CLUBS NOW WANT STARS’ TWITTER FOLLOWERS TOO
How football transfers have changed forever
FIRST time around, Wayne Rooney sat behind a desk at Goodison Park and, flanked by his parents, signed on the dotted line for the cameras. Second time around, he signed the camera instead. The impact has been extraordinary.
Rooney applying a marker pen to the lens is his only contribution to a 40-second Everton film, marking his return, which has had a greater impact than anything the club has ever posted on social media: 27,000 shares, 45,000 likes, 1,300 comments from the @everton Twitter account alone. It even went viral in South East Asia and South America, where no one had cared much about Everton before.
The film illustrates how this has been the summer when transfer announcements became an art form, with clubs and players both producing films designed to generate vast traction on social media. Rooney was shown the #welcomehomeWayne film Everton had planned when he arrived at Finch Farm to sign for the club on July 7.
To a soundtrack of some of his most famous Everton moments, it is a walk through the place as seen through his eyes — passing Duncan Ferguson in the corridor before kitman Jimmy Martin, another old friend from his early Everton years, throws a shirt at him.
Video technician Ryan Dickinson played the part of Rooney in the mocked-up version he viewed. ‘Wayne got the concept straight away,’ says the club’s head of engagement, Scott McLeod. ‘He understands social media very well.’
It is Rooney’s own vast social media presence which has taken Everton to places they could never reach before. ‘He’s unique in that his following is greater than virtually any other Premier League club,’ adds McLeod. ‘Beyond the UK, Wayne is a brand in himself.’
Cristiano Ronaldo, of course, is a vastly bigger one, with 55.2million Twitter followers and 107m on Instagram, making him a greater commodity than all the rest. But Rooney’s seventh place in the global league table of footballers on Twitter is making a world of difference at Goodison. He may be reaching the twilight of his career but he is ahead of Gareth Bale, Sergio Aguero and Luis Suarez in the Twittersphere.
A big social media presence is so commercially valuable to a buying club that it can drive up a player’s fee and salary, a substantial proportion of which is paid in image rights. That is why players are actively making their own contributions to this new film genre.
When Tiemoue Bakayoko joined Chelsea from Monaco last week he arrived with his own film crew. To the sounds of American hip hop duo Rae Sremmurd’s Black Beatles, they capture him travelling on the Eurostar as the sun sets, arriving at St Pancras and taking a cab across London. Bakayoko promotes this as the ‘TB14 Story’ and with a modest 86,500 Twitter followers he still has work to do.
Paul Pogba managed 10 times the number of positive responses this week simply for a raw clip of himself netting a basketball with friends and it was he who set a new standard for transfer films last summer. His presence on social media transcends football and when his return to Old Trafford was announced adidas — his and United’s kit sponsor — put him together with grime artist Stormzy to create a mini music video which went viral.
The Pogba video broke the mould, both in the use of a transfer to reach markets beyond football and in the involvement of a sponsor in the process. It has always been suspected that adidas contributed financially to bringing Pogba to Manchester. But the medium was the most significant part. ‘The adidas agenda is selling football boots to 16-year-olds but the average TV viewer is 44,’ says Jim Dowling, managing director of sports marketing agency Cake.
‘Culturally, TV is not the same space their market is occupying. You need to meet the millennials in their space and that is their phones. The big story here is the declining influence of TV on young people.’
Pogba, like Rooney, has reached a following which transcends club loyalties. In the US and the Far East, many fans follow players rather than clubs and have a favourite player in each league.
Manchester United’s global presence has seen executive vicechairman Ed Woodward make pitches to agents about how much more marketable and famous their clients will become by joining them, rather than Chelsea.
Domestically, little can beat what Rooney is delivering for Everton. On Thursday, he reached 15 million Twitter followers and announced he was giving away one of his signed @ everton shirts to celebrate. ‘Just RT (retweet) to have a chance of winning,’ he tweeted — and 61,000 people have done precisely that.
But Ronaldo occupies another stratosphere. He is presently using his post-season break to promote himself and his sponsors in China. Three moody Instagram images of him wearing their gear in Beijing have collected two million likes.