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This article is based on a report prepared by European
Football Group (EFG), EFG Interactive, and Football
Partnerships (FP) as a follow-up to a panel discussion
organised by FP at Major League Soccer headquarters
in New York City in November. The report highlights
the relationship between soccer fans and their
favourite leagues and teams, and the effectiveness -
or lack thereof - of those leagues and teams to
connect with their supporters (see page 41).
WHETHER IT’S FACEBOOK, Twitter or LinkedIn, it’s clear
that social media is no longer just for kids.
These web-based platforms, which have hundreds of millions
of subscribers, have grown-up applications for any number
of businesses, not least the soccer sector. And unlike every
other arm of the football business from club websites to CRM,
integration with social media costs next to nothing.
Certainly, the major sports leagues in the US are taking
it seriously enough to invest in the main (personnel) costs to
deliver what the fans and sponsors desire.
But what’s the potential for professional football?
According to a joint research study conducted by European
Football Group, the New York-based sports and marketing
agency, EFG Interactive, a global top 25 market research firm,
and Football Partnerships, a leading B2B network for soccer
professionals, the story from the States indicates that returns
are connected closely with how much effort the club or league is
prepared to put in to monetise the opportunity.
Michael Wiesenfeld (EFG) and Alex Kotler (FP), who co-
authored the survey into social media and US soccer highlighted
on the page opposite, believe clubs are only investing a marginal
amount of time and money into social media and are therefore
failing to take full advantage of its power to connect and bond
with fans.
“All the major sports leagues in the United States are on top
of social media and have tens of people working on social media
projects,” says Wiesenfeld. “Comparatively, the figure of around
70 per cent uptake for Major League Soccer is not that great,
although that would be excellent figure in other markets.”
!"#SOCCER!" !"#$%&##'Q1 2010
This, he says, is a missed opportunity not least because the
medium offers Major League Soccer a gilt-edged opportunity to
make up for shortcomings in its marketing approach elsewhere.
“My impression is that Major League Soccer has not been
focusing on the passion of the fans, but on selling before they get
people really involved. Social media can give MLS that platform
to focus on the passion, but the information currently provided
is not insightful enough.
“By this I mean, if you interview the fans they want different
information on a New York RedBulls’ Facebook or Twitter
platform than the stuff that’s on Espnsoccer.com. At the moment
the MLS don’t quite see eye-to-eye with the fans on this. Clearly
there is room to improve but they have yet to commit the finance
or resources to make that happen.”
This is a false economy, according to Wiesenfeld. “It costs
almost nothing to open an account on Twitter or Facebook; all
you need is an intern to hook in the fans. Then maybe two years
and 500,000 followers later, the club will be able to promote
sponsors, tickets and jerseys and also offer it to sponsors as a
platform for promotions.”
At the Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) league, on the
other hand, Wiesenfeld says that the organisation is trying hard
to leverage communications through Twitter and Facebook.
“They have 250,000 people signed up to Twitter alone: the
strategy is to use it as a cheap media to reach a lot of people.
In this case, the full-time head of communications manages
the Twitter feed and takes care that the content is in the best
interests of the club - not provoking arguments or spicy
revelations. For comparison purposes, MLS only has 8,000
followers on Twitter!”
But if leagues or clubs feel there is no urgent need to tap into
the additional exposure that social media enables, perhaps their
sponsors hold a different view. “The only reason for doing a
sponsorship is to get closer to the fans yet some clubs spend just
$1,000 per year on social media or less,” says Wiesenfeld.
“As a sponsor I’d be annoyed by that. It’s easy to do and it’s
easy to make money. For example, when a sponsor’s name is on
a jersey, fans still need to go through a number of steps before
they go into the store and buy something by that brand, but
through a promotion on Facebook, it’s just a click away.”
Because of the high cost of sponsorship, Wiesenfeld adds
that today’s sponsorships are more than ever about ROI rather
than awareness - making social media engagement even more
compelling. “If Chelsea have 500,000 followers on Facebook,
Samsung has a chance to promote a digital camera for $200 to
each and every one of them in ‘one click’. Even if just one per
cent buy, that’s 5,000 x $200 and it’s pure profit.”
One could argue that club websites should be the platform
for such promotional activity, but Wiesenfeld stresses that social
network sites are often a better fit, offering fans, in theory at
least, information and engagement they couldn’t get on the
club website with the advantage that promotions on Facebook
or Twitter feel far less solicitous than an email sent by the club’s $%&#'()*#+&,-'(#
CRM software.
The clubs can also use social media as a new distribution
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platform for ticketing and merchandising at very low cost. -2'(-'+-%02#0-#$'#
Selling a team jersey via a promotion on Facebook would involve
a small commission to Facebook, while a promotion on Twitter
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would be absolutely free, says Wiesenfeld. “The medium of .,(-#*&$#-'4&#3)56-#
Facebook or Twitter can be monetised right away. If there are -2&(/#75-$#89:;;;#
100,000 members, clubs can set up their own promotions or,
for example, give club sponsors one free promotion per year as 2&+#*&,+#'(#-'30,)#
part of the sponsorship package.” 4&/0,#'+#)&--#
But to attract critical mass in terms of numbers the offering
has to be right. So what do the fans really want from their club
or league-based social media networks? “The fans care about a
whole range of things, but mainly they want to feel part of the
club. They want to know what a player had for lunch, where they
went last night and who their girlfriend is.
“None of the club websites I know give inside information

SOCCER!" !"#$%&##'Q1 2010 !<#

#()$*+'#!$%&
on what the players do, but the fans just want to know what
they are doing as regular guys in their 20s: that they went to see
‘Avatar’ yesterday or bought a new car. And I don’t think it’s just
for lower tier clubs. With Manchester United, how else can you
communicate one-to-one with the club? TV is a mass media,
manutd.com is a mass media… you cannot have a one-to-one
approach for the fan.”
But can you really expect highly-paid professional footballers
to write Tweets or even Facebook entries as part of their club
duties? “In my opinion, it has to be the players for a Tweet.
“If I was the general manager of a club I’d assign one or two
players to do it on a regular basis; player who won’t compromise
the image of the club and, in this, some players at the top
level are as professional in understanding the media as the
communications manager.
“The thing about Twitter is that anyone can do it, there’s no
style, and nobody cares about spelling and style. At Chelsea,
(club mascot) ‘Stamford the Lion’ is doing it, which provides
a generic face for club messages, but doesn’t feel like you are
getting real insider info from players.”
Of course, some boundaries need to be put in place to
prevent some of the high-profile indiscretions that have taken
place on player Twitter accounts or Facebook pages to the
embarrassment of their clubs.
Former New York Red Bulls striker Jose Altidore, now playing
for Hull City, starred in a blog on the New York Times website
which drew in fans who avidly followed his every move, whether
he ordered a Dominos Pizza or bought a Sean John jersey.
But when Altidore was late for a game and tweeted about it
from the stadium, the club was not best pleased and imposed
sanctions on the player.
In the UK during the last summer transfer window, the
want-away Spurs striker Darren Bent went even further when he
tweeted the following pithy message to Spurs chairman Daniel
Levy: “Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go stoke NO do
I wanna go sunderland YES so stop f****** around levy [sic].”
Bent reportedly earned a two-week fine but got his transfer to
Sunderland. “It can be very difficult, but a little bit of honesty is
OK,” says Wiesenfeld.
“I understand that the clubs are a bit paranoid about this,
but if a player talks to the BBC or a freelancer, they’ll still release
stuff that is outside the club’s control… as are the images shot by
the paparazzi.”
The upside, in any case, more than compensates for any
downside, he adds. And what’s the alternative? To do nothing
at all, as appears to be the case with many French league teams.
“The French League itself is very interested in social media but
the problem is that there are 100 things for clubs to do and they
are all doing their own thing,” says Wiesenfeld.
“Only the big clubs Olympique Marseille, Paris St Germain
and Olympique Lyonnais have an interest. PSG hired someone
for social media, but in my experience, most French clubs do not
care much about the customer experience.
“France has never been a reference point for marketing in
general, unlike the UK and USA, where clubs are far more
customer/fan centric. But social media is something you can’t
ignore. It costs zero money and opens up so many
new opportunities.”
=;#SOCCER!" !"#$%&##'Q1 2010
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Football clubs are turning to social media to engage
with fans but have yet to monetise the opportunity,
according to a survey of soccer industry professionals
and fans primarily in the United States.
In a survey of more than 300, mainly US-based
respondents, identifying themselves as soccer industry
professionals -namely those working for soccer teams
and leagues - 70% reported that they are actively using
social media platforms to engage with fans.
These include a combination of Facebook (75%),
Twitter (54%), LinkedIn (18%) and MySpace (14%) with
the primary objectives being to keep fans informed
(28%) and to increase top-of-mind awareness (29%).
More than two thirds (72%) of this sample reported to
be achieving their objectives via social media with more
than one third (35%) of these respondents tracking the
number of users on their social media network as the
measure of success.
However 16% (of the 72% of successful cases)
reported that they cannot gauge the effectiveness of
their efforts and for those 30% of respondents working
for a soccer team or league not actively using social
media platforms to engage fans, more than half (58%)
reported that they do not intend to increase their budget
in 2010 to accommodate a social media strategy.
The report was put together by Football Partnerships,
a business-to-business network for soccer industry
professionals and European Football Group, a New
York-based sports marketing firm.
Prepared as a follow-up to ‘TWEET! Blowing the
Whistle on Social Media’, a panel discussion organised
by Football Partnerships at Major League Soccer
headquarters in New York City last year, the report said
it remains to be seen whether clubs and leagues are
proving effective at increasing club-to-fan engagement
or merchandise sales of team/player paraphernalia via
the medium.
Investigating fan behaviour in relation to social
media, the report said that 94% of the 700 fans
surveyed had an active account on Facebook - by far
the most popular platform - but only 48% of them could
confirm that their favourite teams had an account on
Facebook. Meanwhile, 27% reported that they had
made a purchase as a direct result of an advertisement
on a social media network at least one time. 40% of
respondents considered information provided by their
favorite teams and players on social media platforms
as “extremely insightful,” yet of the 31% that follow
professional soccer players or other athletes on Twitter
only 44% admitted that they were more inclined to
purchase related merchandise as a result of it.

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SOCIAL MEDIA HAS BECOME an ‘important consumer
reality’ according to the managing director of Chelsea FC’s
award-winning digital media division.
But, warns Kazimir Knight, it is a complicated environment
and clubs will have to work hard to find a social media strategy
which works for them.
“We certainly recognise the potential but I think the challenge
for any organisation is how to manage the opportunities. It does
not fit naturally into the established functional categories of our
business,” he said.
And, says Knight, there is an additional challenge -
understanding the tangible benefits which even the most
effective use of social media can bring to a club already operating
effectively through a range of other communications channels.
“The issue is that there is such a plethora of activities which
you could potentially become involved in that you need to find
a way of deciding exactly what to focus on, what resources to
allocate and what you expect to get out of the exercise.”
Chelsea, which won the SportBusiness Awards for the
best football website in 2009, is seen as something of a
digital pioneer within the sport. In addition to its website, it
was the first club to cut through the cloud of suspicion and
misunderstanding around You Tube by launching its own
branded club channel.
“We were faced with deciding where we were going to focus
our efforts and really had to consider Facebook, My Space and
Bebo as well as Twitter. In the end we decided to only to get
involved with Facebook and Twitter.
“I think our decision was justified. Our Facebook page has
done well and we have managed to establish ourselves there
without spreading ourselves too thinly,” he said.
“For me the challenge has always been about not trying to
do everything but focussing on what you need to achieve and
deciding on the direction to take.”
Each of the social media platforms embraced by Chelsea has
a different and clearly-defined objective.
“So far as Twitter is concerned, we see it as a way of creating
a bridge between the corporate and personal. There is no
individual Tweater but a group of people who jointly Tweat
under the name of Stamford.
“You Tube is primarily seen as a marketing platform for
our commercial audio-visual offerings. We place tremendous
emphasis on the quality of our engagement with our fans and
YouTube certainly plays a great role in deepening the level of that
engagement,” Knight explained.
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Facebook provides a different kind of channel for a different
kind of message and, says Knight, Chelsea’s use of this fast
developing medium is ‘avowedly non-commercial.’
“We have really not tested its marketing potential yet . Our
experience shows us that Facebook has been a good source of
referrals to our website, www.chelseafc.com.
“It has also been interesting to see that the Facebook page is
particularly popular in territories which we don’t engage to the
same level through other channels. There is, for example, a high
level of engagement from both Turkey and Indonesia.”
As ever, Chelsea have been at the forefront of football
club development in the social media space, including the
appointment of a Chelsea Fan Site Curator - a member of staff
who is first and foremost a fan and is able to cerate a bridge
between the club’s corporate communications and commercial
interest and those of the fans. This is, after all, an area in
which credibility is everything and too many commercial
organisations have damaged their own interests by failing to find
an appropriate and empathetic way of using the opportunities
which social media presents.
“We use our fans to make our social media fly. It is an area
where you have to have a light touch,” Knight said.
“There are people out there in other organisations that look
at social media and wish it would simply go away. They want to
ignore it.
“Well, it’s not going to go away and I simply don’t get that
way of thinking. It is a reality for football clubs and we have
to find the best and most apopriate way of working with the
opportunities social media presents.”
SOCCER!" !"#$%&##'Q4 2009 =9#