WEBSITES · SPORT
A personal website for an athlete is sales material
A social post is gone in a day, and the sponsor has nothing to show their own management. For motocross rider Forty-Five we built a site with two audiences — and the second one is what makes it pay.
An athlete without a website of their own depends on social platforms they do not control. Posts vanish within a day, an algorithm decides the reach, and a sponsor sees nothing they could put in front of their own management.
For the concept motocross rider Forty-Five we built a site with two audiences: the fan and the sponsor. The second one is what makes the site worth having.
An athlete’s website is sales material
A sponsor does not decide on the basis of how beautiful the photographs are. They decide on the numbers and on how simple the partnership will be. So the site has to contain:
- results — season by season, placings, races, classes;
- a calendar of upcoming races with locations and dates;
- reach — followers per platform, views, media coverage;
- the team and the equipment — bike manufacturer, existing partners;
- a high-resolution gallery the media can actually use;
- a clear sponsorship page with packages and a contact.
That last item is the one almost nobody has. A sponsorship package on the website means a company can read for itself what it gets for €3,000 and what it gets for €15,000, instead of waiting for a meeting.
Forty-Five — motocross rider
A full-screen presentation, results by season, race calendar, equipment and gallery — with animations that run as you scroll.
Open demo →How we built the movement
Sport is movement, so the page must not stand still. What we used:
- The number on the cover moves at a different rate from the photograph behind it as you scroll — a sense of depth without three-dimensional models that would slow the site down.
- Results write themselves out line by line as they come into view. Scroll back up and the animation runs backwards instead of sticking.
- The gallery moves horizontally with drag and momentum, the way it does on a phone.
- Every animation switches off if the visitor has reduced motion set on their system. That is not a detail — for some people this kind of movement causes nausea.
What holds for other personal brands too
The same structure works for a musician, a photographer, an architect, a speaker or an actor. Three parts are always the same:
- Who you are — in one sentence, not in three paragraphs.
- Proof — results, projects, performances, coverage.
- What the visitor should do — work with you, book, sponsor, order.
Everything else is decoration. A personal site with only the first point is a business card; one with all three is a business.
Social platforms are for reach, your own site is for the decision. The first without the second is traffic with nowhere to go.
Photographs are often the only obstacle
Athletes usually have hundreds of photographs from races, but most of them are unusable on a website: cropped too tightly, with text burnt into them, in low resolution. Two things are worth sorting out before the build — clearing the rights with the photographers and picking ten genuinely good shots. Ten good ones beat a hundred average ones.
Upkeep during the season
Results change every weekend. If you need a developer for every change, the site stalls after three races. So the athlete gets a simple editor: you enter the race, the placing and a few photographs — everything else arranges itself.
If you are thinking about a site of your own
Look at the Forty-Five demo and tell us what you want to achieve: more sponsors, better media visibility or sales of your own products. Each of those goals means a different structure — and choosing between them matters far more than choosing colours.