SOCIAL SCORECARD: SPORT What your club needs to know to win at online retail 1 CONTENTS 03 INTRODUCTION 06 FINDINGS 14 OVERALL SCORES 20 FOLLOWERS 27 ENGAGEMENT RATES 35 CHANNELS 45 SPORT V SPORT 53 GEOGRAPHICAL SPLIT 58 CONCLUSION 60 METHODOLOGY Click number to jump to section 2 INTRODUCTION With a passionate army of dedicated, life-long fans to engage with, a wealth of sponsors to work with and easy access to athletes-come-influencers, many may think running the marketing for a professional sports club and engaging fans on social media is an easy job. But posting a few pictures of a star player on Twitter or Instagramming a hastily cobbled together highlights reel from last night’s match just won’t cut it. Fans want richer, more “ engaging content that makes them feel a deeper connection to the “ club they follow and the sport they love. 3 And clubs have an opportunity to capitalise on their social media followings to drive more fans to matches, sign them up to membership packages and boost commercial revenues by having them buy the latest kit and merchandise. The opening is there for clubs to better engage with and capitalise on their followers, but where some are hitting the back of the net with ease, many more are missing an open goal by miles. (Feel free to substitute your own clichés in that last sentence based on your preferred sport). To see who’s making the most of social media and using it as a channel to truly engage fans and followers, we looked at the Instagram, Facebook and Twitter profiles of 80 professional sports clubs across the UK and Ireland. We assessed the top 10 clubs from: • Premier League Football • Scottish Premier League Football • Premiership Rugby • Super League Rugby • Pro14 Rugby • County Cricket • British Basketball League • Elite League Ice Hockey 4 HOW WE RANKED THEM To determine which clubs would be crowned Social Scorecard champions, we compared clubs and also looked at how each sport compared against one another. Looking at follower numbers, average post engagements (APE) and overall engagement rate (ER) across the three platforms, we were able to score and then rank each club. We also included a unique measure for this Sports Social Scorecard - followers per seat (FPS). This looks at total follower numbers across all platforms and stadium/ venue capacity to see how many times each club could fill a physical seat with an online follower, which gives us some interesting results. Pull on your club’s colours, pick up your kit and join us as we delve into the Social Scorecard: Sport. 5 FINDINGS 6 In conducting this research there were a number of things we uncovered that should be pointed out for the benefit of those clubs featured as well as other professional sports clubs competing in the same or similar leagues. Here’s what you need to know: Lack of retail/ commercial focus Not using paid capabilities The multi-site issue Handing over brand ownership Static and predictable posting 7 LACK OF RETAIL/ COMMERCIAL FOCUS Although they aren’t retailers, professional sports clubs are retailing. With kit launches every season, a wide variety of merchandise available and many with physical stores there is a significant opportunity to drive commercial revenues through social media. But there’s a distinct lack of attention paid to the potential for product sales across social media channels. We purposefully carried out this research in the run up to and within Black Friday/ Cyber Monday week to see what was being done by clubs for the biggest shopping period of the year. And as it turns out, not a huge amount. Although some clubs were posting retail and Black Friday related content (well done Tottenham, Hearts, Dundee and Manchester City) the vast majority made no mention of it, had no ads running on their profiles and weren’t directing traffic to their retail sites. 8 There were also a vast majority of social media profiles that didn’t link to a club site, let alone a retail site. And if any were, it was a link to a generic homepage, rather than a targeted landing page that would encourage a site visitor to buy anything. That is if you can even buy what you want on the site. One club’s online store didn’t even stock any replica kit for fans to buy - we’re looking at you St Johnstone. Clubs across all sports appear to be missing a massive opportunity to boost commercial returns through social media activity. Those that jump on this as a matter of urgency will reap the rewards very quickly. 9 NOT USING PAID CAPABILITIES It’s been mentioned briefly above but it needs to be pulled out as a stand-alone finding; the distinct lack of ads (and paid capability) being used on social channels. Due to algorithmic tweaks on social channels, posts from brands/businesses (which these sports clubs will be considered by the platforms) won’t be prioritised on people’s news feeds and won’t be seen by anyone who doesn’t already follow the profile. If a club wants to expand their following, and then drive increased revenue from that following, they need to start embracing the paid capability of the social channels available to them. This doesn’t necessarily have to be strictly for a shop store or to sell merchandise. Ads and paid capability can be used for ticketing, hospitality packages, membership and/or any other service/product the club wants to make fans aware of. Making full use of the capability available to a club will only help to drive up follower numbers, fan engagement and commercial returns. 10 THE MULTI-SITE ISSUE The drive on commercial returns from an online store is complicated somewhat as many (if not most) clubs are operating multiple websites. This can lead to obvious difficulties and complexities when it comes to marketing. In most cases clubs will have a home site, ticketing site, hospitality site, retail site and/or membership site which all need to be maintained and fed with a regular stream of traffic. However, most clubs only operate in a constrained geographic region with a finite pool of fans meaning that fan fatigue is a real challenge, especially if they’re being bombarded with multiple messages from the same club. To avoid this, clubs need to look at centralising their marketing efforts and make sure their approach is consistent so that the finite pool of fans can be segmented properly and targeted in the correct way. You can send emails advertising family packages to the fans you know have kids, or send invites to a kit launch to a fan you know bought last season’s kit on the day it was released, for example. Proper planning and focus on marketing efforts is crucial. 11 HANDING OVER BRAND OWNERSHIP Outside of the Premier League and Scottish Premier League (the most monied leagues we looked at) we found that a lot of online retail and merchandise activity for clubs is outsourced to a third party who run this on behalf of a club. This may be a matter of resources and cost, as clubs might not have the budgets to run their own online stores. Outsourcing everything entirely, however, will lead to these clubs likely getting a cookie-cutter approach from a reseller, who may also be running activity for rival clubs and other sports. This “build it and they will come” approach may work for massive clubs with huge followings, but the vast majority of clubs will (or should) be attempting to drive dedicated traffic specifically to their retail site from their pool of fans. Giving wholesale ownership of the retail activity and club brand will limit what’s possible from a retail perspective. It may mean that the club is missing out on potential revenue boosts that could be achieved by taking this activity in-house or working with an expert partner. 12 STATIC AND PREDICTABLE POSTING Club fixtures provide the major impetus for posting on social but across the board there was far too many “here is what’s happening in a match right now” type posts. Most followers will be tuned into the match through some other means, either physically in a stadium, watching on a screen somewhere or following real-time updates. “In-game” commentary and dry summations of the action on social will be largely redundant and won’t drive any sort of significant engagement with fans. However, “around-game” content, especially video, fairs much better with club news, match previews, pre and post-match interviews with players/coaches and highlight montages (when given proper attention and delivered in a high-value way) are driving excellent engagement. There is also a need for clubs to “fill the gaps” between matches with more content that makes fans feel part of the club and in on things. A handful of clubs such as Tottenham, Leinster, Manchester City, and Ospreys are doing this well, posting a wide variety of content that either features players, taps into a memorable moment or gives a behind-the-scenes look into the club. This drives increased engagement with fans throughout the week rather than just at match times. Properly planning out the content strategy for a club is crucial so to make the most of peaks in engagement around matches and suitably fill the gaps to keep fans engaged throughout the week. 13 OVERALL SCORES 14 OVERALL SCORES In what may be a shock result to some, Somerset Cricket Club walk away with top spot overall thanks to a score of 82 out of a possible 100.