The Social Media Era of Sport with FC Barcelona’s Senior Manager for Marketing & Comms in Asia, Ben Wiggins - Episode 3
The beautiful game is as much a business to be run as it is an experience to be shared, and both of these aspects now happen in ways that connect us all more than ever before.
As the almost-immediate response to global, social backlash towards the proposed European Super League demonstrates, social media’s power is potent, and has unlocked new opportunities for fans and clubs alike.
As Senior Manager for Marketing and Communications in the APAC region for one of the world’s most beloved clubs - FC Barcelona - Ben Wiggins joins me on Disconnected to share the incredible reach that sports teams possess in raising awareness for both themselves, and the sport as a whole.
This episode of Disconnected covers:
How social media has more fans engaged with sporting events than ever before
Sports stars using their platform for positive, global change
The pack mentality afforded to fans by social platforms’ apparent anonymity
How social media shut down the European Super League in a matter of hours
Teams becoming brands vying for attention and opportunities beyond the sport
What platforms can do to combat abuse as effectively as they combat copyrighted content
Episode Highlights:
“The accessibility that social media gives us is like everything else, right? It's instant gratification. We've got highlights, we have news, we've got debate, we've got journalists on Twitter that we follow.” - 5:20 - Ben Wiggins
“Sport in general has become such a product and I think social media has been a massive driver. Now they’re packing out the fixture list, which is probably not a good thing for quality, it's not a good thing for players. But what they've recognised is that football’s got 1.2 billion fans across the world. There's an appetite for every single hour of the day.” - 8:05 - Ben Wiggins
“Is it better that people are venting the anger that you can get out of this system for half an hour after the game and then move on with their lives, versus some of the similar trouble, particularly in the UK, that you have with sport in the late 80s with with hooliganism.” - 19:30 - Ben Wiggins
“Forget about Bieber, forget about Ariana Grande, forget about The Rock; Cristiano Ronaldo is the most followed man on this earth, he's a footballer, and he's built a massive global brand for himself. ” - 24:05 - Ben Wiggins
“You see people like Megan Rapinoe fighting for equal pay with the US team. Look at Marcus Rashford and the great work that he did during COVID to ensure that kids in unfortunate situations would still get meals, you look at Lewis Hamilton with BLM. These are incredible things; these people are using their brand to make real positive change. But let's not forget that social media is the enabler of that.” - 34:00 - Ben Wiggins
“Maybe you're not bothered about Messi's free kick at the weekend because you’re not into football. What you might be interested in is how Messi prepares himself physically through the week, how much he trains and sleeps, what he eats, how he recovers. Then you think, as a football club, ‘Can we create a bit of content about that?’, and that's not for the hardcore football fan. That's for someone who's doing an Iron Man who might just pay for that documentary.” - 47:30 - Ben Wiggins
“There's only a couple of examples, really, where clubs or leagues have really transcended their sport. Look at the New York Yankees with the baseball cap, right? How many people actually know anything about the New York Yankees other than that it might be a baseball team? How much more do you know than that, but you still wear a baseball cap.” - 50:11 - Ben Wiggins
“The biggest thing that platforms need to do is start taking responsibility for some of the vitriol that is being spouted on their platforms. Let's face it, they are publishers, right? The content is on their platform, they're the ones that are gaining money from having these people on their platform. So they need to take a lot more responsibility and accountability for it. ” - 56:30 - Ben Wiggins
“Whenever the subject of racial abuse in football comes up, the TV networks, they want to get a black player or ex-player on TV for two or three minutes to talk about it, when really it's not a two or three minute issue, and it's not an issue that black people should be confronting. It's an issue that all people should be confronting.” - 1:07:25 - Jag Sharma
“Let me tell you this now - sport does not have a problem with generating revenue, it has a problem with managing its costs. Using football as an example, that means the players are probably paid too much for it to be a sustainable business model. So it doesn't have a problem with generating revenues. Could you imagine if they would take a percentage of that revenue and put it back into time to improve this situation of racist abuse?” - 1:10:10 - Ben Wiggins
Links & references:
Ben Wiggins:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bewiggins/
FC Barcelona:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/fc-barcelona/
https://www.instagram.com/fcbarcelona/
Jag Sharma:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagsharma
https://www.instagram.com/jagsharma/
The Ian Wright example:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55916729
The Ian Wright & Alan Shearer YouTube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LxpeIULvPA
Ben West Midlands Police example
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/15/uk-first-football-hate-officer-social-media-racist-abuse-stuart-ward
Jag West Midlands Police youtube interview example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc0-waLILDg
Jag NBA example of players addicted to their smartphones
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/sports/basketball/nba-players-checking-phones-at-halftime.html