For soccer fans

Putera Hasudungan, Contributor, Jakarta | Sci-Tech | Sun, November 25 2012, 2:04 PM

Paper Edition | Page: 10

Watching a soccer match at the weekend is fun. It’s exciting to watch the big rivals compete while making predictions about the result.

For die-hard soccer fans, finding out everything about their chosen team has become an obsession. Meanwhile, reading about the soccer players’ — professional and personal — lives has become a source of inspiration.

Those that see soccer not only as a sport, but also as a lifestyle choice, should turn to dewibola.com, which was launched in June this year.

“We saw that there were several portals in Indonesia, but they only provided soccer news. We thought about giving something unique, by adding information on men’s lifestyles such as gadget reviews, fashion, films, health and girls who are related to soccer,” chief executive officer of Exo Digital Agency, Romeo Reijman, said.

He said that dewibola.com was a joint venture between his digital marketing company and the entertainment portal, kapanlagi.com. He said that his agency developed a community of soccer fans, while kapanlagi.com provided the website’s content.

Romeo said that since 2010, his company had developed two Facebook fan pages for the national team of Indonesia. He added that his company also managed fan pages of several national team players, specifically Irfan Bachdim, Diego Michels and Titus Bonai. He said that a total of 5 million Facebook users gave “likes” on the soccer fan pages.

Wearing soccer jerseys is one way for fans to support their favorite clubs and players. Collectors of soccer uniforms can log on to jersey.forumotion.com to exchange tips and tricks in searching for original jerseys.

On the website, registered members can interact by offering advice on finding rare and collectible soccer shirts, including where and how to buy them in online auctions.

It was Oscar Andi who created this online forum in 2008. He said that he saw many messages from soccer uniform lovers scattered in kaskus.co.id. He aimed at gathering the info by utilizing a free web-hosting service so that jersey collectors could meet in one place.

Attended only by a few people in the beginning, now the website facilitates 3,000 members, who gather to play futsal and hang out in the capital every two weeks.

However, some parts of the forum are restricted for new members. They can view galleries of jersey collections and discussion rooms after they have posted 10 messages.

“Only members who have posted 50 messages and attended offline gatherings at least once can open the trade page — to buy or sell jerseys. We want members to develop the discussions inside the website, not solely for business,” Oscar said.

He said that members then have to submit their personal identification and bank information to the website’s moderator before they can post messages in the trade page.

“It’s [an attempt] to prevent deception,” he said.