London Wasps have recently launched a supporter-driven, summer-long campaign to build up to the new season.  Match tickets, hospitality, signed shirts, playing kit, exclusive training with the Club and even Season Tickets are up for grabs in their #EveryFanCounts campaign, where they will be asking supporters across all of their online platforms to share their memories, highlights, views and reasons to look forward to the new season.

Throughout the summer there will be lots of ways for fans to take part in the campaign across wasps.co.uk, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. They will run a series of competitions on these platforms with no limit to how many of these you can enter as well as online chats with players and coaches at Wasps.

London Wasps have also teamed up with American-based company tagboard to collate the interactions around #EveryFanCounts, across all of the Club’s digital platforms into one place. The London Wasps #EveryFanCounts tagboard can be found at wasps.co.uk/EveryFanCounts.ink

Over the summer they will be collecting as many supporters’ messages, pictures and comments as they can and the best will be posted up in the Twickenham changing room for the London Double Header, before being transported back to the Wasps Nest at Adams Park in time for the first home game!

The campaign will provide a great outlet for fans to engage with the Club in the summer months, sharing images, messages and videos in time for the new season as well as offering a great way to engage with the team and the coaches.

To launch the campaign London Wasps players new and old combined to let fans know why they are so important to the club…

At the UKSN event last week, we discussed in great length the future of sport and broadcasting. One interesting point that emerged from panel guest Mark Coyle was BT Sport’s interest in Google+ and that they have big hopes from that platform. This was echoed by Leigh Moore at the adidas lab this weekend. They both appear to believe that Google+ could be a real trump-card in the battle with Sky.

So why, when most others have abandoned the platform, do BT Sport see a future on Google+? The interest seems to lie predominantly with Google Hangouts which, without doubt, have been one of few shining lights for Google. Hangouts have been used with the likes of Pele and Beckham, and can certainly offer a bridge between fan and sportsperson.

If BT Sport can integrate this as a regular feature and be creative with the platform then there’s a high chance of encouraging regular conversation and engagement that forms part of the 360 package that BT Sport is aiming for. “The conversation never stops” as Leigh Moore pointed out at the adidas lab panel, and BT Sport want to be part of it throughout. Current engagement levels on the page are low but it’s still an active community of 300+ followers.

How they intend to maximise the platform will be revealed over the next month or so but for the moment, BT Sport’s intent to make social media a focal point of their outward communications is a positive move. Sky use these channels as more of broadcasting tool and it is clear that BT Sport are correctly looking to encourage regular conversation.

Other companies have seen potential in G+ just to have backed out not long after. The platform remains almost a graveyard of company pages. BT Sport believe they can reverse this trend and good luck to them.

Do you think Google+ could work for BT Sport? Would you consider getting involved in conversations and hangouts on the platform?

One of the biggest problems that Facebook has had for users, especially brands, is making sure fans go to your account and not that of a lookalike fake one.  Twitter, Google+ and PInterest dealt with this problem at a very early stage with the verification ‘tick’ that celebrities and brands can get their hands on.

The launch now on Facebook is a major step forward and one that will see many breath a big sigh or relief and ask “why did it take so long?”.  It is also refreshing to see the platform take the initiative with some of the larger pages.

A post on the website said: “We’re launching verified pages to help people find the authentic accounts of celebrities and other high-profile people and businesses on Facebook.  Verified pages have a small, blue check mark beside their name on timelines, in search results, and elsewhere on Facebook.”

When I clicked on to the ICC (International Cricket Council) page this morning I was greeted that nice blue tick (Ed – ICC are a client of Pulse Innovations).  It is not only the ICC but many of the other large sports pages that now have this verification.  You can add Manchester United, their neighbours Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, the IPL, Premier League, NBA, David Beckham, Messi…. basically every big sports team, governing body and athlete on the platform.

One feature that I do like is that the blue tick also appears next to names in the search bar.  This means that official pages can find the right page simply, without having to go through a dozen others to find the right one.

Many other teams and brands will have to wait to find out how and when they can also get hold of the newest, must-have tick.  Below you can see how they look both on the page and in search.

Hopefully this will see the start of Facebook starting to catch up again…. yes, catch up….. to the likes of Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr.  It has become less relevant to the others and needs to win people back.  If it doesn’t, well we all know what happened to My Space! (yes it could happen)

Leading lights in video production, social media and sport descended upon Bar Kick, Shoreditch on Tuesday night to discuss the poser: “Video: Is it a missed opportunity for sport?”

After some grabbing of free drinks, introductions and reacquainting, the evening was kicked off by Dan McLaren who provided a brief overview to the evening. Setting up for a night of discussion around the opportunities for video across different platforms and with various objectives in mind.  We then enjoyed a quick intro from one of the sponsors, Stream UK.

Richard Welsh, Creative Director at Bigballs Films was the first to present as he introduced Bigballs and discussed their development as a partner with YouTube on the Copa90 channel. Richard spoke of the need for brands to be “agile” in the direction video content progresses; meaning companies can no longer think “year-by-year” about video, and must go granular and learn “minute-by-minute”. When producing content, brands must be willing to listen to audiences and adapt to the feedback received. He spoke of how Copa90 had used “Comments Below”, a show focused around discussions on football, to dictate the talking-points and content for the following week.

After Richard wrapped-up his presentation, there was plenty of food-for-thought to be discussed in a relative intermission before Pusher took to the stage to produce a live demonstration of reactive content and polling by asking the audience to vote on a choice of “Best Premier League goals of the season”. The demonstration was successful and was sure to provide onlookers with ideas about how the platform could be adapted for the needs of other, traditional broadcasting.

After a bit more mingling, the evening was concluded with a star-studded panel featuring (left-right) Dan McLaren of Pulse/UKSN, Mark Coyle of BT Sport, Denis Crushell of YouTube and Tom Hines from the RFU.

Questions for the panel were submitted from the audience and with the hashtag #UKSNvideo on Twitter. Much of the conversation revolved around the legalities of content ownership rights, second-screening opportunities and the value of user-generated content. Interestingly, the panel were unanimously agreed that the second-screen phase was going to be short-lived and that Smart TVs will soon integrate the second-screen onto one. Mark, being in an interesting position with BT Sport, strongly defended high-end production of video in an age of user-generated content.

For more detail in what happened on the night we have Storified all the tweets that used out hashtag, #UKSNvideo.  We’ll also be releasing video’s of the main presentation and panel session.  So stay tuned!

COMPETITION NOW CLOSED!

This weekend is going to be a special one here in London.  With the UEFA Champions League Final being hosted in our capital for the second time in three years it going to be party time once again.  Now we don’t run competitions very often on here but for this we thought we’d make an exception.

We’ve teamed up with adidas to offer something very special indeed for anyone in London this weekend.  adidas will be showcasing and looking ahead at the ‘Future of Football’ with their adidas lab (#adidaslab).  The lab will give a sneaky look at adidas products of the past, present & future.  It will give consumers a glimpse into how football might look in the next  six months, year and beyond.  You’ll be able to test unseen products first-hand in a series of high-tech football experiences featuring real-time data visualisation – all at this behind-closed-doors event in London this weekend.

We’ve got 12 pairs of tickets for the adidas Labs on Saturday 25th May between 11.30am and 1.00pm and we want you guys to come along.  To enter, post a comment at the bottom of this post to say why you want to go and you’ll be in with a chance of winning this money-can’t-buy prize.  We’ll be in touch to let you know if you are going!

You have to be 18 or over and resident here in the UK and must be able to make it to the event on Saturday.  There is no travel as part of the prize, only entry to the event.

So what are you waiting for??  Get writing now….

The Formula 1 giants have been at the forefront of digital technology (online as well as on the track) for a number of years now and continue to innovate.  Some fans though will be sad to see the renaming of the industry-acclaimed @TheFifthDriver as it becomes @McLarenF1.  This change will be promoted at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix with the new handle appearing on the front wing endplate of Jenson Button and Checo Perez’s cars.

The change will make it easier for McLaren’s global fanbase to identify and engage with the team on Twitter and reflects the wider digital engagement strategy to make the team as accessible as possible to a greater number of people – in turn providing them with a unique insight into the heart of a living and breathing Formula 1 team.

Over the last 12 months, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes has seen strong growth in follower numbers and engagement across its social media channels, owing to a revised approach to content strategy, social media campaigns and entering new and emerging digital platforms:

•     During the last 12 months, the number of followers on the official Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Facebook page has increased by 40% to over 700,000.
•     In the same period, Twitter numbers have grown by 80% to almost 350,000
•     Since entering Google+ in December 2012, follower numbers have surpassed the 100,000 mark

As part of a new digital engagement strategy, the official Vodafone McLaren Mercedes website was also re-launched at the start of the 2013 season. Developed in a responsive format, the new website further empowers fans to stay up to date with the latest from the team across multiple devices. As part of the relaunch, the team’s long-standing adaptation of a second-screen viewing experience – now rebranded McLaren LIVE – continues to add to the race-day experience for fans and looks great.

McLaren.com/Formula1 will also be launching in Spanish, reflecting McLaren’s increasingly global fan base, which has been boosted by the signing of the latest Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver, Sergio Perez.

These developments are the latest in a series of achievements for a team that has developed a reputation for its forward-thinking approach to digital and social media – a fact that has been proven over the past four years. McLaren were the first Formula 1 team to offer fans the opportunity to view live telemetry during races and practice sessions, the first front-running team to start using Twitter, and more recently the team has embraced the full breadth of its social media platforms to spectacularly live-stream the MP4-28 car reveal.

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes said:

“Our fans are at the heart of our digital strategy. We’ve strived hard to develop world-leading digital platforms that our fans can enjoy, while creating compellingly insightful content that draws them in and makes them feel part of our team.

@TheFifthDriver has not retired. Through the new handle of @McLarenF1, the mysterious micro-blogger will continue to give our fans unique access to the inner workings of one of the most successful teams in the history of Formula 1, the pinnacle of global motorsport.”

Article taken from original release on McLaren.com/Formula1

Guest Post:  Tom Kelk is a tech/sport blogger and Account Exec at global social media agency We Are Social.  You can find him on Twitter (@TomKelk), LinkedIn and his blog.

Eye of the Fan is a neat campaign run by Turkish Airlines to attempt to promote the basketball Euroleague through social media. Whilst basketball doesn’t have the biggest UK following, it is massively popular in mainland Europe and therefore, Eye of the Fan has received the required interest to return for a second stint.

Simply put, Eye of the Fan is a series of cameras attached to a ‘fan’ who has been given behind the scenes access to basketball matches and reacts to live requests from contributors. The heart of the campaign is its integration with social media. Those following the action can tweet their requests to the ‘Fan Cam’, who will duly oblige to the requests chosen by the ‘Up Team’ in London, and a team in Istanbul which will deliver tweets right to the ‘Fan’ in the O2 Arena. Further to this, these teams will keeping an eye on activity within the stadium and direct the Fan towards events of interest. This responsive caveat brings the fans closer to the game, but also engrosses them in the app.

This a great use of the popular go-pro equipment and fantastic to see it revolving around social media engagement. How well it captures the atmosphere of the stadium and an event is yet to be seen but there is clearly potential. The access to athletes away from the traditional media will certainly attract interest from the majority of sports fans who rarely see players in an ordinary light. The most important aspect to the success of this is the completely free-rein of the Fan who “will be going everywhere cameras normally can’t or won’t go to offer fans and media an exclusive behind the scenes view.” Fans can ask him to joke around with a player, chat with a manger or find the best-looking person in the crowd (see video…).

In my latest blog I spoke about Vine and how it could be used to capture an atmosphere and how clubs were not making the most of their assets and behind the scenes footage; Eye of the Fan manages this with a real-time and responsive element added-on.

Here is the video of the 2012 ‘Final Four’ and this gives an indication of what can be expected this time around. There have been no significant changes since last year’s campaign but the ‘Up Team’ intends to interact with contributors to a higher level than previously:

All the footage will be accessible on a constantly updated website and, once watermarked, can be fully integrated, embedded and shared across websites. Footage of the game itself will not be available due to licensing regulations.

In 2012 the Eye of the Fan Facebook app received 150000 visits; Eye of the Fan posts on the Turkish Airlines received 15000 likes in 3 days. Overall, the 2012 event received 3.7m impressions. It is hoped that the 2013 Eye of the Fan campaign will exceed these numbers by quite some distance.

Regardless of your interest in European basketball, this is a fascinating campaign and should be looked at. Eye of the Fan can be seen from 10-12^th May when the Turkish Airlines Final Four will be broadcasting from the London O2 Arena. The ‘Final Four’ is the culmination of the Turkish Airlines Euroleague – the ‘Champions League’ of European Basketball. The top sixteen teams are currently fighting out to be involved in the ‘Final Four’. Before the Final Four tips-off, you can follow @eyeofthefan on Twitter and see what it has to offer.

It will be interesting to see where Eye of the Fan goes from here. There is a great potential in the idea. At the moment, Turkish Airlines have indicated that they are keen to focus on further communications through basketball and would welcome any opportunity to increase engagement and buzz alongside improving the content output.

There must be opportunities to translate this forward thinking approach over to other sports and hopefully brands will take a close look at the ideas behind this campaign.

It has been a little while since our last digisport interview on UKSN.  We’re delighted to welcome Jim Lucas, Communications Officer at Premier League outfit Southampton.  The club is settling well into the top flight of football here in England after a break of a 7 years, a time that saw them go as low as the League 1 before two successive promotions saw them back with the best last summer.  Jim’s answers give a great insight into how football clubs use social media and what they see as the future of the industry.

Hi Jim. Thanks for taking the time out to answer a few questions. Be great to start with a quick overview of your role at the Saints, who works with you and and what it involves?

I’m part of a small media and communications department, which consists of two communications officers – of which I am one – plus two audio-visual officers, all working under the club’s head of media. We are responsible for all content output and media management/PR. I personally have taken on responsibility for the club’s social media presence, and as such have dedicated quite a lot of my first year at the club to improving and developing our work on those platforms.

All five members of the media department contribute to our social media platforms, but I have taken the lead on that front over the past year – particularly since our promotion to the Premier League. We don’t have a dedicated social media manager, but we haven’t let that stop us innovating and searching for ways to strengthen our social presence. We’ve sensed huge value in engaging with our supporters that way, so we’re determined to keep working on making our social presence even better. We’re now active on Twitter, Facebook, Vine, YouTube, Instagram and Google+. We’re also looking into using Foursquare.

What does a typical day entail for you at the Saints?

As anyone working in football will tell you, no single day is the same as another – I can be writing reaction or preview pieces for our official website, interviewing a player on camera, working on our next matchday programme, liaising with the external media or dealing with anything else thrown at a football club press officer. The one constant, I suppose, is that I am always keeping a close eye on updating Twitter and Facebook. I try to ensure we’re as responsive and informative to our fans as possible, and that we give our content the best possible platform to be seen by the people who matter most to us – our supporters.

How would you describe Southampton’s approach to social media and digital in general?

We’re extremely keen to innovate and be the first to do things. For example, we were the first Premier League club to use Vine. Throughout the club there is a mantra of never happy to stand still, so we’re always looking for ways to be the best we can possibly be. That attitude very much applies to our social and digital strategies.

And do you have specific set objectives for what you do?

We don’t particularly set any numerical targets or anything like that. We simply want our content to inform and engage our supporters as well as possible, and we will always look for more – and better – ways of doing that.

The club have been on Twitter since 2009, that’s almost 4 years now, and gained close to 100k fans. What have you found works best on the platform when it comes to engaging with fans?

Without a doubt, it’s the exclusive, behind-the-scenes content that particularly gets our fans going. Something seemingly so trivial like tweeting an iPhone photograph showing a couple of the players at the training ground can be stunningly well received. We are always looking for opportunities to demonstrate our players in their natural surroundings and at their most human.

As you said before, the club has a presence on different platforms, Facebook, and YouTube especially.  How does your approach differ depending on the platform?

We know we have different types of supporter on each. We tend to be more conversational on Twitter, but Facebook’s introduction of the ability to reply to individual comments has prompted something of a rethink. Overall, though, we believe that our content is valued by our fanbase across the major social platforms, so it’s about how best to promote that and how to generate the best-possible level of engagement.

Players have been both praised and vilified for how they use Twitter. Do you as a club either support or help train your players in its use?

We don’t have a social media training programme, although it’s something we have discussed. We don’t have many first-team players on Twitter, but we’d like to encourage more to join in the future so we’re looking at ways of offering them support in doing so. It’s fair to say, then, that some sort of training and support network is something we’d love to implement as we move forward.

What would you say has been the clubs most successful digital campaign?

I can only really comment on the past 12 months, which is how long I’ve been with the club. Our recent #saintsfc100k campaign was a relatively simple one, but it generated fantastic engagement levels. Shortly before breaking the 100,000-follower mark, we generated a list of our most engaged and loyal followers. We then printed each of those onto an individual sheet of paper, with their picture and username on one side and their actual name on the other. We then asked a selection of first-team players to say thank you to those fans on camera, and produced a short YouTube video compilation of those messages.

Among the selected followers, we included a couple of celebrity supporters in singer Craig David and athlete Iwan Thomas, who both commented on the video. Overall it was incredibly well received by our fans, and it was picked up upon by certain digital media websites and at Twitter HQ. We’re really happy with the level of engagement we got from what was an incredibly simple and cost-free campaign. We’ve also run a good April Fools’ campaign involving Rickie Lambert, behind-the-scenes YouTube features from home matchdays and player Q&As, all of which have been massively successful.

Which clubs/sports do you think do a great job in social media?  Who do you look to follow?

We try not to ‘follow’ anyone in terms of how we do things because we’re determined to carve out our own reputation. However, when it comes to being the kings of social media, it’s hard to look beyond Manchester City. They just ‘get’ it – their content is thoroughly compelling and engaging, and I think that’s what any football club is looking for when it comes to this sort of thing. Chelsea are also pretty good, as are a few overseas clubs like Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan and Barcelona. Outside of football, the NBA is doing some pretty impressive stuff. There’s a lot of inspiration to be taken from the way teams and leagues are doing things in the States, I think.

We’re going to be running our next UKSN event around the use of video – how do you see using YouTube can benefit the club and what opportunities do you see for the platform?

Video is huge. Few clubs of our size have dedicated video editors, but we’ve always known that visual content is such a huge winner with our supporters. As part of the FLi network, we have a subscription-based video service but this season we have really stepped up our YouTube presence as well. We love how easy it is to share our videos via Twitter, Facebook and Google+ and it’s great how quickly they can generate a buzz. Vine is great, too – we get a lot of engagement there. Going forward, we’d love to be able to stream press conferences, events and even non-rights-managed matches via YouTube’s live functionality. Clubs are going to be using YouTube more and more over the next few years, and I’m really glad that we’re ahead of the bunch on that front.

With all this content creation and use of platforms.  How do you measure its success and what tools do you use to do so?

We use the standard insights and analytics provided by the social networks themselves but, as we grow, we would like to look at ways of peering even closer into our statistics. It’s something we’re working on.

Finally, what are your plans (that you can divulge) over the next 12 months in terms of use of digital?  and where do you see opportunities for football clubs?

We’re keeping a particularly close eye on how to implement a multi-lingual social presence. We already have a Japanese-language Twitter feed with over 4,000 followers, and we’re planning to start a Spanish feed in the near future. We’ve also identified our Indonesian and Malaysian fan-bases as ones we should look to cater for. I think there’s a real opportunity for clubs to bring their global supporters closer together with well-run multi-lingual Twitter and Facebook accounts. Speaking more generally, I think making the most of the level of access you have within your own club will continue to drive how we operate. We’re in a privileged position to be as close to the action as we are, so why not make the most of it by generating insightful and engaging content?

Thanks for taking the time out to speak to us Jim.  Best of luck for the rest of the season and look forward to speaking to you again soon.

Following nearly 1 year of preparation, my business partner and I launched MySeatz.com, in August 2011. MySeatz was launched to become the destination for deals on Football League tickets.

MySeatz aimed to increase attendances throughout the Football League by working directly with clubs to make tickets available at a discounted price through sporadic, time limited, and often last minute deals for tickets on the MySeatz web platform. MySeatz was the first dedicated UK Football ticket deal website.

The state of Football attendances seemed to support our theory. Taking each League as a cohort, The Championship, League 1 and League 2 only filled an overall average of 68.7%, 42.7% and 43.4% respectively of stadium capacities in the 2010/2011 season. (These stats haven’t changed much in the last 18 months, incidentally).

It was great…all of this was fuel for the MySeatz fire.

Much of the preparation time my co founder and I spent pre launch was on considering the viewpoint of the Football club, particularly as we understood that clubs wouldn’t be eager to devalue their own ticketing infrastructures.

From a fans perspective, they were able to visit MySeatz.com and register their interest in receiving deals from any one of the 72 Football League Clubs. When we had a deal for their club, we’d email it to them…simple!
We were therefore building fan networks for each Football league club, then offering clubs a cost effective opportunity to sell ticket deals to their registered fans on MySeatz.

However, after over 1 year of efforts, and little positive response from Football Clubs, we called time on the MySeatz journey due to a lack of traction.

Why?

After our de briefing on the failings of MySeatz, we offer the following advice from our experiences for those looking to offer products or services to Football clubs:

Don’t be seen to compete

It sounds obvious, but even we didn’t think we competed with the Clubs. Our self perception was that we empowered clubs by giving them an off the shelf network of fans to tap into. They viewed us as potentially taking fans that were already theirs, and reducing their income by selling cheaper tickets to those fans.

Clubs like control

Feeding off the previous point, Clubs want to retain control over how they sell their products. Third party suppliers can in no way be seen to compete with, or cannibalize sales of the partnering Club. We recognized this and made our service as flexible as possible with no commitments or upfront payments being asked of the clubs. This wasn’t enough.

The clubs wanted control over our network of fans, however without control over our network we had very little leverage, so we were unwilling to allow them direct access to it, which in turn created another barrier to partnership.

Clubs accept empty seats

Clubs understand that empty seats will always be an issue, and many of the clubs we spoke to seemed fairly content in this regard. The general consensus was that whilst they had measures to increase attendances, none of these would be prioritized over the de valuing or cannibalizing of full price ticket sales of regularly attending fans.

The “We’ve done it this way for many years” approach

I don’t want to over emphasize this point, because respectfully, there are many clubs doing many new and innovative things. However, there were certain clubs who were particularly unwilling to consider new ways of approaching an issue, such as ticketing, which has traditionally been managed the same way for some time (although the internet/mobile has changed their distribution channels of late). With these clubs, we didn’t get much of a look in.

Empower the Clubs

On reflection, a better version of MySeatz would have been to provide a “platform as a service” white label solution to empower the clubs to directly offer their own deals using the technology in our ticketing system, without the brand of MySeatz. They could then use the system to further build their own network of fans, rather than feel like we were offloading their fan network to MySeatz.

In the end, there’s a whole lot of opportunity out there for new products and services to offer Football Clubs in terms of ticketing, merchandising, marketing, data analytics, for those ready to disrupt.

In our case, empowering rather than outsourcing would have been a better strategy.

Best of luck to the next hopefuls.

John Henwood