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 6th 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?
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Goal.com. (2019). Serie A 2018/19: le partite trasmesse da DAZN, palinsesto, date e orari | Goal.com. [online]
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Pedersen, P.M., Laucella, P.C., Kian, E., and Guurin, A.N. (2016) Strategic Sport Communication. 2nd ed. Leeds: Human Kinetics.
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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.
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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
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Ronaldo reality TV show
https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/facebook-taking-on-netflix-with-cristiano-ronaldo-reality-tv-show
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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
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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.
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