The role media plays in driving football’s growth
IHAD the opportunity to act as a moderator for the panel session on ‘The Role of Media in
Football Development’ at the ‘Business of Football - Philippines’, organized by MMC
Sportz, held at the New World Makati Hotel last Friday.
It was an insightful discussion with LaLiga Managing Director for SEA, Japan, Korea and Australia Ivan Codina, Mediapro Senior Director for Marketing and Sponsorship Sales Saluaddin Sulaiman Sinnakandu, football reporter Cedelf Tupas, and Mikee Carreon, who is a football analyst for a leading TV network.
The discussion focused on the role that media played in terms of driving and sustaining football’s growth in the country. Given that, as we all know, ours is a basketball crazy country.
Among the important inputs that came out was the need to come up with football icons and heroes, that fans can relate to, and look up to. And this according to Singapore-based
Salauddin is where media comes in. And he cites as an example, David Beckham, who has created an iconic brand for himself, if not an empire, out of his brand. We have of course, local football heroes with the likes of Phil Younghusband, Neil Etheridge, and the other Azkals. But there’s still a lot more that can be done in terms of creating more football heroes.
Cedelf Tupas mentioned that the challenge lies in keeping the fans interested, considering that the matches of Azkals only take place every couple of months. While Mikee Carreon emphasized the need for live TV coverage, specially for crucial Azkals matches.
As for LaLiga’s media strategy, Ivan Codina says, “We are increasing our presence in the
digital space, we are also trying to come up with the best way to get closer to the fans. We are also increasing further our viewership and leveraging on our relationship with global broadcasters in each of the markets, in order to get our product closer to the fans.”
As for the Philippine market, Codina says, “The Philippines is a great market, and it helps
that we have that link, a shared (Spanish) heritage, despite the fact that football is not the number one sport. We think that there’s a huge potential to grow football to the next level.
That’s also why we’re getting closer to the local stakeholders, to see how we can help grow football in this country.”
As for the possibility of having another Filipino player in LaLiga like Paulino Alcantara who played for FC Barcelona back in the day, scored 369 goals for the club, and is referred to by the club’s website as “the Filipino player, whose record was surpassed by Messi (only in 2014), and is the second all-time scorer for the club.” Codina says, “It is highly possible, that there will be another Filipino player in LaLiga like Paulino Alcantara.”
Mediapro’s Saluaddin also emphasized the need to capitalize on Philippine football’s
momentum, considering also that the Philippine Men’s National Team’s FIFA ranking is at its highest, which went up from 113 to 111, in its May 2018 rankings. He also adds that in terms of approaching sponsors, a lot more creativity is needed to drive their interest. That it should be more than just putting logos on shirts.
In his closing remarks, event organizer MMC Sports CEO Eric Gottschalk, says, “A lot of statistics earlier from Frank Saez’ research in this market, still shows that television is the number one platform here in the Philippines, and is still the number one medium that advertisers are looking for to spend their budgets on. We also learned that live TV coverage actually stimulates stadium attendance, and not vice versa. If there’s more football on TV, we will see more fans in the stadium. Football needs media in order to drive commercial revenues for the clubs.”
“More importantly, don’t break the 12th man, we need to create year-long content, in order to keep the media engaged. Hopefully, we can get the television and the broadcasters to take a look at football and give them prime time spots. I think today in summary, this event was a great success. We stimulated thinking, we exchanged a lot of ideas, and we transferred a lot of knowledge,” ends Gottschalk.
Media truly plays an important role in growing this sport and expanding the fan base of football in the country. Hopefully, there will be more events like this one that can create enough interest, and spark that football revolution, which is long overdue.
The author may be reached at char_ cruz@ yahoo.com.