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).
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 3rd 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)
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Hcltech.com. (2019). Manchester United shoots for success with a “digital experience platform” powered by HCL | HCL Technologies.
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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.
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Harry's Blog 