By David Owen
May 18 – Top football clubs face a common problem: as their global brands become more powerful, their fan-bases become more remote and harder to engage with – and to monetise. Digital technology seems an obvious route to addressing this issue, and this week Real Madrid, which has been notably quick off the mark in the use of social media, will launch its latest initative for connecting with supporters worldwide.
The Spanish giants, who last week failed in their attempts to win the European Cup for a second straight season, being eliminated by Italy’s Juventus, will use a press conference at the iconic Santiago Bernabéu Stadium on Tuesday to unveil a new Real Madrid app.
Developed with Microsoft, it is promised that the new product will give users access to player and club statistics in real time, along with the ability to connect with other fans around the world.
In a statistic that will be familiar to other sports organisations of similar stature, the club now assesses that only 3% of its fans actually live in Madrid.
Along with arch-rivals Barcelona, Real have been particularly successful at exploiting Twitter, with even their respective English language feeds attracting far more followers than top English clubs.
When Insideworldfootball looked last month at Twitter activity of the top 10 European clubs in UEFA’s points ranking, it found that Real and Barcelona led the charts with nearly 30 million followers, ahead of the English trio Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea, which each had between 5.5 million and 6 million.
Both Spanish clubs have embraced multiple language Twitter accounts, with Barça translating into seven languages and Real into four.
Real’s latest launch comes at a time when Manchester United is expanding its social media presence in China, last month launching on WeChat, the country’s largest and fastest growing social messaging platform. The Manchester club is the most followed sports club on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, two of China’s most popular social media platforms, with more than 13 million users.
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