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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However, still so few have managed to really grasp and invest into the headset or VR. The content remains somewhat thin and more a fringe element and not an inevitability.

With this in mind, what are companies already trying to do (And nearly about to break through on) and what are the future possibilities of the technology?

Immersive Live Broadcast

With the addition of a VR headset like Oculus Rift and a 360 degree live stream from the venue, broadcasters could immediately place fans within the stadium. We’ve already seen significant investment in HD, 4K and 3D technology in the past from sporting broadcasters, but we’ve seen very little from a VR perspective. Imagine being able to take your seat in the stadium (or several views) and be able to experience the match in a much more real way. Broadcasters could offer viewers the chance to watch from the bench, the commentary gallery, within the main fans stand, or even a ‘FIFA View” from the TV gallery.

In February, the Welsh Rugby Union used a 360 degree camera to capture the atmosphere during the national anthems for the Wales vs. Scotland match. This was a relatively simple concept to execute and worked incredibly well to showcase the atmosphere the Welsh fans and team generate. As a piece of content, it worked well for a relatively small cost.

Tactical Training

The presentation that Sander Schouten gave at SoccerEx highlighted the technology being used to help provide tactical training directly to coaches and players. The technology from Beyond Sport uses match data to simulate virtual matches through VR. This was then used with the players to test their decision-making skillset and help improve reaction time. Furthermore, the technology could be used to help managers and coaches work with players to recount key decisions made in a match, with both parties being able to see what the player would’ve seen.

Developing Younger Players

Other applications for the technology included being able to place younger players in the field of play at a higher level without them being at physical risk. The thinking behind this that our younger players don’t need to rely on just gametime alone to getting better at making decisions but can regularly test themselves without having to set foot on the pitch.

Whilst there will always need to be the reality in the sport, this at the very least, does give younger plays a chance to appreciate and taste the pace and reflexes required for a step up to the next level.

Upselling Better Seats in Stadia

We’ve long advocated a better system for allocating seats in stadiums. Many of the major sports clubs still continue to use the standard flat image of a block covering nearly 900 seats. This is widely the most help you’ll get for trying to figure out where to sit. What if instead, you could individually test the view of every seat in the stadium?

Whilst perhaps an extravagance and a need for some poor soul to take a 360 degree photo from every seat in the house, it would be a nice tool for helping ticket sales and could be used by clubs and venues to let fans sample their seat and try upsell to a better one. In subtly monetizing this, seat upsells based on VR decisions could very quickly cover the initial costs of set-up and start to generate its own revenue  stream.

Got any further ideas on how VR might work in the future, or perhaps think it’s just a fad? Leave us a comment and let us know.

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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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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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AS Roma’s 3-1 victory over the MLS All-Star side was refereed by Hilario Grajeda who can be seen in the supporting video wearing a headset to record the game and provide fans with amazing content. Whilst it might not be “behind-the-scenes” it certainly gives football fans another view of how fast paced a football match can be, as well as an insight into just how moany footballers are on the pitch.

Ref Cam isn’t new to the US, with the Women’s NBA already having trialled the concept to great success. Unfortunately for us, FIFA doesn’t allow this type of technology in any official football match so we will have to be content with this perhaps being used in solely friendlies in the future.

Undoubtedly, it’s a fantastic idea for generating content and could one day be used by referee’s to justify why they made certain decisions based on what view of the ball they had.

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As we stated recently when Liverpool became the first Premier League team to improve WiFi connectivity, this move will drastically help clubs Social Media presence – allowing fans to share their matchday experience with international and domestic fans who can’t make the game. Furthermore, it offers clubs a fantastic chance to market to fans online and in stadium via smartphone app purchases, iPad programmes and geo-location deals.

Celtic Chief Executive, Peter Lawwell said:

“We are delighted to be bringing true hi-density Wi-Fi to our entire ground. Celtic is committed to delivering the best matchday experience possible for our supporters and that commitment requires to stay at the forefront of technological advances.”

“The recent feedback we received from Season Ticket holders stated that Wi-Fi was a service supporters were keen to see introduced.  We are delighted to be able to give our fans something of real value to add further enjoyment to every visit to Celtic Park”.

The move comes at the same time as Celtic are midway through their innovative Video Football Social Media campaign #BeCeltic – where they are releasing video content, weekly competitions for exclusive prizes and offering Social Media fans the chance to fly with the first team to a UEFA Champions League match next season.

As both an advocate of Football Social Media and Celtic, I’m delighted with the move and it keeps in align with Digital-Football.com’s 2013 Sports Social Media predictions that more and more clubs would look to invest in improving their stadia connectivity.

CISCO, the stadium provider, told Celtic,

“With Cisco Connected Sports solutions, Celtic fans can now get real-time, relevant information at their finger-tips and share match-day thrills without worrying about mobile connection issues.”

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As a long standing advocate of Connected Stadium’s, we are absolutely delighted to see yet another football club realise the potential of   having a 21st century stadium that will actually allow fans to connect, learn and share information directly from their tablet or mobile devices. Last month, we highlighted that the value isn’t just in offering better WiFi to fans so they are encouraged to connect with Social Media more, but also integrated the online world physically into the stadium.

City have long been using video and Twitter to pull in tweets from fans across the globe into the stadium concourse. Clearly this pilot has worked as they have invested in bring Cisco’s Stadium Vision Mobile into the Etihad.

StadiumVision Mobile is capable of delivering  live video and relevant event information to fans’ mobile devices with minimal delay and can offer multiple channels of unique content, which could include a replay channel, an alternate angle view channel, and a dynamic data channel (for stats, trivia contests and multi-player games).

Tom Glick, Chief Commercial & Operating Officer for Manchester City Football Club, told Digital-Football.com:

“As a Club that is passionate about innovation and prides itself on constantly looking for ways to enhance our supporters’ experience at the Etihad Stadium, we feel we have found the perfect solution with O2 and Cisco.

Live games and concerts are highly enjoyable social events and we are delighted to be able to offer supporters a system that allows them to better utilise their own mobile devices when at the Stadium.”

It will be interesting to note if both Liverpool and Manchester City see a growth in the next few months from more fans interacting on Social Media during matchdays – as currently most fans are in the digital dark as stadiums struggle to cope with signal/WiFi demand.

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The session was due to start at 1pm but it took longer than anticipated to get Cech from the training ground to Chelsea’s media centre. This caused some confusion and deflated the start of the campaign which started some 35 minutes late, but is to be expected considering the club had never done something like this before. Cech answered a number of questions from 5 fans around the world (e.g. Ghana, United States, England, Sweden & Austria) that had been selected in advance.

It’s fair to say that football clubs have struggled to find a use for Google’s own social network (as have many other brands!), but this is a great development by Chelsea and Manchester City – showing they are not scared to at least be the first to try something new. Chelsea currently are the 5th largest club on Twitter worldwide with 1.4 million followers and also have a hefty 12.3 million on Facebook. Chelsea’s own Google+ presence is quite impressive with over 2 million +1s.

Andrew from the US asked Cech about squad fitness

Google+ Hangouts are a feature of the social network that allow users to hold video conferencing conversations over Google+ running simultaneously with a “chat room” message thread. Manchester City and Chelsea have both used Hangouts as a way of allowing fans to ask players questions. The success of player Q&A hashtags on Twitter (pioneered by Manchester City) quickly spread as many other clubs replicated the tactic. Using Hangouts is perhaps an evolution of this and we may see other clubs attempting to use Hangouts as a way to boost their Google+ Pages (which will most likely help clubs search engine ranking).

Such initiatives are positive for football fans as it shows that clubs are willing to allow their players to open up and engage with their fans in a very personal and direct manner. Player Q&As are incredibly important for ensuring that the club appears authentic, engaged and transparent in it’s dealings. All of which inevitably have an effect on match day sales, season tickets and general club sentiment across the web.

The only criticism we have of the campaign was picking a player who perhaps doesn’t have a very active social media presence – with the goalkeeper absent from Twitter and Facebook. Perhaps Chelsea might’ve attracted more viewers if they had utilised one of the clubs more active social media users. That being said, Cech answered all the questions eloquently and did a could job in coming across as a genuinely friendly and down to earth player. During it’s peak, the Hangout had around 700 viewers according to Google stats, which is slightly disappointing considering the size of Chelsea’s social media audience but we are yet to confirm these stats.

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The traditional matchday programme has been a staple tradition in the football experience, and still today this is a key aspect of fan engagement. The managers pre-match comments allow a dialogue between manager and fan without media interference,  match reports from the youth academy raise the profile of potential young superstars and player interviews provide some insight into the training, lifestyle and opinions of professional athletes.

With all this mind, Digital-Football.com has been fortunate enough to ask Ben Ladkin of the Arsenal Digital team a few questions about the development of the app and why football fans should take notice:

How long has it taken to go from concept to completion for the app?

“We kicked off the project in earnest at the start of the year so it took 8 months to choose a development tool and then put in everything in place to launch the app.”

What was the reasoning behind launching the digital app?

“The matchday programme is an iconic part of the matchday experience and we realised that it was something the vast majority of our fanbase was missing out on.  So, leveraging the iPad’s potential to serve long form content and its scope for interactivity, we saw opportunities both to bring the matchday programme to fans around the world and also to enhance it for the iPad platform.”

What’s part of the iPad programme app is the most impressive feature – what’s the selling point why all Arsenal fans should download it?

“Rather than simply reproduce the matchday programme on iPad, we decided to make the most of the iPad’s functionality and have added various layers of interactivity – the digital version includes video, browsable photo galleries and a range of interactive graphics.  We think this gives it a strong identity and provides added value to fans as it plays to the iPad’s strengths.  Also it is available early – at midnight before an afternoon kick-off and midday before an evening kick off – so fans can start to enjoy match build-up well ahead of kick off.”

How many downloads has the Arsenal iPad programme app had so far?

“We’ve had over 20,000 downloads so far and already we’ve seen good numbers of subscriptions following the first free issue. We will be promoting the subscriptions heavily before the next home game and hope to get a good regular audience who will look out for it on every home match.”

Our thanks goes to Ben for taking the time to answer our questions and provide us with some valuable insight from one of the world’s largest football teams.

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