As part of our study”A Ligue 1 season on YouTube“, we analyzed the media strategies of the main players in French football: clubs, institutions, media... To do this, we explored a dataset composed of all of their videos published on YouTube (nearly 7500!) and the comprehensiveness of fan comments (over 500,000!) during the 2017-2018 season.
Explore the performance of the main players in French soccer using our dashboard:
The Most Successful Club: PSG
PSG's publication strategy is based on a logic of continuous activity, and diversity of voices, in order to generate much more intense engagement than on the channels of other clubs. PSG competes directly with broadcasters by the proliferation of content on its channel. Indeed, he was active 90% of the time during the championship and produced 641 videos spread over 262 days. The Parisian club even spoke more frequently than the broadcasters.
Here, we represent the publishing activity of clubs chronologically. Each line represents A day and the color, the number of videos published.
PSG went off the beaten path by communicating in a much more innovative way than other clubs, developing a communicative discourse beyond its sporting performance. In particular, he has published videos about behind the scenes of his training and his trips and made numerous Chinese portraits of star players.
PSG is adopting the codes of the marketing moment, by sublimating the moments when conversations between fans pre-exist. Thus, the departures or arrivals of new players are exceptional moments put in the spotlight. The Chestnuts are an opportunity to maintain a more direct relationship with fans, whether when an important match (PSG — Real Madrid) falls on Valentine's Day, or by addressing your entire fan base, including internationally by using the codes of a famous Halloween horror movie. This last video has been viewed over 6.6M times.
Finally, The Good Presentation of the Videos Testifies to the Operational Excellence of the Club, since PSG respects the video production rules recommended by YouTube and does not hesitate to adopt strong creative choices that are perceived as innovative: 360° videos, slow motion, etc.
Different Publication Times Between Clubs and Broadcasters
During the championship, the most active clubs chose to communicate frequently before matches, while broadcasters relay championship news, post-match, in particular because they have broadcast rights. Broadcasters optimize the acquisition of these rights by offering these images in different formats: summaries of different lengths, compilations of goals, stops, etc.
Likewise, an actor like Téléfoot will take advantage of his presence on television to broadcast his most controversial sequences, or the most appreciated by viewers on digital. As such, Telefoot's production strategy is remarkable since the program produces specific news content for digital technology (“La Quotidienne”) and testifies to its operational excellence by using the best practices recommended by YouTube (presenting in front of the camera, use of vignettes, active community management, etc.).
This dichotomy offers clubs the opportunity to pre-empt different territories, by diversifying their voices. Thus, they can build “brand speeches” with varied values: glorification through retrospectives, starification of players through Chinese portraits, transparency by revealing the behind the scenes of the club... Thus, clubs are active outside the match period, and maintain a disintermediated relationship with their supporters.
The fact is that the comments posted under club videos are more emotionally charged. In particular, they contain a lot more emojis, unlike those posted under broadcasters' videos.
The LFP, a central player promoting the digital presence of clubs
The official Ligue 1 channel contributes to the digital influence of clubs by offering them high visibility., by broadcasting images of championship news. All clubs are presented regularly, and in a fairly homogeneous manner. The channel maintained by the LFP generated more than 93M views during the 2017-2018 season and allows clubs to engage an audience that consumes very little of their content. Thus, 80% of commentators on the Ligue 1 channel have never commented on a video published on a club's channel during the year. The Ligue 1 channel allows clubs to engage an even larger audience than the one they engage on their own channels. This is the case, for example, of OL, which hired more than 7570 commentators during the season on the Ligue 1 channel, while it had only activated 195 on its own channel.
The CM, a driver in audience engagement
The CM, whose role is to manage the community of users on social networks, has become, today, indispensable in any company with at least one page on a social network. On a daily basis, it creates content, publishes it, answers user questions, etc. One of its main objectives is to create engagement in order to contribute to the development of the company's brand image. Thus, in our study, we noticed that it is the Téléfoot CM that plays a cardinal role in audience engagement. Most often, after publishing a video, he is the first to comment on it by asking divisive questions, thus encouraging their audience to comment on it. This is what makes Téléfoot the channel with the most commented videos. Different relationship strategies can be implemented. Thus, the FFF plays less on creating controversies, than in consolidating a discourse of support for the French teams. The community manager systematically thanks the supporters for their encouragement and concentrates the supporters behind a hashtag #fierdetrebleu.
Interested in these results? You can also find our analyses of Ligue 1 fans on Facebook, as well as for Sponsorship Observatory during the 2018 World Cup.
