Social networks play football | Technology

Measuring is one of the obsessions of today's technology. Everything, however qualitative it may be, is likely to be quantified after the appropriate digital alchemy. Social networks they have an enormous attraction as they are the main communication space of our time, which attracts a lot of information that can be very profitable once analyzed. Also, obviously, for sports clubs in general and football in particular.

Blinkfire Analytics set itself the goal since its birth in 2013 to measure everything related to the universe of sports, to provide clubs with specific and concrete arguments (statistics, percentages, numbers in short ...) that would allow them to sell their growing presence to sponsors. in social networks. This company was promoted from Valencia and Chicago and has headquarters in both cities.

The attractiveness that many fans have acquired the social networks of their favorite teams and players, has generated a transfer. "The fans they no longer go to the traditional media as often as they do to the original source of the news they are looking for, "says Juan Luis Hortelano, co-founder of Blinkfire. And it was precisely this change in trend "that made us consider this project".

To date the idea has curdled quite well. Many Spanish clubs such as Valencia CF, Sevilla FC, Betis, Villarreal, Celta ... are among its clients, but their portfolio is extended by Europe with teams like Juventus, Roma, PSG, Manchester City .... On the other side of the Atlantic they have professional basketball clubs (NBA) such as Cleveland Cavaliers or Houston Rockets, as well as the ice hockey competition (NHL) or football (NFL). In total Blinkfire monitors 40 types of sports, more than 250 leagues, some 3,000 teams, of the order of 150,000 players and some 3,000 brands.

"Without measurement, we could not give a specific and determined value to the presence of the club's contents placed on social networks", acknowledges Ramón Loarte, Marketing Director of Sevilla FC. In their case, measuring offers them "credibility guarantees, comparable with other sponsorship assets existing in the market, not only of football and our League, but worldwide", he adds.

From the Marketing Department of Valencia CF, a spokesperson points out that "the value and demand of content is a key to the current economy. Our club is transforming and investing in its capabilities to be able to promote and expand its contents to contribute to our sponsors and our fans. "

Cost effectiveness

As is sometimes the case on the internet, the system is not one hundred percent consolidated and, in this case, it is asked about the best profitability formula. The most common is that football clubs are guaranteed analysis systems that justify the value of the impact of their content, then negotiate with sponsors global packages. As a reference, the cost of a campaign of one million interactions on Twitter would have an average price to pay to the bird network of about 395,000 euros. Worldwide sports sponsorship is estimated to generate more than 57,000 million euros per year.

A special section of the framework is the way in which the promotion of the club and the players is interpenetrated. Marketing departments work for their figures to contribute to the coffers of the club, although the most famous have their accounts on the sidelines. This aspect is quite opaque and uncontrolled, but an elite player can get to charge thousands or hundreds of thousands of euros per post on Twitter or Instagram something related to a brand.

The appearance of a commercial logo on the boots or on a cap, the birthday of a player wearing a sponsored shirt, the line-up that the team will present at a particular match, even the most seemingly spontaneous situation in which there is an image of a sponsor, are some of the content that Blinkfire Analytics scrutinizes.

The importance of these impacts is not in themselves or in their scope. The important thing is that they are shared. It is the engagement, "the voluntary interactions of the fans with the contents", this is the retweets, likes ... It is a meteoric process because of the speed that demands permanent attention 24/7/365, hence the reports that are delivered The clubs are in real time practically.

The new wants to eradicate the old. Companies like Blinkfire Analytics try to demonstrate with trained algorithms that the business possibilities of clubs are greater with social networks than, for example, with traditional billboards in the field. These second ones can be seen by some 40,000 to 60,000 people, depending on the stadium. "In social networks you get a lot more people and there is a much broader range of possible activations," says Hortelano.