Wyatt Gallagher

Introduction

From 2019 through 2023, as the head of design at Pumpjack Dataworks, I led design for the first mobile apps for Club Internacional de Fútbol Miami—better known to you and me as Inter Miami CF.

We worked alongside Jean Manuel Jiménez and Vincent Wiskowski, the duo leading digital marketing at Inter Miami, to create an app that would lead the league in brand execution and fan experience. In our years together we set the standard for official team mobile apps in Major League Soccer, and proved that streaming live matches held incredible value—value that the league and Inter Miami would realize together in partnering with Apple TV+ to bring the legendary Lionel Messi to Miami.

In our initial meetings in the summer of 2019 it became very clear that we were kindred souls with Jean and Vincent. We wanted to move in the same direction—delivering an app that embodied the fashion-forward, forward-looking identity of Inter Miami and would be a place where fans would want to live—but good design execution was key to overcoming political obstacles.

The app we envisioned together brought together many concepts that I had ready to bring to the table, particularly a monolithic infinite-feed home view that integrated live match updates, instead of forcing fans to follow matches in a separate view.

Leading up to the inaugural season, Inter Miami intended several drops of exclusive merchandise. Both Inter Miami's official online store and Adidas' web store lacked an API for us to use, and we didn't want to settle for browser views. Taking directly from the fashion world, we created a digital lookbook view, using fantastic photography from the IMCF creative team of players wearing the items. The Horizon Pink jacket sold out in minutes.

Metro Miami soccer fans have allegiances all over the world, and the club was keen to embrace this. Together we advanced a heavily customizable profile, including a personalizable jersey graphic and the ability to choose up to two "nationalities" for fans to represent their heritage or international admirations.

Supporters clubs are a big deal internationally, making it easy to find fellow fans of your favorite club anywhere in the world, but they haven't taken off in the same way in the United States. Inter Miami wanted to make that easy with an interactive, searchable supporters club map, allowing fans to create their own clubs and submit their club names and meeting places for placement in the app.

Through months of iteration, in January 2020 we finalized what the first release would look like, and scheduled that release for early March, just before the start of the season.

One of the most important commitments we were able to make was the inclusion of streaming live matches. I have a strong point of view about fan apps: if you want fans to use your app, you need to give them as many reasons as possible to use it. If you want fans to love your app, and to live in it, you have to be just as committed to them. Not every team or league is willing or able to make that commitment.

Mobile streaming of sports seems obvious to you and me, but it's politically and logistically difficult. Jean, Vincent, and others at Inter Miami, armed with my designs, committed to making it happen and to winning over everyone involved. With the cooperation of MLS and of Inter Miami's local broadcasting partner, the app delivered live streaming matches to mobile fans within the club's TV market, verified by location.

Two weeks after the app launched, Rudy Gobert coughed into a microphone, and in time securing streaming became an extremely fortunate move.

Getting approval from MLS was essential to making that happen. They were willing to let Inter Miami be a test case for something they weren't convinced about—and the performance of Inter Miami's streams that year convinced them so much that, a couple of years later, the league secured a massive streaming deal with Apple, and used that deal to help Inter Miami seal their own deal with Lionel Messi.

This is why I championed streaming. It absolutely works.

We worked with Inter Miami through 2021 and 2022 to evolve the app, as the club's visual language and digital marketing strategy matured. Much of this was left on the cutting room floor. By 2023, as is often the case in the sports tech world, key people had moved on and the new people wanted to pursue other directions; at the same time, Pumpjack was leaving the mobile app business.

The Inter Miami app remains one of the most impactful projects I've worked on. Seeing your work shared with millions of people by way of David Beckham, and seeing how excited they were by it, is hard to forget even with everything else happening at the time.