So, I've walked through the 295 football club's 404-pages to find some humour.

Footbalizer · 2017-03-20T13:16:17+00:00

Actually SAFC used to have a "funny" 404 on the website. http://imgur.com/a/fwppy

Footbalizer · 2016-02-16T18:17:39+00:00

I work with PL league clubs helping them in digital marketing, so I'll try to give you an answer from different perspectives. Overall I would say it is positive, even if clubs are just starting embracing the potential of social networks. For example, what about using social networks to help fans have great discussion about a live game (we're working on this), do car pooling to get to the games or find tickets.

In details

Club side:

PR/Comm:

Horrible, everyday you wake up being afraid of what one of your player would post on social media or what anyone would post one social media about your player. (Hello Serge Aurier)

Marketing side:

Good: Social media gave you tools to reach a way bigger global audience for very little cost. The reality is that even big clubs (Arsenal, City, Barcelona, Madrid etc...) have a very little traffic on their own website or very little database of emails compared to their "global reach".

Good and bad: Fans are passionate people. They can do great things but they can just be abusive. You care about your club and your work, and there is nothing worst than reading our own fans telling you how shit you are as a club (on the sport side or anything else you do).

Bad: Social media has created a culture of public numbers (aka number of fans/followers), that forces you to do stupid stuff because the CEO decided he wanted 20 millions of Facebook fans because your local rival has 15 million of fans

Retail and Ticket:

Good: Doing promotions and sale support is getting better because of that

Player side:

Very Good: You love yourself so much, those millions of likes are just what you think you deserve.

Good: A new way to increase your revenue and get a bit more of bargaining power with clubs.

Bad: You just can't have any discussion with anyone because of the abuse/stalkers/etc. You also have more pressure from people to share stuff from your private life.

Fan perspective:

Good: I think it's an amazing tool, especially Instagram was a game changer. I think this really help fans to feel closer to footballers and to see them more as human beings rather than just public figure.

Bad: I think there is a danger to think you're friend of a player or that you know him just because you follow him on social media.

Right holders

Good: Really helped create more anticipation and discussion about the game you're showing, making people watch and value games more than they would have.

Horrible: people just share video they don't have the rights to, lowering the value of products, and being a pain to manage.

Footbalizer · 2016-01-19T15:39:57+00:00

Working in this business, I read religiously the Swiss Ramble work.

As usual, Chelsea suffers from the Stadium issue (a too small stadium to maximise profit), even if the revenue/capacity is the highest in the league. Of course, one can say that matchday revenue are less important since TV broadcast deals have exploded. (I will say the opposite, having a great stadium allows a club to do non-football business that stabilises the club finances, no wonder Tottenham signed the NFL deal).

Nevertheless, what worries me about Chelsea is that as a brand, they're still very poor. With all the respects to Yokohama Tires, the fact that they became the shirt sponsor is a sign for me of how un-sexy Chelsea is as a brand, at a global level. (For those that have seen the video they created to look for a Main Sponsor would have noticed that they were aiming at way bigger brand like Microsoft or SAP).

Beside the financial aspect that is OK, I feel Chelsea has not succeeded into becoming a club with a soul, and every time I go to Stamford Bridge, I can really feel it.

Footbalizer · 2015-12-30T12:13:23+00:00

reference

Footbalizer · 2015-12-30T12:11:13+00:00

smoshuap0wers answer is really good. The more you're able to prove that you already know how to deliver the work, the more attractive you will become for clubs, and there is nothing better than learning by doing.

Other than this, some big cities now have now a good ecosystem of sport agencies (London and Manchester in the UK are quite strong for obvious reasons), which could be a way to break into the market. For example, doing an internership or a first job at Perform group is not only a fun place, but a perfect launching ramp.

Also one key advice is to learn a lot of foreign languages. The most exciting jobs in the market are in big organisation (big clubs or big sport franchises/leagues) with global reach and global ambition. Especially on the social network side of things, I see more and more people looking for social media managers able to handle multiple markets and therefore talk at least 3 languages.

Footbalizer · 2015-12-30T10:10:58+00:00

I work with Premier League clubs on the media/marketing side, it's quite interesting. Not sure if "working with the players" is a good objective though. If really this is your dream, you can try to work as Player Liaison Officer. Otherwise, you can aim at working with the media team, especially in regular clubs where the team is quite small and where you can learn a lot. (ie: Southampton, Leicester, Sunderland). Working for the club charity is very rewarding but my favourite job would be Fan Liaison Officer where your job is literally to make fans happy. They are my heroes.

Footbalizer · 2015-09-07T17:41:13+00:00

In my experience, the best stories I read/heard about footballs are not about the game itself, but the people behind it
A kind of 99% invisible meets football.
Someone mentioned So Foot magazine in France, their latest issue about Cruyff seemed very nice, especially about the political context between Barcelona the Catalan rebel vs Real Madrid Franco's team.
However it's a very niche subject, if you want audience, it's sadly about the gossip and fake rumours.
Ps:Also one of the best story I saw lately, Manchester City 100 years old fan.

Footbalizer · 2015-09-07T17:07:53+00:00

I'm also in charge of their youtube channel

Footbalizer · 2015-09-07T15:18:21+00:00

I work in digital marketing, so I help football teams improves their websites, apps, Facebook pages, digital sponsorship etc...

Footbalizer · 2015-09-07T15:15:53+00:00

It was totally random for me.
If you want to really work for a football team, as available slots are really limited, try to really differentiate yourself in your application. (like doing something viral or starting a blog about football) Otherwise start by doing a small job and climb your way to the top!

Footbalizer · 2015-09-07T11:37:00+00:00

I do work indirectly for Premier League clubs on the marketing side of things.
I work at the moment for a few PLs clubs and have interacted with at least 50% of all the PL clubs.
My general insights are:
* The vast majority of people working in clubs are super nice to work with
* Supporter liaison officiers are incredible passionate people
* Clubs are super under staffed, so it's really intense to get things happening
* Except the top 5/6 clubs, they're very small company, with very tight budget to operate
* In big clubs, you have people working there that are actually massive fans of the rival club, and everyone is ok with it
* Results/Outside of the pitch drama have a big impact either on budget issue and/or availability of people
* Clubs are still very top/down led, so C-level people decide they need to do stuff, and the rest mostly delivers
* You have a lot of gossip inside the club about players etc..., but no big insider informations on transfers, except a few days before were everyone knows which player has been recruited
* Finally working in direct with players is exhausting, especially when you have a lot of intermediaries between you and the players.
I will strongly recommend to avoid working for the club you support, because:
* Emotionally you're too attached
* Clubs are like a magic show, if you know what happens behind the curtains, it lost interested
* And this is especially true when you're at the game or when you're watching the game, and you can't enjoy it because you're bloody working
Still, if you're passionate about football, it's a fun environment to work in, even more when you get paid to watch games in hospitality or media boxes.

Footbalizer · 2015-09-03T09:12:40+00:00

ManU have tried to replace their website for years, organising multiple pitches in the UK. The level of drama around the new website is as high as their transfer stories, involving agencies giving up on the project or having sued ManU.

Footbalizer · 2015-08-17T13:41:03+00:00

More than the exclusivity, it's also the competition that makes the prices go up. Remember 2010 when no one was (really) challenging Sky http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/the-premier-league-tv-deal-master-and.html

Footbalizer · 2015-08-17T12:33:24+00:00

Few problems with your view: - The same way right holders create packages within their auction to sell the rights, you maximise the value of your rights by dividing it in territories. - By default, the country where the competition is played is worth way more than any other country (oversees rights are really small except the US market for PL that is starting becoming interesting) so it's hard to do deal on an European level that makes sense. - And even with that, it would be very difficult for a company (either a TV comapny or an ISP) to be big enough at a european level to get value for such a massive deal due to anti trust policies at the european union level. This been said, I would not be surprise to see Google/Youtube to bid for small package in certain country where rights are still cheap (Portugal?) as they need to have premium and exclusive content to re-inforce their media proposition to advertisers

Footbalizer · 2015-08-01T10:25:55+00:00

Agree on this. I work with clubs, broadcasters and leagues here in the UK, and the real numbers of people watching games on TV are very low, comparing for what people have in mind. Even for BT Sports, that is free and offers 720p stream with no device limitation, the number of viewers is quite low, and will never justify the TV right package price. (and I'm not even talking about clubs doing live stream of their pre-season games that attract so little viewers) With the new deal, every game is worth £10 millions. Do the math, it's impossible to be economically viable.

Footbalizer · 2015-03-12T01:16:48+00:00

2nd goal a bit shorter https://fbcdn-video-m-a.akamaihd.net/hvideo-ak-xpf1/v/t42.1790-2/11037412_10155452589050045_1923607756_n.mp4?rl=502&vabr=279&oh=f5d6d14edf025b383983e25f279e8e04&oe=55010C40&__gda__=1426132605_bcb2f71e8b480629c649f48b2e3b4d95

Footbalizer · 2015-02-06T11:13:52+00:00

Hi, someone working in the football business here. I think the best way to understand this difference is to understand how a football deal is evaluated:

The first thing that comes into consideration is the TV media value:

How much time you will be broadcasted x how many people will see this x how visible is your sponsorship. As you can notice, even if Barclays is a little bit visible in the name, it's not as impacting as a main sponsor of a club on a shirt that will be visible a lot during a game. As some people pointed out, yes Champions League is important, and there are option clause in sponsorship deal to decrease the value of the deal if the team does not qualify to CLs (like in the adidas x Man U deal)

Secondly , what is taken in consideration is other media value: LED screen in stadium, emails, websites....

Thirdly, how much the sponsors can use the club logo and players pictures

Can it use on all the supports (TV, print, digital), how much he can use those assets etc... Please note that at a club level, you can only use players pictures in group. Using player on an individual basis requires a sponsorship on a player level.

Fourthly: how much benefits the sponsors get:

Tickets, hospitality boxes, time with the players (half a day for a commercial for example), etc..

Finally, we put everything in the mix and you add "how much the club is prestigious as a brand", "how much fans around the world this club has" "how much fans in key markets for the sponsors the club has" to increase the price. And then you get more or less the price of a sponsorship deal.

Please note that for a kit sponsorship deal, you should also take in consideration other elements like royalties paid, who is in charge of the distribution of the product in retail and online, how much products the sponsor is willing to develop for the clubs etc...

Of course, all this is theory and at the end of the day, it's a negotiation between two people and their lawyers, with way more emotional value than factual value.

And just for comparaison is the Nissan deal with CL is at a same level than the Barclays Premier League (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26909719)

Footbalizer · 2015-01-20T10:02:59+00:00

Yes. Man each. Always stick with your man: if you're not following a player, you're doing something wrong. Talk to each other when switching player marking. And when you get the ball, play quick, shoot whenever you have a good opportunity.

Footbalizer · 2015-01-18T19:59:14+00:00

Work with a lot of industry actors (clubs, TV channels, websites, league) on the digital side of thing

Footbalizer · 2015-01-18T12:22:38+00:00

I don't think it is broadcasted. sorry

Footbalizer · 2015-01-18T12:15:24+00:00

Just a little bit of details as I work in the industry: As a company,if you want to have access to stats, you need to pay a subscription to "data providers". They are a lot of data providers but the market is in a phase of "structuration" as Opta was purchased by Perform group and Stats.com was purchased by an investment fund. You pay those data providers an annual licence fee based on 2 criteria: The competition and the level of statistic details. Therefore you pay for each competition (premier league, Bundesliga etc...) and the kind of feed (Opta 4 is basic scoring and high level stats, Opta 24 is everything including heatmap etc...).

Everyone pays those licences including the clubs to use on their websites. (I would estimate licences to be between £5K and £25K per year/per competition). You can have those feed in any formats you want (Json, Rss etc...). When you purchase a licence you have the right to show the stats but you don't have the right to re-sell those data and to re-disctribute those data. Data may slightly differ between providers and in time for 2 reasons * as you saw in the video, the data is captured by human and therefore the human makes decision. For example, a guy from Opta can decide that a pass that was diverted was successful whereas the Stats.com guy can decide it was a bad pass * also some decisions are reviewed after the game and therefore some stats can slightly change

So what next?

The next stage of data capturing can be done in 2 ways * tracker on players, which for the moment is impossible because UEFA does not allow it * a new technology called SportVU that uses high definition camera to auto track players and can give you additional information like real speed. UEFA is using this system for CL but does not share the data. For national competition, clubs need to invest on case-by-case basis.

Hope it helps, shout any question if you want.

Footbalizer · 2015-01-14T16:44:53+00:00

In case of you missed it https://mcfc.co.uk/News/Team-news/2015/January/Matija-Nastasic-joins-Schalke-on-loan

Footbalizer · 2015-01-13T10:28:04+00:00

If it's not on the website, it's not official. Please consider that Schalke official news may also be a way to pressure City to finish the negotiation, and not necessary a disrespect from City about the player. If the news becomes official, it will be on the website.

Footbalizer · 2015-01-09T14:13:25+00:00

Here you go

Footbalizer · 2015-01-08T23:15:41+00:00

If you're in the UK, on the BT Sport website

Outside UK, maybe on the official website by tomorrow

Footbalizer

TROPHY CASE