Ireland has a broad based support of a large number of sports with GAA and Rugby clearly performing higher here than in many countries around the world. That’s a healthy balance and one which benefits all.
In a global context though the biggest beast is football. By a considerable margin.
Data compiled going into the current Rugby World Cup showed the highest Rugby player club salary to be that of Dan Carter when he joins Racing Metro after the World Cup. He will be paid €1.5 million per annum. The highest paid in Soccer in Cristiano Ronaldo at real Madrid who is paid an eye-popping €33 million a year.
The reason for the disparity is the respective engagement with global fans of the two sports.
Tubular Labs, whose European Head Denis Crushell will be speaking at the Digital Future of Sport event hosted this week by Sport for Business have this month produced an in depth analysis of how football video content is consumed together with a number of key takeaways for how brands can attach themselves to it.
The viewership rate for football videos is growing at an annual rate of 72% and branded content is responsible for 11% of total views, massively over what the equivalent rate for brand created videos is in other sectors.
- • Branded football content gains 22% more views than the average category. “Best of” player video compilations are a missed opportunity, particularly for main brands in this category such as adidas, Nike, Puma and EA. We recommend that brands try to connect with the football audience by creating content in the genres of Football, Entertainment, Sports and Comedy.
- • Premier League YouTube “fan channels” today are growing 3.6X that of Premier League official club channels, which we predict will continue. Fan channels give all fans a platform to say what they think before, during and after football matches.
- • We estimate football viewership on YouTube to increase substantially for Euro2016, as was the case with the World Cup. Football views for the World Cup 2014 increased from the previous summer by 252% on YouTube. At current growth rates, that would mean a total of 15Bn views during Q3 2016 in total. That’s 2.1 views for every person on earth!
- • Working with football/gaming influencers can increase a brand’s visibility, engagement and likability on YouTube. There were over a thousand comments on YouTube about “Wembley Cup” ; 15% of these included the word “like”, “best”, “great” or “thank(s)”. Branded content is very successful when including multiple YouTubers in episodic content.
Those coming along to Wednesday morning’s event will be able to meet Denis and obtain a copy of the full report on football video content.
Hear from leadership organisations including Tubular Labs, Three, Heineken, Epsilon and RTÉ Sport about how they see The Digital Future of Sport at our special half day conference in Dublin this Wednesday, October 21st. Reserve one of the last few remaining places today.
