Do sponsors want to sponsor FIFA or The World Cup?

(understatement alert)

It’s been an interesting week for FIFA.

I’m not going to comment on anything to do with the racism issue, or even the (alleged) corruption. I think there are better qualified and better informed people than me to do that. But I am going to throw my 2p worth into the debate about how the sponsors should or shouldn’t act.

There have been many people over the last year who say that the only way to bring a leadership change at FIFA is via the sponsors- the big companies that plough millions of pounds into the Zurich piggy banks. That’s probably a viable and relevant point. Because as long as the management of the world game is raking in the cash from the these guys they have a valid case to say that they are doing a decent job.

Get money, distribute money, make a lot of the smaller federations (and some of the bigger ones) happy.

But here is the thing that I’ve been wondering – do the sponsors of FIFA actually feel like they sponsor FIFA? Or do they sponsor football, and more specifically The World Cup?

If they feel like sponsors of The World Cup, then FIFA’s growing and largely negative profile may not feel like anything more than an irritation – a PR damage limitation job until the real action starts. And there is nothing like the World Cup (maybe, possibly, The Olympics) for brand exposure.

It’s one of the truly global events and one that is largely positive. It has a build-up, a captivating main event and a legacy. It opens up hundreds of different activation opportunities over a long period of time.

And the big sponsors know that. They also know that if they pull their sponsorship on moral grounds, there will be a queue of companies (competitors even) waiting in the wings. They also know that they will be throwing away a unique sponsorship proposition. A pricey one, but that price comes because of the lack of genuine alternatives.

It’s a tricky one then. And it has largely been brought about by the quite recent trend of a governing body as a brand in itself. The profile of FIFA has been raised over the last few years and with that comes a spotlight.

So has the spotlight on FIFA devalued their major offering to sponsors?
Or can football and its governing body be separated in the eyes of the people who put the most (money) into it?

There is also one more possible consideration here.
When change does come to FIFA, and there is a positive wave of sentiment around new initiatives and cleaning up of the governance, the whole proposition may be looked at in a different light. The current sponsors may want to stick around to be a part of that, and even try to take some credit for it.

My instinct is that the positive PR that would be gained by a high-profile pulling of a FIFA sponsorship deal doesn’t outweigh the positives in being involved with a World Cup, or the potential positives in being “part of the solution” rather than “part of the problem”.

I’ll be very surprised if any of the major players pull out at this stage.

A real opportunity for The League Cup

The big news this morning was the announcement by The Football League that Carling would no longer be the title sponsor of the League Cup.

Carling have held this sponsorship for over a decade and, in my opinion, done a pretty good job of it. This has included some decent PR, some interesting digital activation incluindg the iPint app and some clever digital signage. Although lets gloss over the failure to use spell check before pushing the go button…..

But that is no more. And this departure throws up a real opportunity.

The League Cup is at a significant crossroads. Interest from high-profile managers seems at an all time low. A couple of managers have even stated publicly their delight that their teams have been knocked out of it early. A distraction. An inconvenience. A nuisance.

Attendances are pretty low, and early rounds are notable for rows and rows of empty seats watching over two reserve teams.

So, why would any sponsor want a piece of this? Well I’d argue that this crossroads is, in fact, the ideal time for a big, significant brand to get involved. But with certain conditions attached. Here is my vision for it.

Repositioning the League Cup as the family tournament.

As successful as the Carling association has been for the League Cup, it has somewhat inhibited its ability to reach out to the family market – at least overtly. I think this has to change.

As families get priced out of going to the “big” games, there is a real opportunity for a sponsor-led revolution of the League Cup. Get a family brand on board and make everything about the experience tailored to bringing families to the games.

This can be done in a number of ways – how about these for starters (and thanks to @nathjones for his suggestions on Twitter this morning):

– Earlier kick of times. How about a 6pm start so that you can take the kids and get them back to bed at a decent hour? Give the kids their first experience of a game under floodlights (one of the magical experiences of my childhood was Ayresome Park for evening games with my dad).

- Deals for schools. Local deals for the local kids to go and watch their local teams. Get seats blocked out by youth clubs, after school clubs and schools of all types.

- Events in and around the ground. Mascots, face painting, experiential stuff – the stuff that football does so badly (but cricket does well). With the right kind of sponsor on board this kind of stuff could really work. And if the sponsor was, for example, Asda, this could be reciprocated in store at a local level throughout the build up and aftermath of a match.

- Associated schools five-a-side tournament. Local finals before local games, and the eventual final before the League Cup final itself. Lovely extended PR possibilities from something like this, again on a local and family friendly level.

- Family pricing. £20 for a family, or more radically (as @nathjones suggests, so hammer him please…) Pay What You Want. Clubs, the sponsor and the League could really hammer this in the build up to the matches – try to make it an impulse buy, an exciting after-school treat for the kids that is affordable, fun and easy. Y’know – like it used to be.

- Embrace the future stars. The nature of football these days means it is unlikely that first teams will be sent out to the League Cup games all the time. The new sponsor should embrace this. Negotiate more access to the future stars who will be playing – get them involved in the pre and post match activation. Really max out the communication about future fans supporting the future stars.

I think there is a real opportunity here – for the competition and the sponsor itself. Local activation for a strong British brand.

I’d bet my hat, however, that we’ll end up with The BIG BAD BETTING COMPANY CUP though. That would be a real shame.

How can football clubs use Gamification techniques?

Put pretty simply, and denigrating my career to a future-salary-impeding level, Marketing is a function that tries to make people do certain stuff.

You can dress it up all you like – engagement, branding, digital, social etc. But at the end of the day I’m sat here at my laptop trying to come up with ways of making more people buy more of the stuff that we sell. That’s the big goal. And on the way to that there are loads of little goals – make people feel more engaged with our brand, make people read our sales literature, make people follow us on Twitter and so on.

Even this blog is designed to make you think I’m less of a clueless clown if you actually meet me. Not sure it’s too successful on that score, but never mind.

Anyway, as part of this whole “making people do stuff” extravaganza, I’m starting to become increasingly obsessed with a marketing tactic known as Gamification. This is the superbly wanky marketing term for adding game mechanics to products, services and the marketing journey as a whole.

We’ve reached a point with Gamification whereby it is very firmly entering the conscientiousness of marketers in all sectors. Hell, even us B2b cavemen are thinking about it more and more.

So, how have gaming mechanics manifested themselves in marketing? Collection, achievement, levelling up, rewards and customisation are just some of the techniques that you’ll see across a number of sectors.

But I’ve yet to see too much evidence of its use in football. So, how could football clubs better use Gamification to engage and excite their fans. A few thoughts:

1 – Audit your interactions

A football club and its fans have dozens of different types of interaction. From visiting the stadium on match day, to liking the official Facebook page or buying merchandise. Every single interaction can be used in a Gamification context – but only if you have them all mapped out and know how they all fit into each other.

2 – Reward loyalty (properly)

Richard Ayers, the Head of Digital for Manchester City, recently said – “With lots of clubs, you devote your life and give money for season tickets and get back the right to buy more shirts”

I couldn’t have put this better. Loyalty of fans is too often assumed, and too often used as a commercial lever.

So, here is a thing – by mapping out the interactions your fans have with you, you can get a feel for how they contribute to “loyalty” and you can reward this appropriately. If you add a game layer by ACTUALLY OFFERING PROPER REWARDS THAT PEOPLE WANT, you’ll be able to encourage the right kind of interactions.

3 – Bridge online and offline behaviour

Every other industry is starting to understand how online and offline behaviour interacts. How the online research can lead to offline purchase, or vice versa. Brands use online channels to monitor chatter, assess feedback and even handle complaints about offline purchases.

I see very, very little on this in the world of football. Only this week the sports marketing world was getting excited that Valencia used their Twitter handle on the front of their shirts where the sponsor’s name usually is.

So, why not try bringing all of this activity together? Do clubs have their fans’ social profiles mapped to season ticket data?

Do they reward the guy who is sharing photos, liking, retweeting and then turning up to his seat on a saturday afternoon? Do they know he’s unhappy with his subscription to the premium club website? Well – he’s told all of this friends and followers, so why not?

Lots of modern CRM systems allow for this kind of social profiling and interaction. Check this from Salesforce.. It has to be possible with a football club, surely.

4 – Enlist fans to engage with other fans (and then reward them)

A popular Gamification technique is that of adding rewards and bonuses for referrals. This should work perfectly in a football environment. It could be something along the lines of a simple recommend-a-friend bonus. Or more complex like group-buying discounts. But the fact is that the fans are the best recruiters a club could ever have.

And as games get more expensive to attend, the dad-to-son vertical model of recruitment may be less reliable and peer-to-peer horizontal model will become more important. This kind of thing could work on a game-by-game, competition-by-competition or seasonal basis if done correctly.

A lot of this is basic CRM stuff. And I know that clubs need to get that bit right before they can really add a game layer.

But I’d love to log in to my club website using my Facebook profile, and on that have a personal profile page with all of the stuff that I’d done.

Think about how LinkedIn encourages you to complete your professional profile. Well, why can’t my club do that for me? Why can’t it try to get me more engaged by showing me the level of my interactions and letting me share them with my social networks. Shame me about only going to 3 games in the last year. Give me credit for liking, sharing, subscribing, +1′ing, retweeting and embedding. And give me a pat on the back for sharing my engagement with my friends and followers.

Only then will it really be game on.

Crest of a wave

Nothing signifies the emotional connection between a fan and their football club like the club crest.

When a player kisses the badge, it’s seen as the ultimate confirmation of their loyalty. And brought up when they up sticks, move on and start smooching a totally different piece of cloth. How can he leave? He kissed the badge last week. Kissed. The. Badge.

So what does it mean when the marketing guys get hold of it? When the club badge gets subjected to focus groups, round table discussions, white-board mind-mapping and brand pyramids?

This week a long-suffering Crystal Palace supporting friend of mine pointed out the leaked options for a new Palace badge. A modern twist on the eagle crest. I asked the sports marketers in my Twitter following their opinions on updating such an iconic symbol of what a club means.

The responses were really interesting and covered a number of reasons for undertaking such a project. They included:

Modernising for a digital world

A logo these days has a different role than in the past. Sure, it does all of the same things – acting as a shortcut to the brand by creating an easily recognisable identity. But these days it needs to work in different places. From a purely practical point of view, printing techniques are more varied than before, and in the online world there is a need for the logo to work as a Twitter icon, or in a banner ad, or in a smartphone app.

Sure, a lot of traditional logos have no problem with this. But it’s always easier to design this stuff in from scratch.

Representing a shift within the club itself

Much like a more corporate re-brand, the point was made that a club may want to change its crest to represent a more fundamental shift in culture within the club. Consider the case of Arsenal. In the 90s the culture of the entire club was successful but dour. Very British, very defensive and a team that would grind out as many 1-0 wins as it would take.

In the subsequent years, Arsene Wenger arrived and the club gradually become more cosmopolitan, with a different culture in terms of playing style, player recruitment and commercial outlook. This was crystallised by the updating of the club crest, and finally the move to the new stadium.

Copyright protection and legal stuff

Interestingly, while the Arsenal website does mention a change in culture and an impending new ground as reasons for updating their badge, the first reason they state is “being unable to copyright the crest” due to “uncertainties of its origin”.

In a modern commercial world, this is pretty solid reasoning. It’s also probably the one that is least palatable to fans. It has all sorts of connotations – but the main one is about clubs protecting revenue streams from merchandising by legally protecting the main feature that links the merchandise to the club. You can’t trademark a colour, or probably even a shirt design, but you can own a logo and manage its distribution. Bad news for stall holders outside grounds, good news for the club accountants.

The main lesson from all of this seems to be one of keeping the fans involved. If a club understands just what that badge means to the fans and consults them in the re-brand, it can be done well, and help to freshen up everything about the club. Even if the reasoning is one of revenue protection, or simply a marketing exercise, the positives need to be communicated well, communicated often and communicated early.

That way, everyone wins. Except the unofficial merchandise seller outside the ground of course.

My 5 point plan for increasing grass-roots football participation

Playing football has been a massive part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I played for my school team, then onto college and throughout University. Then, since joining the real world I’ve played for (the mighty) Horsforth Fairweather FC in a couple of different sunday leagues around Leeds. That’s me on the banner picture on this blog, number 5.

I watched with interest, therefore, the launch of The FA’s new “Just Play” initiative designed to get more people playing football regularly. http://www.thefa.com/GetIntoFootball/NewsAndFeatures/2011/just-play-060611

There is some good stuff here, and the aim is absolutely admirable. I wish it every success in the world.

But as an alternative, and based on my own experience as the Sunday League Frank Queudrue, here is the Simon Banoub five-step plan for increasing participation in grass roots football (caveat – some of these would likely need the ok from FIFA. But they love us, so I can’t see a problem with that…..):

1) Zero tolerance on headcases

There are a lot of nutters who play amateur football. I’ve come across lads who openly admit that they only play to get into a bit of scrap. This puts a lot of people off playing. There needs to be absolute zero tolerance. Far more checks on people playing under assumed names. Full transparency on which clubs have had people banned and the disciplinary statistics for amateur leagues published widely and openly for potential players to check.

And an absolute clamp-down from the local FAs on referees who “don’t send in” disciplinary reports. This happens a lot. I’ve been the beneficiary a few times, getting let off the £8 fine for the odd booking (I went for the ball) but that doesn’t make it right. And a lot of the nutters know that there is going to be no punishment for their transgressions, financial or otherwise.

2) Give FAs the option to move to summer leagues

We all know the feeling. Your alarm goes off on a sunday morning and the first thing you hear is the rain lashing against your bedroom window and the wind howling outside. Your wife lets out a little laugh then rolls over and goes back to sleep.

The next two hours of your life are pretty horrific. Horizontal rain coming directly into your face (seemingly in both halves: how does that happen?) and the ball barely rolling along in the quagmire.

Unsurprisingly this puts a lot of people off. It takes a special kind of character to enjoy paying to play football in conditions that Shrek would dismiss as “too boggy”. So, give people the option. Put the posts back up. Get some summer football on the go.

3) Rolling subs

A 90 minute game of football is quite an undertaking. It is daunting for people who are not very fit, or returning to exercise. So let leagues at amateur levels decide to allow rolling subs so that people can get a taste of it without killing themselves. Also, it would stop people turning up to SUB NOT USED for FOUR WEEKS ON THE TROT. Not that I’m bitter.

4) Coaches as refs

Refs at sunday league level are pretty bad. As bad as the players really. So why not add a refereeing module to some of the early coaching badges and lower the barrier to entry to reffing at that level. At least then the pool of potential refs would be increased.

And the new generation of coaches would get first hand experience of what referees have to go through in the amateur game. This would hopefully increase the levels of discipline over time.

5) Get the corporates involved with evening leagues

Evening leagues already take place to a certain extent, but why not target the corporate market and try to encourage companies to create leagues that play on an evening. This may be done in the summer on grass or all year round on all-weather pitches. Get it sponsored, or maybe run a scheme similar to “Cycle 2 Work” in which kit or pitch fees can be subsidised.

If any of this stuff already happens please let me know.

What’s going on with Lucozade?

It’s one of the great re-positioning case studies. From medicinal drink of grandmas to energy drink of sportsmen.

It’s an example that is dragged out at all levels of marketing theory classes. Successful and sensible, and allowing a brand to thrive in changing times. Lovely.

So, this brand has previous. It’s moved with the times before. And it is seemingly trying to do it again.

But, I’m confused. Their latest ad campaign does what a lot of sports brands have tried to do recently (I’m assuming now that Lucozade is a bona fide sports brand by the way) – combine sport with other forms of modern culture, notably music. The effect of this, Lucozade clearly hopes, is to reposition themselves as a “sports culture” brand – one that acknowledges the role that sport plays in people’s lives on and off the pitch.

It’s no longer about what Lucozade can do for your performance, as it was with John Barnes below, it is about how Lucozade can be a part of your story from sport and beyond – whether you participate or spectate.

Now, I don’t really like this strategy. It feels like they are running scared in the face of competition from the likes of Powerade.

But at least it is a strategy. Fair enough if the guys who live and breath that brand think that it can span the sport-culture divide.

My issue comes with the other stuff that I see from the brand. This morning I drove past 3, maybe 4, bus stop ads from Lucozade.

These ads were majoring on a “Free Sports Session” message, driving people to this website – www.lucozade.com/participate/sport-free60/

Back to the pitch again. All about performance and participation.

It feels like a different brand, in a different space and with a totally different positioning. It feels like the two things have been done by two separate agencies who have never spoken to each other.

So, I had a look at their Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/lucozade, and things become interesting.

The main Lucozade brand is being positioned as the sports culture lead, but the Lucozade Sport brand focuses on performance and life on the pitch and the track.

So it makes a little more sense – it’s the traditional energy drink that is moving more into the culture space, with the hope being that the Lucozade Sport brand can continue to do its stuff successfully as before.

Right. Fine. I can buy that. I understand it now.

But the problem still remains – should I have had to go to all of that effort to understand what they are trying to tell me?

I’m seeing ads like this one which tell me one thing about the Lucozade brand:

And I’m driving past other ads that tell me something totally different. I’m confused.

I think the teams behind these disparate pieces of communication need to get together and look a little more closely as to how they fit into the overall message that is getting across. They need to stop competing with each other and start to achieve a bit more clarity.

I could wade through all the messages myself and try to decode what they mean, to see whether this brand resonates with me in any way. But I’m not sure I have the energy.

The type of football fans you are targeting don’t exist

This post has been brought to you by Keith, Ian and Andy.

It isn’t surprising that brands want to align themselves with football. It’s exciting, it’s trendy and it is a topic of conversation online and in workplaces up and down the country. In short: people like football. So, align your brand with it and your brand will also look exciting and trendy. People will talk about your brand online and in workplaces up and down the country.

They will like your brand because they like football. Pretty simple really.

Except, it isn’t that simple. And here is why I think so many brands get it so spectacularly wrong.

The type of football fan you talk about in your brainstorming meetings doesn’t exist

The type of football fan that people who aren’t football fans think of as football fans are not actually football fans. Understand? No?

Let me explain. Years ago, Nick Hornby released Fever Pitch – it was a story about “real” football fans – obsessive, compulsive and passionate followers of their team. People who ensured their entire week revolved around “the big match”. They had pre-match routines, superstitions and “lucky pants”.

It made being a football fan trendy. It was carried on by things like Soccer AM. By the rise of the celebrity fan spotted in the crowd on Match of the Day.

All very nice. But complete bollocks.

Now – don’t get me wrong. There are some fans like this. They might be called Keith, Ian or Andy. They probably have lucky pants.

But these days they are a tiny, miniscule percentage of the whole “football fan” demographic. If you are targeting these guys, or hoping that by portraying them you will resonate with this hugely engaged group of consumers you are missing a trick. For two reasons:

1) Match-going fans are too cynical for this approach. They know what you are trying to do, so stop it. Football fans will take the piss first and ask questions later. It’s not as cute a place to be as you think it is. It’s acerbic and at times volatile. And that’s what people love about it. Not James Corden talking about which players look like garden vegetables.

2) Match-going fans are an irrevelvance. See below.

Fans at the match are window dressing

This might annoy some people. Or depress them. It depresses me to be honest. But the reality is that the people who sit in the seats at Premier League stadia are an irrelevance in the bigger scheme of things. They are there to add colour and flavour to a television programme. Just like the audience in the X Factor or the people (idiots) that boo at departing Big Brother contestants.

The vast majority of football fans consume football like any other TV show. There are heroes and villians. There is a storyline and a dramatic arc throughout. The off pitch stuff is as important as the on pitch stuff to most people. A massive majority of people who would consider themselves fans of Premier League teams will never go to game – it probably never crosses their mind.

Football is part of a larger cultural mix for most people. They file their team alongside their favourite bands, and players alongside movie stars.
They have grown up supporting teams from afar, and having their football supporting agenda dictated to them by TV companies and are perfectly happy with that. If they do go to a game it will be an event – a visit on a par with catching an arena tour from The Foo Fighters.

This isn’t to say this type of fan isn’t passionate, or doesn’t care. It’s just different from how people like me grew up. They are worth targeting, and football is still something that aspirational non-sport brands should be looking at. Just make sure you know your audience.

If not – you could just end up with something like this:

Do sports broadcasters understand the dual-screen viewing experience?

I’m pretty much always farting around with my iPhone or iPad.

It drives my wife mad. It drives my family mad. It even drives me mad sometimes.

So, in typical fashion, while watching the blistering Arsenal v Barcelona match in the Champions League last night I was farting around on my iPad at the same time.

It struck me during this match that they off-screen experience was every bit as important to me as the match itself. I was following friends, colleagues, strangers and celebrities on Twitter to see what they were posting about the game. I was ducking out of Twitter to fire up the excellent Total Football app (powered by Opta…) to have a look at the chalkboards and the stats as the game was going on. I was posting images from that to Twitter.

I was slagging off Robin Van Persie seconds before he scored. Then laughing at the torrent of abuse I got seconds later. Cheers guys.

I was then flicking to email to read my brother moaning about the game falling on his anniversary. Then back to Twitter, and back to the Total Football app.

I think this is a pretty standard scene across the world. People watching great pieces of event TV – whether that be iconic sporting occasions or the X Factor, and sharing the experience of that event with people from the comfort of their smartphone, computer or tablet. I’ve posted about the rise and rise of “Event TV” before.

So, my question is why so few brands have embraced this shift in viewing behaviour? Why have so few broadcasters acknowledged that people only have one eye on the screen? I can only think of ITV’s “ITV Live” concept as an example of this happening in practice. I can’t think of anything from the main sports broadcasters.

It’s strange from Sky and the BBC as they are two brands who seem to understand social media, to varying degrees.

I’d like to see broadcasters help to shape the social media agenda around their properties. It doesn’t have to be a complex technical solution like ITV Live (although kudos for trying). Why not have an “official” hashtag for each live game? Studio pundits, having done their bit before the game, could tweet to that hashtag throughout and answer questions from fans and join the general discussion. They, as experts, could point out tactical developments that us plebs might not have spotted (more than likely because we’re too busy messing about on Twitter to properly concentrate).

They could address points made during the half-time analysis and continue again in the second half. Why not ask for suggestions of questions to ask the managers in the post-match interview?

Someone like the BBC could also import parts of the their superb minute-by-minute text commentary into the hashtag stream, keeping people informed as to what is happening “around the grounds”. A broadcaster could bring the hashtagged stream into their website for full 360 degree coverage of the discussion.

When internet connected TVs really kick off, I could easily see an official widget at the side of the screen with the hashtagged tweet-stream, saving you the effort of moving your eyes up and down.

The future is about paying hardly any attention to loads of things at once. Brands need to start interacting with me wherever I glance, never mind wherever I inhabit. Stop trying to drive me to your website, or manage my “customer journey”. Just come and join in where I already am.

And that is watching football with one eye, and messing about on my ipad with the other. Where are you?

Will sport ever get to grips with Twitter?

Over the last few weeks it has been difficult to move without seeing a headline about a sportsman getting in trouble for tweeting.

Most recently it has been Ryan Babel, re-tweeting a picture of Howard Webb, photoshopped into a Manchester United kit. Before that it was Jose Enrique letting slip that he was injured and would miss a couple of Newcastle games. And of course there was Kevin Pietersen having a rant about being dropped from an England squad.

Three different types of message – a joke, some inside info and a rant. All pushed out from players through Twitter and all reported in the mainstream press before subsequent retribution from the appropriate authorities.

Sports marketing savant Professor Simon Chadwick (a must-follow at @prof_chadwick) argues that someone in sport must get to grips with Twitter. I agree. And here are a few reasons why clubs and authorities are storing up problems for the future by not addressing the power of Twitter:

They flat out don’t understand it

The main problem is that people involved in sport don’t understand social media. In much the same way they didn’t understand PR or the need for media training 10-15 years ago. How often do you hear it described as a medium for people talking about what they had for lunch?

Certainly more often than you hear it described as the single most important new information exchange in decades, that’s for sure.

And if you don’t understand it, you can belittle it. And once you belittle it, you don’t need to treat it with the respect it deserves.

They only see the problems, not the benefits

Following on from the first point. If people in sports organisations don’t understand Twitter, then the only time it is brought to their attention is when someone says something stupid and gets himself or the club into trouble.

So immediately Twitter becomes something to be clamped down on.

The mentality is that it is either a) puerile or b) harmful. And therefore the policy becomes “How can we stop this causing us problems?” rather than “How can we harness all that is good about it, while minimising the potential problems”.

Players have no other outlet

Sport is an emotional thing. Both in terms of on-the-field passions and the relationship between fans, the club and its players.
Players these days have no real outlet for expressing emotion. They are held on a tight lease, told what to say and when to say it. Their only real bonding moment with fans is a small walk in a circle clapping the fans at the end of a game. Or, heaven forbid, kissing the badge after scoring a goal.

So, when an immediate, easily accessible form of communication to the fans is available, it is understandable that players use it to vent, to rant and sometimes give a bit of inside info.

So, what to do. Well, back to Prof Chadwick:

Competition & team ethic means careful use of necessary; but total ban on athletes/players tweeting is surely counter-productive? Right to free speech, but also good communication/relationship building tool but teams, clubs, federations need to get grip on what acceptable/what not, formulate strategy carefully, then implement proactively.

And for me, the last couple of words are the most important here – implement proactively. A simple ban is pointless. It is unfair on fans and also on those players who are engaged enough to chat to the people who pay their wages. A free-for-all approach will lead to more trouble.

So, the key thing for me is that social media needs to be taken seriously as a part of the media training landscape. Clubs and organisations need to up-skill internally so that understanding of the landscape is prevalent throughout.

Only by understanding the techniques and tools available can sport start to sidestep some of the pitfalls and also harness the considerable benefits of social media.

Alternatively, they can just keep hilariously dismissing it as “Twatter” and hope for the best.

Stake and clips

Since the rules were relaxed we have been inundated with TV ads from sports betting companies.

It’s a hugely competitive industry and each is striving for that little bit of differentiation, a reason for us to throw our money their way.

It’s interesting to me how some of the campaigns focus on providing that differentiation through a product offering, some through a focus on building a brand personality and some through a focus on the owner as the figurehead.

As a punter and sports fan, here is my short summary of what I take away from each of the campaigns:

Ladbrokes
They’re passionate. Look, it’s Chris Kamara and Ian Wright doing passionate funny dances and shouting.

BetFred
They have load of bonuses and an owner called Fred.

VictorChandler
They have an owner called Victor.

Paddy Power
It’ll be a laugh to bet with them (and it’s always nice to have a chuckle with someone who is taking your money from you). And I can lose my money chucklesomely on a variety of mobile devices. Lovely.

Bet365
This is the place to go for in-play betting.

(sub-note, the half time ads with the latest live odds are my favourite TV ad innovation of the last few years and I don’t think Bet365 have had enough credit for it)

BetFair
Get the best odds because you are betting against other punters and you may (but probably won’t) be cleverer than them.

William Hill
Their name contains the word “Will”.