Football Marketing are delighted to publish a ‘Facebook Marketing in European Football’ (by Nils Knoop) case study which analyses the Facebook strategy and performance of the top European clubs. Today’s article is the first of the complete analysis which will be published over the next few weeks.

What’s the social media marketing performance of European football clubs beyond the sheer number of fans? With this question in mind, a scientific study was conducted analysing the Facebook marketing of 52 clubs in the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A and Spanish Primera Division over a period of 25 weeks (end of season 2010/2011, summer break, beginning of season 2011/2012) looking at a total of 27,485 posts. The goal of the study was to look at the differences, effectiveness and efficiency of football clubs’ Facebook marketing and determine critical success factors for European clubs.

In recent years, social media has fundamentally reshaped the way people interact with the world around them and this is no more apparent than within the field of sport. As famous UK sport researchers John Beech, Simon Chadwick and Alan Tapp state:

Sport and the Internet look like a marriage made in heaven because of the unmatched enthusiasm and loyalty it generates among consumers. The nature of the activity of professional football and the characteristics of the fans suggest to lock the fan more tightly into a relationship with the club.

With the global appeal of European football, fans from around the world will increasingly look to engage with clubs and players via social networks. Those that don’t get a handle on it risk scoring a huge own goal online. Chris Nield of ManCity says:

The key goals of the social media strategy is to provide the fans with additional and inclusive streams of communication direct to and from the club; to provide additional, engaging and exclusive content to our fans on social media networks and to build virtuous relationships with fan sites, blogs and forums that already exist online.

However, European football clubs apply a rather ‘wait and see’ approach to new technologies and many clubs today do not see the need nor the benefit of social media and why the club should engage further with its fans.

Why successful Facebook marketing is important for clubs

First of all, social media has changed the way people communicate and purchase with the Internet playing an ever-increasing role. Furthermore, there is a significant shift from transactional marketing to relationship marketing in which interaction, communication and connecting with fans is the central focus. Facebook is the perfect platform to apply this new approach to marketing as it provides reasonable ways to engage with fans. With markets saturating, European clubs always have to find new revenue streams – Facebook is one. Through social media, the loyalty of fans towards the clubs increases significantly and fans with a high level of loyalty are more likely to spend money.

Eleven factors why football clubs should embrace social media
With the aim to encourage football clubs to invest into social media, Gotsch from Customer Think outlines 11 factors why clubs should embrace social media.

1. Fans are interested in engaging with their club. As mentioned earlier, football fans are naturally interested in their club, its players and the home of the club (stadium) to a much higher extend than the average consumer. Furthermore, social media allows reaching a global audience and engaging with fans in an individual way through direct two-way communication.
2. Fans feel like they (ought to) have a say! Football fans talk about their club, see themselves as part of the club and demonstrate their connection to the club. Therefore, the adoption of social media in relation to their favourite club is a natural next step in the relationship.
3. Players and club individuals are perfect communications icons. In no other industry there are proportionally as many individuals that actually mean something to the fan. Gotsch argues “to receiving a personal birthday message from your favourite player or a response on a question from the commercial director is difficult to beat by any other industry”.
4. Fans speak out and influence others. Football fans are passionate to step in for their club, defend it and try to convince others to join the club and become a fan.
5. Fans are easy to reach. The number one source of information for sports fans and most important online marketing tool have long been the club websites – connecting the website with the social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter forms a successful triangle to inform fans and create opportunities for engaging, interacting and collaborating with the club.
6. Clubs are going international. the technological advancements such as the Internet have made geographical boarders to disappear. For example, in an attempt to reach international fans and drive international membership sales due to a saturated market in the U.K., Arsenal London launched various digital media applications. In that way, the relationship and interaction with the (international) fan-base was extended beyond the fan experience in the stadium.
7. Fanship is emotional and loyalty is long term. According to Gotsch, “studies show that up to 90% of people have decided who their favourite football club is by the age of 10 and only a few change this preference later on in life”. This is in line with research by Beech and Chadwick as well as Mullin and Shilbury regarding the high level of loyalty as a distinctive characteristic of sports.
8. New media is critical to economic success of clubs. To reach out to fans further away and increase the number of fans, clubs are turning more and more to new media. For many clubs this is not a matter of choice but simply a necessity in order to compete. Some researchers even expect a competitive disadvantage by not engaging in social media. In addition to that, is argued that top clubs cannot afford to get social media wrong due to three reasons: saturated home markets, player expenses and globalisation of media.
9. Social media is mobile, football is mobile!. Games, interviews, news and updates are all things that fans demand to access anywhere and anytime. For example, in order to increase the online experience during a game, various clubs have started to convert their stadium into technologically advanced temples. In 2011, Spanish club Real Madrid C.F. teamed up with Cisco Connected Sports Solutions to transform the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium into the most technologically advanced stadium providing the fan with an innovative mobile experience through special applications and ‘during-the-game-content’.
10. Clubs are big brands but small or medium sized organizations. Sports brands belong to some of the biggest brands in the world. For example, clubs in the English Premier League score as high in brand recognition as some of the most well known global products.
11. Fans and sponsors simply expect it.

In addition to that, (12) availability of content – sports content can be separated into ‘on-field’ related and ‘off-field’ content. The on-field related content is primarily centred on game coverage and event-related information such as training sessions, transfers and travels to games happening on a regular basis. In contrast to that, off-field related content includes content about the club, players, press information, sponsors and entertainment making it the key to sports social media.

Posting Behaviour of European football clubs

From the literature review, it was concluded that content is a key factor for the success of a Facebook page and that content differs between pages. As a result of putting online content into different categories, differences in the posting behaviour could be observed. The findings suggest that content directly related to the match, player transfers, entertainment and interviews are the most frequently used categories. Furthermore, it can be seen that content of players, sponsors as well as content that directly involves the fan is less frequently used. Moreover, a view on commercial content shows that some clubs almost do not use this category at all while others put more emphasis on this type of content.

In regard to the frequency of posts – a topic that is often discussed concerning the application of Facebook marketing – the findings show that the clubs with high numbers of fans seem to focus on publishing an average of around two posts per day. Additionally, FC Barcelona, the club with the highest number of fans in the Spanish Primera Division, has the lowest frequency of posts while Real Madrid, with almost the same number of fans, posts more than twice as much as FC Barcelona. In contrast to that, Manchester City, one of the clubs that has been mentioned severely as benchmark when it comes to social media marketing in sports, publishes an average of more than six posts per day. In line with the posting behaviour, the different content strategies that clubs conduct were examined in the study. First of all, it can be said that there are only slight differences between the leagues concerning the content on the Facebook pages in general.

Nevertheless, posting behaviour differs between the three periods of the season. This means that the content of Facebook pages is closely linked to what happens around the club with different topics of interest. During the summer break, content seems to be more difficult to find and the focus shifts from game coverage towards event information (for example charity or community events, training sessions) and entertainment (for example statistics around the club history, pictures from the past). Moreover, the findings show that the focus differs between clubs with game coverage, entertainment, event and player information as proportionally most frequent content categories. Interestingly, those categories communicating directly to and intensively involving the fan are generally less frequently used but foster interaction in comparison to other categories. Furthermore, categories connected to commercial interests – sponsors, suppliers and commerce – are quite seldom used, especially by larger clubs. As a result, it can be argued that until today, Facebook is usually seen as a platform to provide information rather than communicating with and involving the fan or to use it as a commercial stage satisfying especially cognitive and affective needs.

Furthermore, the findings show that content structure – one of the keys for Facebook marketing – differ between clubs with some clubs applying a general structure – game plan – for the content of their Facebook page whereas other clubs’ posting behaviour seems to be rather coincidently influenced by events and happenings around the club (for example transfers, success, player information) and therefore lack general structure. For instance, Arsenal and Manchester United focus intensively on their players and coaches (through interviews and player information) whereas Manchester City puts emphasis on entertainment (photos of Manchester City fan pets). In addition to that, Chelsea publishes posts in a very structured way during a game day including posting a game preview, interview with the coach, line-up, game coverage, game review, press conference and photos of the game. Furthermore, activities such as the player of the week or fan picture of the day give the page additional structure. This provides the fan with orientation and additional value.

In addition to the general strategy and structure, content of the Facebook page has been mentioned severely in the literature as key success factor. Although this study did not have the aim to analyse the quality of posts, some interesting observations from the football clubs’ Facebook fan pages will be discussed here. As mentioned-earlier, game coverage is the core topic on clubs’ Facebook pages. Interestingly, the way in which the actual game is covered varies between clubs. Some refer to their club TV, ticker on the website or Twitter account or connect their Twitter account directly with their Facebook page leading to extensive coverage and a high number of posts. Others only post the most important events (goals, half-time result, end result) while there are even clubs that do not cover their games at all. For example, Stoke City ran a large campaign ahead of the FA Cup final but then did not cover the actual game at all while Wigan posts exclusive content via an on-pitch reporter from inside the stadium.

Furthermore, exclusive content is produced in several occasions. At Real Madrid, Iker Casillas took a photo of Mesut Ozil in the changing room, posted it on his Facebook page, which was then shared by Real Madrid. In addition to that, Malaga CF ran a campaign in which they gave away special prices for every 1000 new fans (for example training with the players, one player wears a shirt with the name of a fan at the back) and Atletico de Madrid hired a photographer exclusively for taking photos for the Facebook page. Finally, Chelsea puts focus on utilising pictures to increase the experience on the page. The club publishes a high number of photo albums, all including about five to ten pictures, as well changes their profile picture several times demonstrating the fan that there is always something happening on the page that is worth visiting. In regard to the language in which posts are published, it can be seen that this decision is highly influenced by the general club strategy. For example, Real Madrid posts in English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabian and French while FC Barcelona posts in Catalan, Spanish and English (order differs between posts), Villarreal in Valenciano, Espanyol in Catalan, and English clubs usually in English language.

To sum this up, it can be seen that posting behaviour differs significantly between clubs influenced by the general club strategy. However, generally, it seems to be important to have a general post game plan with specific activities and topics to provide the fan with some orientation of what is happening on the page.

Source: Nils Knoop

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