Football Transfers – Engagement Machines
The summer and less so winter transfer windows are like Christmas for football fans around the world. The levels of excitement are unmatched when a club is linked to a top player around the globe.
Social media is now the number one source for football transfer news. Twitter is king, with fellow social media outlets Instagram, Facebook and YouTube falling slightly short.
The shift from newspapers to TV and websites for these types of news was slower than that from TV to social media. This seems to have certainly accelerated within the last few years. In terms of bigger outlets such as BBC and Sky Sports trying to increase their engagement and interaction with people online; many have created a column just for gossip on transfers, as people tend to view anything to do with their club, no matter the source. This is separate from the news by reputable journalists which is unless they are breaking a key story, usually something that has already been discussed on social media.
It is not hard at all to get clicks in the sphere of social media, that much is clear. Accounts have recently surfaced where they pretend to have exclusive information, and it garners hundreds of thousands of impressions and lots of engagement. This not only shows the power of social media with the sheer amount of people you can reach and speak to organically but also shows the danger that it holds. Misinformation is rife within social media and while it is positive that Instagram and Twitter are doing their parts respectively to begin to tackle the issue with warnings before reposting etc, it still is a problem that could be spread into the wider world.
However, what is difficult in this day in age is to create a credible reputation for a new business or journalistic website discussing transfer news or other sports news. One company that has been extremely successful in such an endeavour in recent years have been The Athletic. They have done a fantastic job in mixing modern media with reputable journalists and ex-pros to deliver a mix of short, long and audio form content. They have successfully branded themselves as a sleek and modern yet reliable and professional brand and created a huge variety of content for several different audiences. From podcasts to exclusive interviews, and analysis from ex-pros such as Alan Shearer and Yaya Touré, just to name a couple, this makes them the most sought-after subscription-based model for sports news out there.
In terms of engagement, it does not get much bigger than deadline day. Gone are the days where you would get your news by watching Sky Sports News with Jim White in his yellow tie and radio shows such as TalkSport, journalists such as Fabrizio Romano, David Ornstein and Laurie Whitwell are receiving millions of impressions when discussing transfers between sides, particularly on deadline day. On The Athletic’s ‘Talk of the Devils’ podcast, journalist Andy Mitten mentioned how news editors repeatedly say to him that he can just churn out football transfer news as the clicks, attention, and engagement that it receives is unrivalled.
YouTube has also emerged as a way for certain journalists to do similar style wrap-ups to that was popular on Sky Sports News et al. Fabrizio Romano has gained over 1.25 million subscribers on YouTube with his videos averaging around 450 thousand views, where he tends to upload daily. This plainly displays the number of people that are interested in this type of content, with certainly more room for growth in the future.
Are you glued to your phone in the transfer window? I certainly am...
