How AI helps Bundesliga clubs in international fan disputes
The Bundesliga has been back in action for two weeks now. This means that Germany’s clubs are also continuing their efforts to expand their global fan base. After all, it has long been no secret that soccer fans represent a very lucrative market even beyond the country’s borders.
To appeal to new fans, football clubs have developed into true content producers in recent years and are increasingly transforming themselves into media companies. With interviews, goal scenes and recreational selfies of the pros, clubs are bringing the sport closer to their fans than ever before. TeraVolt, an agency for digital TV products and consulting, has evaluated how successfully the Bundesliga teams are distributing their content via social media and explains how they can beat the European competition on this playing field with the help of artificial intelligence.
Plenty of content, but only ten percent video If you want to win the hearts of football fans, you need new and high-quality content on a regular basis. A Twitter analysis shows that German clubs are at the forefront of tweeting in Europe with an average of 19 posts per day. However, only every tenth post contains a video and only 16% a link that leads users to further content and thus increases reach. In comparison: English, Spanish and Italian clubs each post twice as much moving image content on average. The outlier is Atletico Bilbao. With around 50 and even 100 posts per day at peak times, the Basque club is the clear content champion.
Teams target young people and get involved in China With a few exceptions in the French Ligue 1, all clubs in the five biggest European leagues are now represented on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Several clubs are also experimenting with platforms that appeal to younger target groups, such as Snapchat and TikTok. A growing number of teams are also getting involved in the all-important Chinese market. As many as 44% of German clubs use the popular micro-blogging service Weibo, for example. The leader here is the English Premier League with 65%, followed by the Spanish Primera Division (60%).
Premier League speaks twice as many languages as Bundesliga
For a global reach, it is not only important to have a good range of content, but also to speak as many languages as possible. By localizing content, clubs can reach potential new fans in their own language and stand out from the competition. This is a major challenge for German clubs, but also a great opportunity. The challenge: an analysis of the six biggest clubs in each league shows that the Premier League teams distribute their content in almost twice as many languages - 7.2 on average - as the German Kicker teams (3.7). The Spanish Primera Division is also far more multilingual than the Bundesliga, with an average of five language variants.
How AI can help football clubs attract new fans
With artificial intelligence, the Bundesliga clubs could quickly catch up. This is because an AI-supported speech-to-text engine enables football clubs to share their content quickly and easily in 40, 50 or more languages. According to Tobias Fröhlich, Managing Director of TeraVolt, clubs have arrived in an era in which fan and market shares are being redistributed. "Video as the medium of the future plays a central role here. The ability to address fans in their native language, especially if it is not English or Spanish but Chinese, Arabic or Thai, is new and can have a major influence on a fan's choice of club. In this way, the club can quickly multiply its reach and increase the transaction rates of the posts read."
The clubs of the five biggest leagues in Europe were evaluated in the second half of the last football season. You can find the complete study by TeraVolt here here.
