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An insight into the world of a Club, Athlete and Corporation

Social Media

The rise of Facebook active users hasn’t stopped increasing from around 50 million users in the third quarter of 2008 to over 2.2 billion users in the fourth quarter of 2018, Instagram follows the same pattern starting at 90 million active users as of January 2013 up to 1 billion recorded in June 2018 Twitter however started with 30 million active users in the first quarter of 2010 and peaking at 336 million active users in the first quarter of 2018, this has shown a slight decline to 321 million active users in the fourth quarter of 2018, this however shows how popular and consistently used social media has become with more people expected to follow.

After the signing with Juventus on July 10th the club gained on social media, 3.5 million Instagram followers, 1.7 million Facebook likes, 344,000 Twitter followers and a 71% increase on YouTube engagement (Fox, 2018).

Cristiano Ronaldo has a total of 137 million followers and is rewarded with $750,000 per Instagram post, only Selena Gomez and Kylie Jenner are paid more to post with Ronaldo being the highest sporting earner with Neymar coming second at $600,000 per post (Hopper HQ) this shows that the power traditional media once had has now been shifted into different forms of the new media. Between 2016 to 2017, Ronaldo posted 580 pieces of sponsored content which generated 927 million interactions (Forbes, 2018).

On the 6^th July it was reported that Facebook was looking at creating a reality show looking into Ronaldo’s life, worth up to $10 million dollars for him. This would give fans a glimpse into the life of the footballer and how he goes about his business in an effort to not only engage with fans and increase the amount of active Facebook users but to also compete with streaming services such as Netflix which also released a documentary about Ronaldo. Not only this but Facebook also live streamed Ronaldo’s first league game for free allowing fans to watch the man on his debut (Spangler and Wallenstein, 2019).

Streaming services

With new and different types of digital technology and the expansion of new media markets the sports/media complex has been taken into a new dimension (Lefever, 2012:14). “Millions of fans and consumers have now transitioned from purely using traditional media to receive their sport content to an integrated approach where they engage through a variety of platforms.” Mitchell (2015) cited in Pedersen et al (2016) this is through social media such as Twitter and Facebook to streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix.

DAZN is a streaming service, noted as the Netflix of sports, signed Ronaldo as their global ambassador in all its markets including Canada, Germany and Japan. It will be screening the Portuguese forward’s exploits for his new club having struck a three-year deal with Serie A, said to have cost €600m, to show 114 matches a season live in Italy (Goal, 2019). They signed Ronaldo to this service due to his popularity on social media and because of his move to the Serie A from La Liga, they feel that fans of football are more likely to watch more of that league solely due to him being in it and with the streaming rights they now have, expect people to sign up for their service. “We’re now more interested in celebrities than perhaps we are teams and that’s a characteristic of not just football and sport but of life in general” (Chadwick, 2018). With the arrival of Ronaldo at Juventus their Instagram following increased 99.57% in just 5 months this suggests more people will be paying attention to Juventus and the Serie A.

What the people want

Silva and Almeida (2019) monitored the reactions of fans to live events is a new and revolutionary way to measure football impact. The results of this allow sponsors, advertisers and media rights holders to not have to trust a hunch when producing something fans want to watch, sports can now be the ultimate vehicle for brand promotion. Biometric responses were collected from fans watching Juventus vs Athletico Madrid and the player that really stood out was Cristiano Ronaldo when he touched the ball people’s heart rates elevated more than when any other player received it, this may be because they expect something special to happen (You should do). This shows how Ronaldo’s image and the expectedness people feel with him increasing the probability of people watching what he does making him a business’ dream.

This also helps Ronaldo in his own pursuit of marketing off his brand, in the case of his fragrance CR7, due to the fact people associate Ronaldo with greatness the chances are everything that he either sponsors or produces is going to be presumed of a higher class as well. Not only this but his huge following also helps. Thompson et al., (2016) believes that it is imperative to understand the role of social media in terms of sporting context considering the importance of brand management, the development of strong consumer–brand relationships, and the emergence of social media. Ronaldo, also known as the king of Social Media, is used by many sponsors such as Nike and Tag Heur to use his popularity by getting him to interact with his followers

References

CNN (2018) Has the digital age changed football fans?
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/17/football/cristiano-ronaldo-juventus-social-media-fans-china-spt-intl/index.html
(28/03/2019)

Goal.com. (2019). Serie A 2018/19: le partite trasmesse da DAZN, palinsesto, date e orari | Goal.com. [online]
Available at: https://www.goal.com/it/notizie/serie-a-201819-le-partite-trasmesse-da-dazn-palinsesto-date/k4nm0ni4h6du1pimmfjtbj5tu
[Accessed 27 Apr. 2019].

Fox Sport Stories (2018) Cristiano Ronaldo Case: Social Media Fans Phenomenon
http://foxsportsstories.com/2018/09/04/4176/
(28/03/2019)

Lefever, K. (2012) New Media Landscape. Netherlands: TMC Asser Press.
(28/03/2019)

Pedersen, P.M., Laucella, P.C., Kian, E., and Guurin, A.N. (2016) Strategic Sport Communication. 2nd ed. Leeds: Human Kinetics.
(28/03/2019)

Silva, P. (2019). X-Ray of a Football Game: The Power of Cristiano Ronaldo’s Image. [online] GreenBook.
Available at: https://greenbookblog.org/2019/04/16/an-x-ray-of-a-football-game-the-power-of-cristiano-ronaldos-image/
[Accessed 23 Apr. 2019].

Spangler, T. and Wallenstein, A. (2019). Facebook in Talks for Cristiano Ronaldo Reality Show, Which Could Be Its Biggest Original Yet (EXCLUSIVE). [online] Variety.
Available at: https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/cristiano-ronaldo-facebook-reality-show-1202865749/
[Accessed 27 Apr. 2019].

Sport Bible (2018) The Amount Of Money Cristiano Ronaldo Earns From A Single Instagram Post Is Seriously Insane
http://www.sportbible.com/football/news-reactions-how-much-cristiano-ronaldo-earns-from-a-single-instagram-post-20180727
(28/03/2019)

Techradar (2018) Facebook taking on Netflix with Cristiano Ronaldo reality TV show
https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/facebook-taking-on-netflix-with-cristiano-ronaldo-reality-tv-show
(28/03/2019)

Thedrum (2018) NEWS DAZN signs Cristiano Ronaldo as brand ambassador – ‘it was a no-brainer’ says CMO
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/08/22/dazn-signs-cristiano-ronaldo-brand-ambassador-it-was-no-brainer-says-cmo
(28/03/2019)

Thompson, A.J., Martin. A.J., Gee, S., and Geurin, A.N. (2016) Fans’ Perceptions of Professional Tennis Events’ Social Media Presence: Interaction, Insight, and Brand Anthropomorphism. Communication and Sport, pp. 1-25.

Richard Arnold, the clubs managing director, states that digital engagement is directly linked to Manchester United success on and off the pitch, this is mainly due to the mass following they have on social media which is 659 million followers across all their platforms. They believe the end goal is to create a circle where the fans are engaged with more. To not only benefit their interaction with the club but also to create greater opportunities with partners with the club (Sport Media, 2019)

The use of social media in business are user focused so the posts are aimed at consumers and fans to increase their engagement, operational, so using them daily to keep fans interest and updated and strategic but this is aimed more at the club and hitting certain objectives for example ticket sales (Filo et al, 2015). Online content is essential for Manchester United as millennials account for 77% of their social media followers and 51% of the club’s fan base (Arnold, 2018). 

Twitter

More than 300m people a month use Twitter and around 350,000 tweets are sent per minute and half of its users sign in each day. Not only this but it also reaches out to a younger audience, this is incredibly important to Manchester united due to 77% of their social media following are classified as millennial (Arnold, 2018), and with a total of 19.1 million followers on the platform it’s a considerable amount of people and the 3^rd highest football club only behind Barcelona and Real Madrid (Business Insider, 2018). Twitter can be used for an array of things for example many organisations give away free tickets through he platform and this is sometimes referred to as “TwitTix”, these are for fans that reply to the organisations Twitter account and actually going and meeting with a representative for the organisation at an announced location (Billings and Hardin, 2014). However, Manchester united use their account to keep fans updated on events such as players and goals of the month and allow their fans to decide who gets this reward via a voting system. They post a selection of players or goals and a link posted with this selection will take you to the club’s main website allowing you to have your vote, this keeps fans engaged as they feel they get to make a big decision for the club and also they get to re-watch the highlights of certain players throughout the month or all the different goals that were scored.

The club don’t tend to give away free tickets for the main squads games, they’d struggle anyway, however they are always posting about games that fans can attend for free, these games consist of the youth level squads from under 23s to under 18s so rather than give away free tickets they allow the fans the opportunity to watch the up and coming prospects for free. Due to these games being at Old Trafford for the most part it allows fans that maybe can’t afford match day tickets to go the stadium and enjoy it in a different perspective.

Fan engagement and social media platforms go hand in hand and are used effectively by the club Stander, Van Zyl, & Motaung (2016: 309) solidify this argument as they believe that fan engagement amongst sports fans have been established as a critical contributor to commercial success and development of sport and specific sport clubs. Parganas, Anagnostopouslous, & Chadwick (2017: 160) states that through social media, fans identify more with the team, are able to feel strong emotions, interact with their team, socialize with other fans, and seek for original and up-to-date information regarding their team.

Website & official app

The club’s website, ManUnited.com, is very popular with engaging fans as it is available across the globe, it holds all the club information a fan would ever want, competitions, match day tickets, player stats and portfolios.

However, with the launch of the new app there is now more than one place to find all your Manchester united news, just days after launch, the Manchester United Official app reached number one in the App Store’s sports category download charts in 68 markets around the world. The app was also top ten within the sports category in a further 123 markets. The app uses Opta’s instant player scoring system and match data feeds, it provides a live view of who is influencing the game, lets fans compare them head to head, and highlights which team has the momentum at any given moment based on recent play. Fans can also assess the statistical impact of players in key areas, shooting, attacking, passing, possession, defending and goalkeeping all based on positive actions during the game. Not only that but polls are regularly posted allowing fans to reminisce over moments in the past and which ones they and others enjoy the most (ManUnited.com, 2019)

MUTV

A more traditional form of engaging the fans is their dedicated TV channel, this is 24 hours a day 7 days a week channel which shows pre-season Tour games live and has live radio commentary of every Manchester United first team game across all competitions the Premier League, FA Cup, EFL Cup and European fixtures (ManUnited.com, 2019). On top of this, live Reserves and Academy matches will be shown throughout the season. Additionally, it shows games of the past and has interviews with former and current players giving the fans the opportunity to learn about the past and the present of this football club.

References

Billings, AC, & Hardin, M (2014), Routledge Handbook of Sport and New Media, Routledge: London.

Filo et al, Use of social media in business (2015)

Forbes.com. (2019). How Manchester United Sees Digital As the Key To Future Commercial Success. [online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemccaskill/2018/09/10/how-manchester-united-sees-digital-as-the-key-to-future-commercial-success/#3df674b36407
[Accessed 4 Apr. 2019].

Hcltech.com. (2019). Manchester United shoots for success with a “digital experience platform” powered by HCL | HCL Technologies.
Available at: https://www.hcltech.com/press-releases/press-releases-business/manchester-united-shoots-success-digital-experience-platform
[Accessed 4 Apr. 2019].

Manutd.com. (2019). Official Manchester United Website. (Online)
Available at: https://www.manutd.com/en
[Accessed 4 Apr. 2019].

Parganas, P., Anagnostopouslous, C. and Chadwick, S. (2017: 150) Effects of social media interactions on brand associations A comparative study of soccer fan clubs. International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship, 18, (2), pp. 149-16

Sikes, P. (2019). Manchester United attributes its success to online fan engagement | Digital Sport. [online]
Available at: https://digitalsport.co/manchester-united-attributes-its-success-to-online-fan-engagement
[Accessed 4 Apr. 2019].

Sportspromedia.com. (2019). ‘Man Utd app driving phenomenal fan engagement’, says MD. [online]
Available at: http://www.sportspromedia.com/news/manchester-united-app-fan-engagement-revenue-tickets
[Accessed 27 Apr. 2019].

Twitter.com. (2019). Manchester United (@ManUtd) on Twitter.
Available at: https://twitter.com/ManUtd ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
[Accessed 4 Apr. 2019].

Super 6

The gamification of sports takes elements of sports and give to people to either solves problems or have fun this in theory encourages people to participate (Callanan, n.d. a) this can lead to rewards such as prize money or invites to team dinners. This game gives people an opportunity to win £250,000 if they guess the correct scores of selected games. This encourages users to dive deeper into different teams helping them learn about different teams and their season rather than just their own, this then increases fan knowledge about the sport and encourage them to watch more football on Sky. People pick results and compete to earn prizes, with the use of stats get users more invested in the sport this gives people a sense of accomplishment encouraging them to either become club assets or assets of a certain league or federation, this then allows for sky to increase the amount of game packages they buy and once again increases their following. I know this increases fan engagement as I take part in this mode, I look into the previous fixtures and form each club is going through and try to get a winner, so far, I haven’t got close.

Fantasy Premier League

This is a concept used by many sports CBS Fantasy Sport, which deals with varying sports from hockey to American Football, then there are more specific versions such as Sky’s Fantasy Premier League (Anon, 2019). This game mode gives you a total of 100 million to spend on a starting 11 that you use to win points through goals clean sheets and assists, this is another game that encourages fans to invest time into research as this also offers prizes for the top players, not only this but less serious players can create leagues with their friends and compete between themselves either with a jackpot at the end or not, this could increase or decrease fan engagement depending on the type of person that is playing, personally I stick it out because I fancy my chances against my mates. With different game elements added to different apps fans are going to be involved in the actual sport because if there is competition they will want to win (Well I would) (Callanan, n.d. a).

The future of the apps

This form of sports watching, and participation is most likely going to increase in the next 2 years as the projected growth of gamification is set to grow from $4.91 billion in 2016 to $11.94 billion in 2021 (Statista, 2019a).

If participants feel the apps are informational, so knowing that you are higher up on a leader board throughout a season, it can increase feelings of competence and promote performance (Hamari et al., 2014) meaning fans are going to stay engaged so that they can finish higher than even more people.

Bittner and Shipper (2014) state that gamification is an emerging technology that uses digital media to inspire people to act in a different way to what is traditionally a non-gaming environment, in order to influence the importance of online and real-world behaviour and it is believed to be better targeted at younger consumers. However, in the case of super 6 and fantasy football they are breaking the trend and are able to utilise older fans to keep them engaged with the sport this is through the need of being over 18 to take part in these activities.

Workman (2013) strengthens this idea in terms of stating that gamification represents the fusion of 4 trends which are the explosion of social media usage, the mobile revolution, the rise of big data as well as the emergence of wearable computing. This is currently shown in fantasy football, Super 6 and also Sky bet as you can now get all of these apps on your phone, including the statistical data that comes with them.

Sky Sports Score Centre & Official app

With new and different types of digital technology and the expansion of new media markets the sports/media complex has been taken into a new dimension (Lefever, 2012). “Millions of fans and consumers have now transitioned from purely using traditional media to receive their sport content to an integrated approach where they engage through a variety of platforms.” Mitchell (2015) cited in Pedersen et al (2016) this is through different forms of either social media or even downloadable content including the two main apps of Sky Sports. The apps allow for easy access to sport related articles and football scores making it easier than ever to read up on what is going on in sport whenever and wherever you want, I mean if I can do it others should be able (Sky Sports, 2019). This helps with fan engagement due to its easy access and availability but also on match days fans are able to view the statistics, via the score centre app, this includes clear chances created, passing and shooting stats and many other aspects of any game they wish to look at, this therefore engages the fans and keeps them up to date with what is going on.

Soccer Saturday & Super Sunday

Soccer Saturday is a format on sky sports news every Saturday where a host (Jeff Stelling) and a host of pundits talk about the upcoming fixtures of the day and also report on the super six games whilst they are on, finally they will round up and conclude what they have watched and have discussions with one another (Sky Sports, 2019). However, they aren’t just sitting there being serious throughout, their discussions can get quite and heated and then they can turn comical, this allows people to watch the whole show, 12 till 6, and not have a dull moment. With this sort of entertainment, the likelihood of people watching during the day is quite high and it has proven to be successful with BT Sport taking the same concept and calling it BT Score. This form of TV punditry is probably more interesting for the neutral fan whos team is not playing, or if you’re a united fan and don’t fancy watching rubbish again, with this level of entertainment it’s hard not to watch. It keeps fans engaged through the opinions of the pundits and whether or not the viewer thinks their right and in most cases people will not agree, especially with the likes of Paul Merson who tends to be wrong.

Social Media

The rise of Facebook active users hasn’t stopped increasing from around 50 million users in the third quarter of 2008 to over 2.2 billion users in the fourth quarter of 2018, Instagram follows the same pattern starting at 90 million active users as of January 2013 up to 1 billion recorded in June 2018 Twitter however started with 30 million active users in the first quarter of 2010 and peaking at 336 million active users in the first quarter of 2018, this has shown a slight decline to 321 million active users in the fourth quarter of 2018, this however shows how popular and consistently used social media has become with more people expected to follow.

Recent years have witnessed the rise of new media channels such as Facebook, YouTube, Google, and Twitter, which enable customers to take a more active role as market players and reach (and be reached by) almost everyone anywhere and anytime. These new media threaten long established business models and corporate strategies, but also provide ample opportunities for growth through new adaptive strategies (Hennig-Thurau et al. 2010). Sky use social media effectively, through the live option, this allows them to stream anything they like so the broadcaster shares behind the scenes footage that viewers may not have been able to see otherwise, for example Sky has used Live to show exclusive content such as a discussion on the England squad with Soccer AM presenter Adam Smith and international footballer Alex Scott, which generated 150,000 views in an hour. “Facebook Live has brought another dimension to the way we engage with our audience (Gibbs, 2016)”.

References

Android Authority. (2019). 10 best fantasy sports apps for football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. [online]
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Anon, (2019). [online]
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Bittner, J.V., and Shipper, J. (2014) Motivational effects and age differences of gamification in product advertising. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 31(5), pp. 391-400.
[Accessed 11 Apr. 2019].

Callanan, S. (n.d. a) What is gamification? [online]
Available at: https://sportsgeekhq.com/tech/gamification-of-sports/
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Callanan, S. (n.d. b) Social gaming is the new frontier
Available at: https://sportsgeekhq.com/social-media/social-gaming-is-the-new-frontier/
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Fantasyfootball.skysports.com. (2019). Sky Sports Fantasy Football. [online]
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Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., and Sarsa, H. (2014). Does gamification work? A literature review of empirical studies on gamification. 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Science [online]
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Hennig-Thurau, T. et al. (2010) ‘The Impact of New Media on Customer Relationships’, Journal of Service Research, 13(3), pp. 311–330. doi: 10.1177/1094670510375460.
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SkySports. (2019). Mobile 2014 (Sky Sports). [online]
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Statista (2019a) Value of the gamification market worldwide in 2016 and 2021 [online]
Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/608824/gamification-market-value-worldwide/
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The Drum. (2019). How Facebook Live is turning the social network into the sports broadcaster of the future. [online]
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Workman, B. (2013) Playing to win: mobile gamification done right [online]
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