Matthew Glendinning reports on the social media explosion and the marketing implications for professional football.

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Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, it’s clear that social media is no longer just for kids. These web-based platforms, which have hundreds of millions of subscribers, have grown-up applications for any number of businesses, not least the soccer sector. And unlike every other arm of the football business from club websites to CRM, integration with social media costs next to nothing.

Certainly, the major sports leagues in the US are taking it seriously enough to invest in the main (personnel) costs to deliver what the fans and sponsors desire.

But what’s the potential for professional football? According to a joint research study conducted by European
Football Group, the New York-based sports and marketing agency, EFG Interactive, a global top 25 market research firm, and Football Partnerships, a leading B2B network for soccer professionals, the story from the States indicates that returns are connected closely with how much effort the club or league is prepared to put in to monetise the opportunity.

Michael Wiesenfeld (EFG) and Alex Kotler (FP), who coauthored the survey into social media and US soccer highlighted on the page opposite, believe clubs are only investing a marginal amount of time and money into social media and are therefore failing to take full advantage of its power to connect and bond with fans.

“All the major sports leagues in the United States are on top of social media and have tens of people working on social media projects,” says Wiesenfeld. “Comparatively, the fi gure of around 70 per cent uptake for Major League Soccer is not that great, although that would be excellent fi gure in other markets.”

This, he says, is a missed opportunity not least because the medium offers Major League Soccer a gilt-edged opportunity to make up for shortcomings in its marketing approach elsewhere.

“My impression is that Major League Soccer has not been focusing on the passion of the fans, but on selling before they get people really involved. Social media can give MLS that platform to focus on the passion, but the information currently provided is not insightful enough.

“By this I mean, if you interview the fans they want different information on a New York RedBulls’ Facebook or Twitter platform than the stuff that’s on Espnsoccer.com. At the moment the MLS don’t quite see eye-to-eye with the fans on this. Clearly there is room to improve but they have yet to commit the finance or resources to make that happen.”

This is a false economy, according to Wiesenfeld. “It costs almost nothing to open an account on Twitter or Facebook; all you need is an intern to hook in the fans. Then maybe two years and 500,000 followers later, the club will be able to promote sponsors, tickets and jerseys and also offer it to sponsors as a platform for promotions.”

At the Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) league, on the other hand, Wiesenfeld says that the organisation is trying hard to leverage communications through Twitter and Facebook.

“They have 250,000 people signed up to Twitter alone: the strategy is to use it as a cheap media to reach a lot of people. In this case, the full-time head of communications manages the Twitter feed and takes care that the content is in the best interests of the club – not provoking arguments or spicy revelations. For comparison purposes, MLS only has 8,000 followers on Twitter!”

But if leagues or clubs feel there is no urgent need to tap into the additional exposure that social media enables, perhaps their sponsors hold a different view.

“The only reason for doing a sponsorship is to get closer to the fans yet some clubs spend just $1,000 per year on social media or less,” says Wiesenfeld.

“As a sponsor I’d be annoyed by that. It’s easy to do and it’s easy to make money. For example, when a sponsor’s name is on a jersey, fans still need to go through a number of steps before they go into the store and buy something by that brand, but through a promotion on Facebook, it’s just a click away.”

Because of the high cost of sponsorship, Wiesenfeld adds that today’s sponsorships are more than ever about ROI rather than awareness – making social media engagement even more compelling.

“If Chelsea have 500,000 followers on Facebook, Samsung has a chance to promote a digital camera for $200 to each and every one of them in ‘one click’. Even if just one per cent buy, that’s 5,000 x $200 and it’s pure profi t.”

One could argue that club websites should be the platform for such promotional activity, but Wiesenfeld stresses that social network sites are often a better fi t, offering fans, in theory at least, information and engagement they couldn’t get on the club website with the advantage that promotions on Facebook or Twitter feel far less solicitous than an email sent by the club’s CRM software.

The clubs can also use social media as a new distribution platform for ticketing and merchandising at very low cost. Selling a team jersey via a promotion on Facebook would involve a small commission to Facebook, while a promotion on Twitter would be absolutely free, says Wiesenfeld.

“The medium of Facebook or Twitter can be monetised right away. If there are 100,000 members, clubs can set up their own promotions or, for example, give club sponsors one free promotion per year as part of the sponsorship package.”

But to attract critical mass in terms of numbers the offering has to be right. So what do the fans really want from their club or league-based social media networks?

“The fans care about a whole range of things, but mainly they want to feel part of the club. They want to know what a player had for lunch, where they went last night and who their girlfriend is.

“None of the club websites I know give inside information on what the players do, but the fans just want to know what they are doing as regular guys in their 20s: that they went to see ‘Avatar’ yesterday or bought a new car. And I don’t think it’s just for lower tier clubs. With Manchester United, how else can you communicate one-to-one with the club? TV is a mass media, manutd.com is a mass media… you cannot have a one-to-one approach for the fan.”

But can you really expect highly-paid professional footballers to write Tweets or even Facebook entries as part of their club duties? “In my opinion, it has to be the players for a Tweet.

“If I was the general manager of a club I’d assign one or two players to do it on a regular basis; player who won’t compromise the image of the club and, in this, some players at the top level are as professional in understanding the media as the communications manager.

“The thing about Twitter is that anyone can do it, there’s no style, and nobody cares about spelling and style. At Chelsea, (club mascot) ‘Stamford the Lion’ is doing it, which provides a generic face for club messages, but doesn’t feel like you are getting real insider info from players.”

Of course, some boundaries need to be put in place to prevent some of the high-profile indiscretions that have taken place on player Twitter accounts or Facebook pages to the embarrassment of their clubs. Former New York Red Bulls striker Jose Altidore, now playing for Hull City, starred in a blog on the New York Times website which drew in fans who avidly followed his every move, whether he ordered a Dominos Pizza or bought a Sean John jersey. But when Altidore was late for a game and tweeted about it from the stadium, the club was not best pleased and imposed sanctions on the player.

In the UK during the last summer transfer window, the want-away Spurs striker Darren Bent went even further when he tweeted the following pithy message to Spurs chairman Daniel Levy:

“Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go stoke NO do I wanna go sunderland YES so stop f****** around levy [sic].”

Bent reportedly earned a two-week fine but got his transfer to Sunderland. “It can be very difficult, but a little bit of honesty is OK,” says Wiesenfeld.

“I understand that the clubs are a bit paranoid about this, but if a player talks to the BBC or a freelancer, they’ll still release stuff that is outside the club’s control… as are the images shot by the paparazzi.”

The upside, in any case, more than compensates for any downside, he adds. And what’s the alternative? To do nothing at all, as appears to be the case with many French league teams.

“The French League itself is very interested in social media but the problem is that there are 100 things for clubs to do and they are all doing their own thing,” says Wiesenfeld.

“Only the big clubs Olympique Marseille, Paris St Germain and Olympique Lyonnais have an interest. PSG hired someone for social media, but in my experience, most French clubs do not care much about the customer experience.

“France has never been a reference point for marketing in general, unlike the UK and USA, where clubs are far more customer/fan centric. But social media is something you can’t ignore. It costs zero money and opens up so many new opportunities.”

Also in this document: “Twitter – survey reveals mixed messages” and “How Chelsea are making the most of the social media opportunity.”

Download the PDF report here.

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