all the modern commerce features already proven at other Bluepitch clubs: smart player logic, flexible merchandising, and a UX tuned for matchday peaks.
The Solution:
- Migrated from the legacy membership/merchandise platform to a custom Shopify theme with no compromise on performance
- Implemented Shopify POS to align stadium and retail locations with the online store
- Integrated membership tiers so discounts scale with loyalty (First Year/Bronze/Silver/Gold) and apply automatically on login or scan
- Configured player- and collection-based merchandising, making it easy to shop by squad, kit, or capsule drop
- Optimised navigation and checkout for mobile-first traffic and AAMI Park matchday surges
The Results:
- One commerce engine powering memberships, merchandise, and POS with a consistent experience across channels
- Loyalty-aware pricing that deepens member engagement and increases perceived value of each tier
- Faster, more flexible storefront ready for new kits, campaigns, and collaborations
- A future-proof platform that turns every member login into a personalized City Store experience, online and in-stadium