Web 2.0 and Football (Soccer)
It was only a matter of time before I found strong complementarities between my two passions, Web 2.0 and Football (Soccer). Are Web 2.0 and football (soccer) strange partners?. Not really if we see the similarities between the key tenets of club football and Web 2.0 principles and features.
Football fans are essentially what keep the clubs thriving and prospering. Club fans are the most important asset for any club, an asset which they cannot own, but an asset they cannot do without. Fans can make or break a club as sports club fans and particularly football fans are extremely passionate about the club they are associated with and in many cases the club affiliation of fans is passed from one generation to the next . Fans also have a major role to play in the way clubs are run. Let us next look at how and why Web 2.0 is important for Football clubs or for that matter any sports club. Fans need to communicate and collaborate with each other to share ideas, views etc. and they need to make their voices heard not just among their peer-group, but also to the club management and players. Fans are always looking forward to new means of communication and collaboration with their peer groups as well as the club, players and management.
Some of the largest football clubs of the world have taken towards Web 2.0 with gusto. Based on a brief analysis of football club website from across the world, football clubs which stand out from the rest in terms of their Web 2.0 adoption are Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea and to some extent AC Milan. All these clubs have adopted a number of Web 2.0 features including Blogs, Podcasts, RSS Feeds, RIA based Interactive Games, Discussion Boards, Chat etc. Out of these Arsenal football club stands out in terms of the ease to access the content, Manchester United scores as far as enabling collaboration across fans are concerned and Chelsea has some very cool RIA features. If we draw parallels between sports clubs and enterprises, we can see that customers/consumers of enterprises are in many ways similar to club fans in most cases. Their passion towards an enterprise brand or product may not be as passionate as those of club fans, although there are exceptions in the case of iconic brands such as Harley Davidson.
Comments
How will Mashups and widgets trend of web2.0 translate to soccer club (branded) merchandise? Will the fans be able to make money creating and selling merchandise?
Posted by: Balaji Sowmyanarayan | November 20, 2007 5:53 PM
Interesting question, which essentially hints at more legal hassles. Football (Soccer) clubs can have a clause such as in SecondLife wherein the user owns all the copyright or a Zazzle model where again the user owns the copyright at the same time granting Zazzle, non-exclusive worldwide transferable license. The model followed by Zazzle may be a workable model for Football clubs as the incentive for users to generate royalty fees is more as the club has more control over the content/design created by fans. This would help the clubs to market the merchandise incorporating the designs created by fans.
Posted by: Dr. Jai Ganesh | November 21, 2007 9:00 AM
Good imagination and well explained.
Posted by: Sreejith | January 11, 2008 11:07 AM