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 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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What is the Connected Stadium?

The Connected Stadium is a concept where sporting arenas are improved technically and digitally to ensure that the audience within,

• a) Is encouraged to interact online from within the stadium
• b) Can interact with the online web whether via tablet or mobile devices.

With the rise of the smartphone in the last 5 years mobile devices and Social Media have become more and more entwined. As such, football fans are heading to stadiums armed with their phone – ready to tweet, share, Like and snap photos. Connected Stadium’s often involve having to improve 3G/4G connectivity or offering fans WiFi (either free of charge or monetised) so that they can connect and engage from the stadium without slow/non-existent connections.

Why is important to have a Connected Stadium?

Stadiums have previously been incredibly poor for phone signal/online connectivity. If you can imagine the sheer consumption and overload caused by 60,000 people trying to check in on their Facebook app, you might be sympathetic to the providers who have to deal with sudden surges in activity pre, mid and post-match. Connected Stadiums are important to football clubs in particular as they have their customers (the fans) captivated and all in one area where they can influence the thought process.

Furthermore, a Connected Stadium is conducive to Social Media, especially when you consider that in sports, the stadium is often the heart of all life, history and activity. With this being the case, it is absolutely crucial that fans can share, engage, monitor and create Social Media engagement in the right places at the right times.

In a Connected Stadium, fans can tweet their opinions, Instagram and share their photos, Like official club status updates, check in to the stadium – and ultimately but perhaps further down the line, purchase goods. Connected Stadiums should allow clubs to maximise on matchdays and improve their engagement levels. Furthermore, it should help improve other aspects of the club – international brand, merchandise, marketing, PR and even customer services.

Is it just giving fans WiFi?

No. Improving connectivity isn’t the only ingredient of a Connected Stadium – it’s a huge part of it but not the only element. Clubs need to ensure that fans have visibility first off – which means signage, programme materials, stickers on back of seats informing them how to properly access the WiFi and what the Social Media channels actually are! Secondly, they need to incentivise fans into actually using the system – this means offering discounts/prizes for geo-location check-ins, running matchday competitions, offering hashtags and even perhaps – as Manchester City have done so – moderate and promote selected tweets onto screens in the stadium to encourage further tweeting.

Club Social Media campaigns need to be integrated into the stadium itself with offline call to actions, clever use of geo-locations tools and services and a strategy that facilitates match day content and spreads this to fans who can’t be in the stadium.

If it’s so good, why are there so few doing it?

The key problem that nearly all football clubs face is the sheer amount of investment that is required to physically buy, install and maintain an enterprise level WiFi system. The logistics behind undertaking this task only grows as the stadium capacity increase, so when you consider Wembley has 90,000 seats, trying to potentially cater for 90,000 individual mobile devices uploading an image of perhaps 3MB during a halftime period of 15 minutes – is quite demanding.

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What would you like to see in stadiums to help improve fan engagement? Are Connected Stadiums worth the investment?

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With the foundations of Football Social Media already set, what does 2013 mean for the 1,551 football clubs currently using Twitter and even more on Facebook?

1. Blogger Outreach

As the power of influence continues to shift towards the blogger-sphere from the traditional press (And note, I’m not saying bloggers have more influencer, just more than they used to!) – clubs must start to take notice of the opportunity that influential fan bloggers hold. Football clubs will begin to develop deeper relationships with bloggers as a way of changing fan perceptions, improving fan engagements and help generate Social Media noise. This will come in the form of blogger match invites, bloggers at press conferences and providing bloggers with behind the scenes content. Fans will always trust their fellow fans over club communications (Which are often perceived to have a commercial agenda).

2. Curated Tweets for media publications

Fan tweets are increasingly becoming the go-to device for measuring fan opinions. Very slowly, we’ve seen fan and player tweets appear in sports TV shows and print media as a way of representing the thoughts of a fanbase on a particular issue or incident. If clubs are savvy enough, they will look to promote their own Social Media and brand by encouraging fans to tweet more often. Clubs can do this by curating the best and most influential tweets from fans and players into their offline and online media. Whether this via projecting tweets throughout stadium concourses as Manchester City have done or including them in website match reports – it’s a great way of involving fans with content production.

3. More use of “Datatainment” in club media

No longer a new concept, the aptly named “Datatainment” ideology is the process of using big data as a way to entertain and engage with fans. A fantastic example of this has been Arsenal’s Stats Zone content on their website before playing opposition.

The London giants use performance data such as pass completion, goals scored, clean sheets, team form etc. as a way to predict the outcome of the match and help entertain fans by giving them some insight before the game. This has to be adopted by more clubs as data – or stats – fits the psyche of a football fan perfectly. Datatainment content is a great way for clubs to build excitement around football matches, help bust myths about player performances and generate substantial levels of Social Media noise with engaging and visual content.

4. Bigger fines, harsher punishments for player Twitter mischief

In 2012 we finally saw footballing bodies like the FA and the Premier League issue Social Media guidelines for football players in the UK. We’ve also learnt that many clubs are internally training and educating players around good and bad practice as players have become more active on Social Media channels like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Still in it’s early stages, we can expect clubs to develop these pieces of governance and regulation further – so expect to see tougher and harsher punishments for football players making mistakes on Twitter in the future. Club Brand and PR can take huge hits in the mainstream press from negative tweets – so ensuring players don’t portray the club in a bad light will be a priority for every Social Media manager at football clubs this year.

5. Monetization of Social Media channels

Last but certainly not least, finding a way to make money from Social Media will be perhaps the most important issues football clubs face in 2013. If 2012, was the year clubs got to grip using Social Media and showing how influential it is, 2013 will be the year clubs will have to prove it’s worth the investment to their board of directors. Expect football clubs to be inventive in ways of trying to monetize their Social Media – this might be through making more content to sell match day tickets, more tie-ins with partner sponsors and better use of Social Media to help aid merchandise sales.

So there you have it – our official predictions for 2013. After getting a decent number of our Football Social Media predictions right for 2012, hopefully we can continue our good track record and continue to bring you the most exclusive and very latest news about how football clubs are using Social Media.

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• • Allow fans to share their game-day experiences with the thousands of supporters at the Santiago Bernabéu, and with millions more around the globe, via social media applications easily accessible from their mobile devices.

• • Provide customised applications that create an immersive and interactive game-day environment, allowing fans to use their smartphones to engage Real Madrid in a more personalized fashion.

• • Help ensure consistent and reliable connectivity to thousands of fans by efficiently off-loading all data traffic and freeing up the entire cellular network bandwidth for phone calls and text messages.

• • Provide a new communication channel which Real Madrid staff will be able to use for security and operational purposes and other services, including a better service to the press and other media.

• • In addition to this, there’s a whole spectrum of new possibilities to access content and engage with visitors during non-gaming days, especially for the Bernabéu stadium visiting tours.

I’ve blogged at great length about the importance of improving connectivity in football stadiums, it is entirely pointless to spend thousands on a Social Media strategy and content if you don’t improve the location where this will be most relevant. Fans need to have access to WiFi or 3G if they are to talk about the sport, share content and sign up with your Social Media channels.

Real Madrid are the second team in Europe to optimise their stadium in order facilitate and encourage Social Media usage, the first being their La Liga rivals and Social Media powerhouse – FC Barcelona – who improved the Camp Nou in July. Hopefully, this kind of thinking comes to the UK sharpish as football fans are consistently frustrated by a lack of mobile connectivity during matchdays. I’m also delighted to see a second club fulfil my original prediction that we’d see Socially Connected Stadiums by 2012.

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Football clubs often have huge communities on Social Media, and they have a wonderful platform to advertise for free in their own stadiums – yet so few actually do. So, whilst trying to figure out this problem I couldn’t help think – why not advertise on the pitch itself?

Pitch advertising is rampant in Rugby and in some cases it’s already been done on the sidelines at European football stadiums – but no club is yet to use that “so watched” space to advertise their Social Media. Most likely footballing bodies such as the Premier League forbid brand advertising on the pitch, but what about on the sidelines – where the manager stands, where the subs warm up and ultimately where everyone in the stadium (and TV) can see?

Club Twitter account handles should be finely cut into the sideline grass – not too much that it’s an eyesore, but enough so that fans in their seat are aware that such Social Media channels actually exist! Clubs need to grasp that the Social Media experience is as much offline as it is online – they need to leverage their assets to promote their Social presence to it’s fullest.

What do you think? Would it be an awful eye-sore on the sacred turf or a creative way to raise brand Social Media awareness? Tweet me @walshybhoy or leave a comment…

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For months, we’ve been campaigning for clubs to bring their online presence into the offline stadium. The stadium is the heart of all footballing activities, so it makes sense that if you are going to start a Social Media strategy, you ensure that the stadium is ready for it – this means offering free WiFi for matchday connectivity, advertising your Social Media accounts and bringing in live social media content into the stadium.

By bringing in fan tweets (which will presumably be moderated before going on screen) – City are highlighting their Social Media presence and empowering fans to engage. It’s a nice connect from the offline user at the match, and perhaps the online user who may be thousands of miles away.

Manchester City join both Real Madrid and Barcelona as the only top flight European teams to optimise their stadium for Social Media.

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