Never mind the points and prizes for our top clubs... the new battle is off the pitch as teams wage war for digital and social media success

  • Commercial gains online are now fiercely contested by Premier League teams
  • Digital creativity is used to engage fans and in turn generate new revenue  
  • More 18-34-year-olds consume sport on mobile than watch on television
  • Shareable videos of top players are always preceded by advertisement  

The weekend’s big winners — Chelsea and Manchester City — could reflect on how football has changed utterly in the 15 years since it was Arsenal and Manchester United dominating the landscape.

But at football’s new frontier, there was a parallel contest being fought on Sunday afternoon: the commercial battle — waged on multiple digital and social media platforms — for attention, followers and the millions of pounds they can attract.

On the basis of this one afternoon, it has to be said that the Premier League is not the only realm where City are ahead.

Twitter kings: Manchester United have 15.6m followers on the social media site and lead the way across the Premier League with a total following of more than 115m

Twitter kings: Manchester United have 15.6m followers on the social media site and lead the way across the Premier League with a total following of more than 115m

Manchester City's Facebook is the fifth-most followed in the Premier League with 27.7m fans

Manchester City's Facebook is the fifth-most followed in the Premier League with 27.7m fans

Live pitch-side analysis, streaming of the #pep press conference, a choice of brief or extended highlights, nine players tweeting in co-ordinated fashion, they made Chelsea’s output seem pedestrian. Antonio Conte’s club offered none of the above.


Assessments of the day’s losers’ digital creativity are difficult to make as defeat is something clubs simply cannot cope with on their own media. They’re all the same: a game which has consumed the club’s platforms pre-match suddenly vanishes when they’ve dropped three points.

When United and Arsenal were in the ascendancy, clubs were set up simply to win football matches. It was in 1992 Nick Hornby defined a match day at Highbury as cigar smoke, pipe smoke, foul language and community. 

The Premier League’s success since has been based on the TV rights market, with the extraordinary revenues it has brought in: £5.1billion in the latest domestic deal. There’s been a ‘socialist’ feel to it, with the money spread to all clubs, and that’s kept the top flight competitive.

But now the big clubs see social and digital media as white space outside the TV rights realm where they can leverage their brands and turn fame into money, by attracting followers who will never set foot in their stadiums. This phase is far more dog-eat-dog, argues the sports business analyst Richard Gillis.

He says: ‘It’s less about the Premier League and more club versus club. The bigger the digital footprint, the more inventory the clubs have to sell.’

It’s a more dynamic and complicated terrain than ever. The percentage of 18 to 34-year-olds consuming sport on mobile devices has just overtaken those who view it on TV. That has challenged the rights holders, though Sky Sports have been imaginative in their response.

Clubs are competing with TV companies for what is a new, huge demand for Premier League video output of any kind. They can hardly produce enough of the stuff.

Chelsea are a huge hit on Instagram with 10.4m people following their account

Chelsea are a huge hit on Instagram with 10.4m people following their account

Research by Imagen, a media management and distribution company, found that 44 per cent of sports businesses cannot even generate enough output to meet demand.

Clubs are becoming content providers and following one of the oldest tenets of publishing: build a following and make money from the advertisers. It helps that the nature of football support has changed, too. In this new global world, fans ‘support’ players as well as teams, and follow a star from club to club. 

The average fan follows as many as four teams on average, say analysts. In theory, there are therefore millions of floating supporters out there.

Numerically, Manchester United are way ahead here. Vice-chairman Ed Woodward recently told the club’s New York Stock Exchange investors that United account for almost half of all the social media interactions on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter of the 20 Premier League clubs, with 250m of the 510m ‘likes’, ‘comments’ ‘shares’ or ‘retweets’. Twitter said last month #mufc was its most used hashtag. 

But United’s rivals — Arsenal, Liverpool, City and Chelsea — are proving far more imaginative as they look to narrow the gap.

The clash between Liverpool and United three weeks ago attracted a global audience of 900m and Liverpool won the digital war that day.

Both clubs have tried to make history a big part of their digital appeal and Liverpool chose the biggest home game on their calendar to name a stand after Kenny Dalglish. 

The accompanying video was viewed 853,000 times on Facebook — numbers United, with their huge headstart on followers, could only beat with a video of David De Gea saves against Liverpool.

Archive footage is a big asset and United love rolling out De Gea with #davesaves. But Liverpool have been more creative this season. 

A video they persuaded Joe Gomez, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Daniel Sturridge and Nathaniel Clyne to shoot on a car-share to training epitomised what fans want most of all: to be taken behind the curtain.

The four sing Mario’s Let Me Love You in Oxlade-Chamberlain’s Range Rover and discuss their musical merits with another driver at traffic lights. 

The film’s tone feels more authentic than the usual choreographed interviews, and the club have maximised it, with 1.3m views for an edited version in addition to clicks on the full video.

It’s also Liverpool’s 125th anniversary and their ‘This is Our Story’ video — 125 years in 125 seconds — has delivered big numbers, too, with a level of creativity which eclipses United’s output marking the 50th anniversary of their iconic European Cup win over Benfica.

Competing in this digital realm is a relentless battle of historical landmarks, with the big clubs never missing a chance to wish happy birthday to a former player on Facebook and proceed to roll out clips of his best moments. Nemanja Vidic’s recent 36th birthday was a tap-in. There were two million views for his birthday best moments package.

What remains difficult to extrapolate is whether the number of clicks is evidence of authentic fans around the world, desperate to consume anything the club put out. This was called into question in 2011, when United claimed they had 650m fans, out of a world population of five billion. 

The research, which said a third of South Korea’s population supported United, counted people who answered United were either their favourite team or one they enjoyed following. The numbers do inflate the value of sponsorship contracts.

Big money is also up for grabs from ‘branded content’; films in which sponsors’ products are subtly placed, often by the sponsors who produce the films. ‘Some big corporates are hugely cynical about whether their branded content is seen by anyone,’ says Gillis.

There’s serious cash at stake here. One estimate suggests branded content generated sports businesses £2.3bn in the last year and that the market might be worth nearly seven times that by 2021. 

Gulf Oil International’s recent 15-second film, promoted on United’s Facebook page, asked ‘Who is our smoothest player on the ball?’ included nothing more complicated than some players heads, orchestral music and crowd noise. It commanded 1.1m views. 

Arsenal have embraced one of the less popular social networks, Google+

Arsenal have embraced one of the less popular social networks, Google+

Liverpool are popular on YouTube with more than 700,000 subscribers to their channel

Liverpool are popular on YouTube with more than 700,000 subscribers to their channel

With so many fans expressing affinity to multiple clubs, Arsenal, Chelsea and City have pushed out their content beyond the confines of their own media channels in the hope of recruiting them.

All three are shareholders in Dugout.com, a social media network of 79 of the world’s top clubs that aims to replicate the success of Facebook for football fans.

This professes to be the biggest collaboration between clubs. It aims to build a fanbase by sharing club content up to 48 hours before it is released on any other social media, with the revenue shared between the company and clubs.

It is impressive, with the site showing an outstanding Sergio Aguero video hours after he broke City’s goal record, Luis Suarez and Denis Suarez playing a memory game, and Halloween videos from City and Arsenal. City also won there, with a self-deprecating video of 20 City howlers.

Every video is preceded by a lucrative advert. Significantly, United are the one major club who turned down Dugout’s invitation — the message being they don’t need someone else’s portal. The football world waits to see what they have planned.

In February United hired Phil Lynch, a former Yahoo chief, to become their CEO of media and Woodward said in September the club would launch a new website and club app ‘in coming months’.

They’re sticking with the paywall model which Chelsea ditched and City never adopted. Woodward has said he views MUTV as a ‘sort of production company’ which will generate content.

Manchester City have been more experimental, something that reflects the brand identity they’re trying to form: making up in modernity for what they lack in trophies and history.

They are the first to offer a virtual reality experience of a game, a 360- degree tunnel cam and to move into eSports — competitive video gaming, a market which generates hundreds of millions. Their Facebook page has grown 287 per cent in three seasons. In the same period, Chelsea has risen 168 per cent, Arsenal 159 per cent, Real Madrid 135 per cent, United 107 per cent.

City have also just become the first club to pass one million followers for their YouTube account, while United are the only club in the world’s top 30 not to have one.

Of course, clubs are not offering all of this out of the goodness of their hearts. When we click on any tweet, Facebook post or YouTube video, clubs’ sophisticated content management systems are identifying us as possible purchasers of tickets, shirts or subscriptions. Our data becomes their data. Sales messages will inevitably follow.

The objective way of following a club remains national and local media and fan sites — from Arseblog to the Anfield Wrap, United We Stand to Bluemoon — where defeats are raked over every bit as much as victories. There is also a level playing field for the unofficial sites, which operate on small budgets, creativity and passion.

The same does not apply for official channels where — despite excellent output from Crystal Palace and Southampton — smaller sides struggle to keep up.

Tottenham Hotspur are ranked sixth overall for total social media followers

Tottenham Hotspur are ranked sixth overall for total social media followers

This battle will not become less intense any time soon. The Premier League clubs’ huge slab of TV money has made them less hungry for innovation and seen them arrive later to the digital scene than Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich. 

But all that is changing. All top-flight commercial directors worth their salt will tell you, with a smile, that half the world’s football fans are not even connected to the internet or a mobile phone yet.

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