Last week Blueclaw delivered a guest lecture about the rise of Social Media in in the football industry at Coventry University. Blueclaw were part of a select group of sports industry experts invited to give individual lectures in their corresponding area of expertise - including Neil Doncaster (CEO of the Scottish Premier League), Paul Thompson (Team GB Ice Hockey coach) and Bert van der Auwera (Marketing Manager RSC Anderlecht).

Having worked with numerous sports institutions/athletes and Social Media clients over the years, I decided to give my lecture on a topic that has been increasingly prominent in the press - football and Social Media. In the last 18 months football clubs around the world have been making huge strides in improving their social media in order to better engage with fans, regulate their players activity and commercialise their Social Media audience. Here are some key points from my lecture:

Football Social Media grows

The rapid growth of Social Media in sports is unlike any other industry. Football clubs have an astonishing 46 million Twitter followers combined worldwide, whilst on Facebook they enjoy 120+ million Likes, I predict these numbers are set to double in 2013. Football Social Media even dominates the record books with over 15,000 tweets per second happening during the Euro 2012 final - a Twitter record. Even among the individual players - superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo have an astonishing 50 million Facebook Likes, that’s more than Bieber, Obama and Starbucks!

Evolution for mainstream media

Twitter has radically changed the way that clubs and press engage with their players. For instance, Michael Owen’s departure from Manchester United wasn’t announced on Sky Sports News, in the papers or even on United’s website - but instead on his Twitter feed. Social Media has weakened the bond between mainstream media and player and instead made it easier for fans to engage with their sporting heroes. However, the negative consequence of this freedom is that players comments are less regulated by club press officers, and therefore more likely to be controversial.

Connected Stadium

Connected Stadiums are the future of not just sports but all entertainment events. There is little point investing thousands into a social media strategy if you’re not ensuring that your own venue isn’t optimised and encouraging social media activity. Connected Stadiums are physical entities that provide easy access to 3G or WiFI. The stadium should be highlighting the appropriate social media accounts in signs, seats, concourses - even the matchday programme. Importantly, the connected stadium is one where the fan can engage with the stadium in a very social level. For example, Manchester City placed “Twitter screens” around the concourse of the stadium so fans could tweet in messages of support and then see them on screen.

Datatainment

Arguably the hottest buzzword of 2012, ‘datatainment’ is creating entertaining content using data. Football fans are stattos by nature - they love to consume and analyse data to prove a point, find insight and learn more about the game. Several key clubs like Arsenal and Manchester City are already harnessing their data in order to produce entertaining content like infographics, player reports and interactive data visualisations. Football clubs are data-mines with stats on players, matches, training, performance, attendance and fans, so they need to use it better.

-

What is clear is that the football industry has rapidly become an influential adopter of Social Media, even if it has had to overcome some serious obstacles to get there. As more clubs and athletes flock to channels like Facebook and Twitter, it is clear that Social Media is becoming a primary component of any sports marketing strategy.

Thanks very much to Coventry University for inviting us down to have a chance to speak and help educate the next generation of marketers.