Picture of the Australian Web Award trophy in Adelaide

How the new MCG digital experience won at the Australian Web Awards

We are absolutely thrilled to share that our recent work with the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) and Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) has won an Australian Web Award in the Sports and Recreation category!

Marty Drill

04 June 2026

3 minute read

The Australian Web Awards are the pinnacle of digital excellence nationwide, judged by an independent panel of industry peers. They evaluate entries based on strict criteria including design, user experience (UX), technical execution, accessibility, and overall effectiveness. To win an AWA means a project doesn't just look great, but it sets a benchmark for the highest standards of web development and strategy in Australia.

For an iconic national institution like the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), delivering anything less than a world-class digital experience wasn't an option. Taking home this award is a massive testament to the collaborative, hard work of both the Luminary and MCC teams.

MCG and MCC on mobile

The MCC handles a complex digital ecosystem, catering to over 160,000 passionate members, managing the Australian Sports Museum (ASM), and welcoming more than four million sports and entertainment fans to the MCG website annually.

The challenge was clear: the legacy digital estate was fragmented across three separate brands running on outdated, end-of-life platforms. Content management required constant duplication, and massive traffic spikes, like a major concert or AFL Finals ticket announcement, demanded manual infrastructure scaling just to keep the sites online.

Working hand-in-hand with the MCC team, we consolidated three fragmented sites into two modernised platforms (MCC and MCG, with the Australian Sports Museum smoothly integrated under the MCG banner), all powered by a single instance of Optimizely DXP.

Key features of the transformation included:

  • The "My MCC" member portal: A mobile-first space that completely streamlined dining reservations, club functions, and renewals, replacing archaic paperwork with personalised, pre-filled forms.
  • Revolutionary stadium mapping: We replaced a flat, confusing map with an interactive, multi-level 3D visual guide. Fans can now pin their exact seating section and toggle between stadium tiers to find the closest amenities on their specific level.
  • Dynamic events calendar: A centralised component model that lets the team publish fixtures once and cross-promote them seamlessly, utilising carousel sliders and custom components for gate times, parking, and ticketing.
  • Rock-solid architecture: Migrating to Optimizely's PaaS managed cloud, integrated with Cloudflare, allowed the site to easily absorb sudden spikes of tens of thousands of simultaneous users without a hitch.
Picture of MCC portal

The results so far

An award is an incredible honour, but the true measure of a project’s success lies in how it performs in the wild. We are incredibly proud to report that the project was wonderfully received by the client, and the real-world performance metrics speak for themselves.

Comparing year-on-year data, the new digital experience has driven spectacular growth across the board. Overall web traffic lifted 15%, with mobile engagement up 21% and session engagement up 20%. With over 60% of users accessing the site via mobile devices (often while standing inside the stadium itself) the 21% spike in mobile engagement proves that the mobile-first focus is hitting the mark right when and where fans need it most.

The impact we hope to make

As Rey Sumaru, General Manager of IT and Innovation at the MCC, beautifully put it: "This evolution brings our brand promise of stepping into greatness to life in the digital space."

Moving forward, our hope is that this new ecosystem acts as a benchmark for how iconic, high-traffic venues handle digital transformation. We didn't just want to build a flashy website; we wanted to create an accessible, future-proof experience.

By prioritising strict WCAG accessibility compliance (ensuring colour contrast, screen reader compatibility, and keyboard navigation function seamlessly), we hope this platform ensures that every single fan, regardless of ability, can plan their day, find their seats, and share in the magic of live sports and entertainment. Ultimately, this award marks the beginning of a digital foundation built to support the MCC and the millions of fans who love the "G" well into the next decade.

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