A Premier League football club’s kit launch is more than just an online sale—it’s a global event. Fans from around the world rush to grab the latest jersey, creating a surge of traffic that can overwhelm even the most robust eCommerce platforms. When the Club asked thinkTRIBE to carry out Load Testing for its latest launch, it uncovered a critical flaw that could have severely impacted online kit sales and the Club’s brand reputation.
The Hidden Challenge: When Autoscaling Falls Short
Like many online retailers, the Club relied on cloud autoscaling provided by a third party to adjust to traffic demand. The assumption? That the system would seamlessly expand capacity as demand increased. The reality? Instead of a smooth transition, the scaling process triggered widespread storefront errors for all users.
High demand events for football clubs, such as kit launches or online ticket sales, cause extreme spikes in traffic compared to baseline levels, making successful scaling essential. A failure of this type would have led to frustrated fans, abandoned carts, and lost revenue.
The key takeaway? Don't let cloud autoscaling lead you into a false sense of security. Autoscaling is not a substitute for Load Testing. Without testing as part of peak preparation, the Club wouldn’t have known that its system wouldn’t scale fast enough to keep up with demand.
The Solution: Real-world Load Testing combined with 24/7 CX Monitoring
1. Load Testing under real-world conditions to uncover risks
With online sales growing significantly year on year, the Club turned to thinkTRIBE to ensure its platform could handle demand. We conducted Load Testing, including Spike Tests, based on real-world traffic profiles using a mixture of user journeys and drop-off ratios. The results were concerning: instead of handling demand smoothly, the autoscaling feature caused major errors to users across the storefront.
What we uncovered:
Instead of the slowdown in user journeys that we would normally expect to see for some users, as the system adjust to demand, user journeys suffered critical errors.
Large numbers of users encountered errors across the storefront and throughout their journeys preventing checkout, including "504 Gateway Timeout" messages.
Autoscaling was not adjusting capacity sufficiently to manage changes in demand and prevent widescale disruption.
Pre-warming caches reduces 99% of errors
Armed with this insight, the Club was able to use smart "cache warming" eliminating 99% of errors and preventing failures prior to kit launch.
When traffic increases, auto-scaling adds extra 'nodes' to keep things running smoothly but if nodes aren’t ready, users see errors. To prevent this, pre-warming the cache on new nodes with popular requests before they go live, ensures most user requests are answered instantly from the cache. This reduces strain on databases and backend systems - keeping customer experience seamless.
2. 24/7 CX Monitoring to Keep Sales Flowing
Following the Load Testing and successful infrastructure changes, thinkTRIBE’s ongoing CX Monitoring ensured supporters continued to enjoy a seamless shopping experience. We help Football Clubs optimise ongoing customer experience by simulating real customer journeys on desktop and mobile, using real browsers on real operating systems, we detected and helped resolve potential issues before they could impact sales.
Common problems uncovered included:
Broken ‘Add to Bag’ buttons
Out-of-stock items appearing available until checkout
Checkout failures leading to abandoned carts
Site slowdowns reducing engagement
Payment processing errors particularly with international providers
The Results: A successful kit launch without a hitch
Thanks to thinkTRIBE’s proactive testing and monitoring, the Club avoided major kit launch disruption, ensuring:
Flawless peak performance – No unexpected crashes or slowdowns, even under record-breaking traffic.
Revenue protection – Prevented costly disruption, abandoned purchases, and brand damage.
Seamless fan experience – A smooth, stress-free buying process from browsing to checkout to maximise online revenue and safeguard the Club's brand.
Faster issue resolution – Video replay of errors and real-time insights helped the Club fix problems quickly, minimising disruptions.
Reduced workload for tech teams – thinkTRIBE managed testing and monitoring, freeing internal and third-party teams to focus on other priorities.
The Takeaway: Autoscaling is not a substitute for Load Testing
For any business handling extreme traffic surges, Load Testing and CX Monitoring aren’t optional—they’re essential. The belief that cloud autoscaling out of the box can prevent issues is a dangerous misconception. Without proactive testing, retailers risk major failures at the worst possible time.
By preparing in advance and catching performance risks before they impact users, thinkTRIBE helps brands protect their revenue, reputation, and customer experience.
This Premier League Club is now better prepared, ensuring its eCommerce platform remains resilient and ready for peak demand.
Read the full Premier League Kit Launch case study here
Ready to learn more about optimising your Football Club's eCommerce?
To learn how to prepare your website for a successful kit launch read our eBook or there's a summary in our blog here.
Read our blog for more information about how to optimise ongoing digital customer experience for your Football Club