The Industry Column – Is Football Switched On?

Is football switched on to social? 

Sports Revolution’s Josh Robinson discusses the use of social media in the fast-paced, ever-changing world of football, and whether or not one of the most global sports in the world is really switched on to social.

Many people say football and social media are a marriage made in heaven. All those communities of like-minded and passionate fans, scattered around the world, looking to share rumours, rants, replays and reasons why the referee’s a rascal (or words to that effect).

In today’s digitally connected world, social provides the ideal channel for football fan engagement and is rich with commercial potential. So are our biggest clubs making the most of it?

At Sports Revolution, we have undertaken some extensive research amongst professional football clubs in the UK to gain an understanding of the development of social media within the industry. The results threw up some interesting findings. 

You would expect that the more that clubs invest in social media the greater the return but even amongst the high-level elite clubs, the resourcing of social media is limited, with only 32% of the 19 clubs who participated in the survey saying that more than three-quarters of a full time equivalent (FTE) position was dedicated to social media generation. 

It should come as no surprise that it is the richer clubs who are investing more in social media staffing, dedicated more than 75% of a FTE to it. At the lower end of the resource spectrum, clubs generally invest less than 50%. 

And as much as clubs don’t seem to be embracing social media investment, neither are they measuring the impact of their social media campaigns, with over 75% using ‘likes’ (a relatively weak measure of engagement) as the sole tool for measuring success. It seems that few are applying CRM management techniques to social media in order to help shape targeted marketing campaigns, and not many are merging information collected through social media with other data sources.   

So what have we learnt from this exercise? The outstanding take-away from the survey is that club use of social media is still in its formative years so it is understandable that we are seeing differing levels of success. The resourcing issue is key – that clubs need to invest in social as another revenue-driving channel of the business, and as such they need specialists in-house to realise its potential, but they must also be clear on their social media strategy. 

However, we must not forget that there is also never a point where social media development is complete – it needs to be treated as an ever-evolving process that has the all-important fan relationship at its heart.