Manchester City has achieved a Premier League “first” by launching a new app for Amazon Fire TV that will showcase the acclaimed CityTV video series. Other content that will be available includes: a behind-the-scenes look at the tunnel on match day, team manager Pep Guardiola training tips, player profile segments and the club’s 10-part series called Global City.

Club officials felt their fan base viewing habits have changed over time, as more of them are using online streaming services for their broadcasting needs. Man City believes that Amazon Fire TV is a growing media platform with huge potential, and felt it was important that CityTV be apart of this growing trend. A move of this nature is a clear sign of how trouble the waters are for cable television providers because their former viewers now exist on multiple digital platforms.

Manchester City is Sport’s Leading Technological Innovator

This announcement is just the latest of a long line of technological advancements offered by Manchester City, who have become an innovator in the professional sports business world. They recently launched “Instant Articles,” which provides the fans with the latest club news on their Facebook page. Plus, Man City will send iPhone users an official exclusive club sticker set via a text message.

Marketing on various social media outlets allows the club to better align itself with a wider global audience. The hope is to strengthen the demand and distribution of Man City’s video content on a broader, more popular digital television platform. Last season, Manchester City’s YouTube channel was the second most popular professional football club website in the world. The club’s videos averaged 150 views-per-minute during the regular season.

Prior to the 2015 campaign, Man City became the first Premier League club to offer a “second screen” video app to their fans sitting inside the Etihad Stadium seats. The CityMatchDay app offers a live video stream of the match and real-time stats to the paying customers and Man City fans around the globe on various social media outlets.

Inside the stadium, fans are able to connect on a free-WiFi network to watch live alternate camera angles from the match that isn’t available to the viewers at home. Plus, you have instant access to a multi-camera setup that provides a bird’s-eye view of the pitch. Many of the fans enjoy the reverse angle replays of the match’s most controversial plays, which offers a different view to argue with other patrons. The video stream can be rewound up to 30 seconds, as this allows the fans another opportunity to re-watch those breathtaking goals after they actually took place.

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Recent data acquired from acuity digital shows that the combined total of all followers on Instagram for every Premier League has surpassed 40 million. More surprisingly, Instagram is just 2 million followers away from becoming the 2nd most popular Social Network – a crown currently held by Twitter.

Data from the digital marketing consultancy based in Leeds showed that as of November 5th, there are 42.1 million Instagram users following a Premier League account. On Twitter for comparison there are a total of 44.3 million users following a club. However, this pales in comparison to Facebook that boasts an accumulated total of 236 million Likes.

Instagram Followers by Premier League team (November 2016)

Unsurprisingly Manchester United dominate the table with 14.4 million followers on their official Instagram account, just as they top both the Twitter and Facebook league tables. What is interesting is that the Red Devils have some 5 million more followers on Instagram than they do on Twitter.

Noticeably, the United team have put substantial investment into Instagram with only Liverpool FC beating them on the sheet volume of media content posted on Instagram. On Twitter in comparison, Man United appear third from bottom for volume of tweets – though they were notably the last Premier League side to join Twitter in July 2013.

In the coming months we can expect to see the Facebook owned platform overtake Twitter. With a focus on rich media across mobile devices, Instagram has allowed the Manchester United social team to communicate to their fan base with historical footage, photos of what players used to look like and repurpose imagery and video shared by past and present members of the squad.

In addition, the team at Old Trafford have done a great job of monetizing the channel to just the right level. This season saw them quite heavily promote the launch of EA Sports FIFA 2017 game through Instagram. The marketing however was quite subtle and allowed EA Sports to piggy back on United’s enormous marketing platform. As Instagram continues to grow, more and more sponsors and brands will look to ways to leverage their commercial agreements with football clubs to amplify their own marketing activity.

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There is no doubt that the English Premier League’s popularity has soared with a huge injection of television and sponsorship revenue, but what does this look like online? The above graph shows data from Google Trends that puts into perspective just how huge online search interest has been over the last 10 years. So far April 2016 holds the highest peak in search interest from the search engine giant – Google.

With over $52 billion (net) generated in revenue by Google in 2015, the search marketplace presents a huge opportunity for football clubs and sponsors alike. There are clearly millions of sports fans using Google every month to search for their favourite teams and rivals, but which football club commands the greatest search volume? We’ve utilised data taken from Google’s Keyword Planner Tool   to calculate the average monthly search volume for football team’s brand terms.

Who tops the Google Search Volume table?

Unsurprisingly, Manchester United top the table for the most average monthly searches (in August), but Arsenal aren’t far behind with 2.9 million searches every month. Meanwhile, near the bottom, Hull City FC or perhaps Hull City Tigers, have had just 13,400 average monthly searches – even despite matches against Manchester United and Leicester City in August.

Are clubs capitalising on Google Search volume?

A brief look at Manchester United around “manchester united tickets” shows significant Google Adwords advertising on this keyword. The likes of Thomas Cook – who as an official ticket partner – are bidding on this term, along with a number of other online ticket sites. However, the official ticket office has not PPC adverts running and could be missing out on driving their own revenue stream.

However, when it comes to official merchandise such as shirts – specifically a keyword like “manchester united shirt”, the official club megastore is bidding on the term and has a PPC strategy in place. Interestingly, the official club site faces stiff competition in somewhat of a bidding war against it’s own official partners – namely adidas and KitBag. It’s not just in the paid search arena that the United marketing team face a challenge. Mike Ashley’s SportsDirect actually occupies the Organic search #1 spot ahead of the official store, which suggests they may need to be some work done on United’s Search Engine Optimisation.

So, whilst the former Champions may remain one of the world’s largest sporting brands and most Googled football team in the Premier League, there may be still some work to do to absolutely maximise their marketing strategy.

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Only three years ago the @ManUtd Twitter account languished behind the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool in terms of size and engagement, but how times have changed. Using data recorded by Digital-Football.com back in November 2013, we’ve compared where English Premier League clubs were then versus where they are now (plus a few new clubs in the league since then).

It took only 70 days in 2013 for the @ManUtd account to hit 1 million followers, but in less than 3 years the Mancunian giants have added an astonishing 7.3 million new followers (+505.98% growth).

Even though fierce rivals Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal have added an incredible 4+ million in the same time period, only Crystal Palace come close in terms of relative growth seeing +498.65% November 13 to September 16.

With transfer signings like Zlatan Ibrahimović and Paul Pogba, it’s no surprise that United have stormed their way to the top of Twitter league tables. However, the real value of this huge growth isn’t just vanity metrics, but the sheer size of an alternate advertising platform that United now have. With an audience of over 8.8 million, the Red Devils have developed a social strategy that doesn’t just engage with looks to activate sponsor partnerships.

With branded sponsored content from the likes of Chevrolet and adidas, United have been able to leverage their growth to presumably command better sponsorship deals and generate a new revenue stream. Quite simply, 3 years ago – this wasn’t happening on a major scale.

When it comes to PKs and goal celebrations: practice makes perfect! #ChevroletMascots pic.twitter.com/fIpSjD0yPk

— Chevrolet FC (@ChevroletFC) September 24, 2016

The clubs marketing department have also looked to actively advertise alternate and internal marketing initiatives such as the clubs TV channel MUTV and corporate social responsibility programmes.

As per our 2014 recommendation that Sports Social Media had to monetize in order to thrive, clubs need to continue to invest and innovate in not just engagement, but also for strategies to generate revenue and reduce operating costs.

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Whilst a simple and fairly basic tactic, it’s one rarely seen in football stadiums are clubs struggle to properly integrate their online activity into the football stadium. We’ve long been advocates of the “Connected Stadium” model that advocates using technology to not only encourage social media engagement within the stadium, but also pulling in the external fanbase who follow the match via social media into the matchday experience.

Obviously there’s the usual challenges of ensuring the right technology is used by the club as well as making sure that content is properly moderated, but this is fantastic to see arguably a lower profile club (Albeit Southampton have been excellent in the Premier League this season) not scared to invest in the strategy.

The benefit of this is undoubtedly that it should encourage fans at the stadium to tweet the official accounts, thereby improving engagement and potentially giving the club some further data capture. Secondly, the initiative also shows the club being innovative with technology and undoubtedly fits with the clubs ambitions to position the brand as a serious top tier Premier League team. Thirdly, this again an excellent idea for engaging with fans and giving them  real reason to engage with the clubs social media presence.

Earlier in the season, Queens Park Rangers announced they would be advertising match specific hashtags on the home dugout in a bid to encourage fans to use Twitter to share their thoughts and photos about the game.

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Michael Chopra tweeted,

“Fucking joke this come in training only 6 fucking players here then find out the fitness coach taken the football session #joke.”

The tweet was later on deleted by Chopra and the club announced that the tweet was in relation to the fact “Chopra was one of number of players asked to report to training as normal this morning for extra work with the fitness coach.”  Chopra has been fined the maximum amount for breaching the clubs code of conduct and given a very public warning from the staff at Blackpool FC.

The Seasiders issued the following statement on their website around midday that stated:

“The manager has requested that the fine levied against Chopra, which equates to more than £10,000, be donated to the club’s Community Trust, to assist in their work as part of Altogether Now – A Legacy for Blackpool. The club can confirm that Chopra was one of number of players asked to report to training as normal this morning for extra work with the fitness coach.

Both the manager and the chairman are aware and disappointed with the contents of his tweet, prompting this course of action.

The player, who has the right to appeal, has since apologised for the tweet and removed the contents from his account. The money will be utilised across a number of projects to improve the lives of young people in Blackpool, through the delivery of health, education and inclusion schemes.”

Whilst the action itself is to be frowned upon, Blackpool must be commended for their quick turn around on not only identifying the tweet but preparing a statement and the necessary punishment. In less than 3 hours, the Championship side managed to react and readdress the situation.

Blackpool could’ve improved their image further by perhaps suggesting the player would now have to undergo a Social Media best practice session and be refreshed about the club’s own Social Media Policy (which we can assume the club has).

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Obviously, this isn’t a perfect engagement calculation but it does offer us a quick insight into the value of followers and activity.

The table did show some surprising results, one being that Liverpool had only an engagement rate of 18.8% despite having a sizable following. Arguably one of the best results went to Arsenal who command a mammoth 3.1 million Twitter followers and still managed to hold a respectable 44.6% engagement rate in November. Our quick engagement figure may not be perfect, but it does quickly allow us to see how effective clubs are being with their content coupled with how often fans engage with the official Twitter properties.

Twitter Engagement Table (November 2013)

As football clubs invest more heavily in Social Media, now that they are seeing more demand, we can expect to see more metrics like this becoming more important and common online. Judging growth solely on follower statistics is slowly losing relevance, where engagement is growing in importance. With clubs looking to monetize their Social Media presence to potential sponsors, metrics like this can help place a value on the club’s Social Media, as well as help create internal benchmarks to measure against.

Furthermore, such engagement metrics can add value for projecting not just future Social Media engagement, but aligning with marketing campaigns such as season ticket strategies. These figures can be used and installed into the marketing funnel to help project how much traffic Social Media can generate for the club website, and in turn – conversions.

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In less than 3 months, Premier League clubs have grown by 10 million which is staggering growth considering that’s the equivalent of the population of Greece suddenly signing up to Facebook and Liking an EPL side.

Facebook has quickly become a part of everyday football life and a trusted source for team line-up announcements, transfer confirmations and match day information. The sheer growth of the platform worldwide, but particularly in football, has also changed the way that the way the mainstream media has control over football news.

Social media like Facebook and Twitter have given clubs an incredible advantage over the traditional media industry in that no longer are they subject to the opinions and spin of journalists, but they have a clear and transparent platform to say what they want without interference. However, it’s important to note that this does work both ways – with fans often resorting to Facebook for complaints about poor team performance, lack of transfer activity and the leadership of a club.

Whilst Manchester United are still relatively new to Twitter, they’ve been an active user on Facebook over the past few years and with 36.7 million fans, they are the largest contributor to the leagues combined total. Interestingly, a quick look at the United Facebook Page shows that the majority of their postings are exclusively images – a strategy that the club have been keen to use on Google+ and Twitter.

With 100,000,000 Likes – it is indisputable that the value social media holds in the football industry is massive. Clubs that fail to properly think, equip and invest are not only missing a commercial opportunity, but they are far behind what the modern fan expects.

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The R’s have used dedicated matchday hashtags since the start of last season and have found the move popular in engaging with the QPR fans pre, during and post-match. Adam Hulme, QPR’s Multi-Media Officer, said,

“We are always looking for new and innovate ways to engage with our fans through social media. We understand that communication with our fans is crucial and our social media channels allow us to experiment with new technologies to help engage with our fans.

In becoming the first club to add our matchday hashtag to our home dugout we hope to show our growing fanbase how to interact with each other to hopefully add an extra dimension to their matchday experience.”

This is a fantastic initiative by the club and meets one of our early predictions that we should expect to see Social Media having more of an impact not just online but also offline. Back in May, Digital-Football commented that we expected to see more football clubs improve WiFi connectivity in the stadium, as well as have more awareness for Social Media channels around the concourse and pitch itself.

Alex Trickett, Head of Sport at Twitter UK, said,

“Twitter brings people closer to the things they care about and for many in the UK, that means football. “We are excited to see QPR thinking of new ways to use our platform to connect fans with the team and players.”

Last season, QPR were the first Premier League side to stream live pre-match press conferences through the social media channel Ustream.

QPR have long been at the front line of Football Social Media – offering fan engagement across Twitter, YouTube and Facebook – as well as relatively new platforms such as Ustream, Instagram and Vine. Earlier this season, QPR used Vine to announce their first opponents of the 2013/14 Championship campaign – yet another innovative way of breaking news first. In August, the R’s were named as the most socially savvy football team in the UK outside of the Premier League and scooped the ‘Innovation in Insight-Driven Multichannel Marketing’ award for the #ForeverRs campaign.

We look forward to this development and it will be interesting to follow how much of effect it has on matchday engagement for the London Championship side. Certainley, it’s positive to see a club in a lower league (although undoubtedly the recently relegated club is of Premier League calibre) be brave to test boundaries and take risks in new marketing strategies.

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Hoops fans have been asked to tweet in their questions to the manager on the #AskHarry hashtag and throughout today, he will respond via the @OfficialQPR Twitter account. Whilst Twitter Q&As are incredibly common among clubs, it’s good to see a club willing to integrate their manager into their activity. Managers on Twitter are incredibly rare, and to the best of our knowledge the only major football manager currently using Twitter is Celtic’s Neil Lennon.

Undoubtedly, younger and ambitious footballers are probably more motivated to be on Social Media as they look to not just make their own opinions about the game known, but also start to build a media profile for life after football. Managers meanwhile have either been “too busy” to take to Twitter or have harbored a cautious skepticism for a platform that regularly gets player sin trouble and into the back pages. For QPR however, they see the move as a refreshing way of opening up a dialogue with their fan base and capitalising on a time where there’s likely to be less criticism towards the manager.

QPR Multi-Media officer, Adam Hulme, told Digital-Football.com,

“At QPR we are always looking for new and innovative ways to engage and communicate with our fans through the club’s official Social Media channels. Many fans will only be able to hear Harry Redknapp’s thoughts and opinions by watching our live press conferences – streamed live via @OfficialQPR – or small snippets on TV, but without really having their ‘own’ questions answered.

It’s rare that football managers take time out to engage with their fans through Social Media. As Harry isn’t on Twitter, we thought we’d do the next best thing…#AskHarry!”

The move shows how Social Media is increasingly becoming a more and more influential consideration for not just marketing and engagement strategies, but also with press issues.

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