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At Total Digital Football towers we are always on the look out to improve our blog. We really value your feedback and that is why we are looking for any comments, thoughts or feelings about what we are posting up. With the European championships coming to a close and the impending London 2012 Olympics football tournament we are looking to get the site running perfectly in time for the big kick off in the European leagues.

So from our subject content, to the blog's layout or even the pictures we use. We want your points of view in  order to shape our content to appeal to you, our readership. So all you need to do is to drop us a comment on the blog or drop us an e-mail with your comments and we will get back to you on the feedback.

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Mitch Freeley

Editor- Total Digital Football

Germany's Adidas eyes Euro supremacy

Words: Ronan Shields

Source: Adidas

Adidas has raised its earnings forecast for this year to €1.6bn based on the back of an Euro 2012 boost as both Germany and Greece bear its iconic three strips in this evening’s Quarter Final.

The sportswear giant’s football unit believes that its marketing activity is set to yield record dividends for a single year, with earlier sales forecasts coming in at €1.5bn.

Speaking yesterday at a conference hosted in Warsaw, Adidas’ global CEO Herbert Hainer said the boost in sales, including the shipment of over 1m Germany replica tops, meant it was set to be the most successful year yet for the European sportswear brand.

The increasing challenge of Nike in the football sector has prompted the sportswear giant to up its marketing and sponsorship activity and UEFA’s Euro 2012 tournament has been a focal point ahead of this year's Olympics.

Recently this has included Adidas sponsoring the official match balls of UEFA’s Euro 2012 and the launch of the brand’s first football-themed Tumblr website as the tournament began.

Adidas is using its Tumblr page, which is a micro-blogging site similar to Twitter but with more of an emphasis on multimedia content, to upload content featuring its products and brand ambassadors, see below.

As the tournament progresses the German sports giant is also using other digital media outlets as part of its digital media activity during the tournament.

This includes the use of the Twitter hash tag #unleash as six of the original 16 tournament finalists, including tonight’s Quarter Finalists Germany and Greece, wore Adidas-branded kits.

Of course, there is an irony that German-based Adidas’ brand should emblazon the shirts of both tonight’s contestants given the ongoing economic woes of Greece and the friction this is causing with Germany in the political arena.

In fact, when looking at the football jerseys of all the P.I.I.G.s nations (Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Greece) in the Euro economic zone. Only Portugal (Nike) and Ireland (Umbro) sport jerseys manufactured by non-German brands, Puma makes Italy’s kit.

But with Nike, Umbro’s current parent company, looking to sell-off its Manchester-based brand that could soon change. Who says 'it’s only a game'?

Ronaldo fronts Nike social activity as Portugal kicks-off Quarter Final showdown

Source: Nike

Words: Ronan Shields

Nike’s football is often keen to leverage the game’s international sporting tournaments to bolster its social marketing efforts and today Cristiano Ronaldo is at the centre of its activity.

This comes as the Portuguese side, captained by Ronaldo himself, prepares to kick off against the Czech Republic in the UEFA tournament’s first Quarter Final game. 

As arguably Nike’s most high profile brand ambassador, Ronaldo’s visage fronts the latest Facebook and social media campaign from Nike Football, dubbed ‘Power your Nation’.

Source: Nike

 Facebook users are encouraged to upload pictures of themselves taking part in football action with the campaign also running with the slogan ‘My Time is Now’.

Nike is also encouraging Twitter users to participate in its social campaign by tweeting their sporting achievements using the hashtag #makeitcount, which is also emblazoned on much of the outdoor activity, see image left. 

All of this continues from the sportswear brand's multi-million campaign launched ahead of the tournament with a viral video featuring its top brand sponsors, including Ronaldo and France's Frank Ribery, see video at bottom of page.  

This follows on from Sagres, the foremost Portuguese branded lager, running a ‘We are a Beautiful Nation’ campaign where it encouraged users to submit photos of themselves to its Facebook page, see below.

Source: Sagres

The eventual winning entrant being flown to last weekend’s game between Portugal and Denmark in Ukraine.

Earlier in the year, Total Digital Football reviewed the Ronaldo-branded mobile app. 

'Do I not Like that?!' - England's growing influence on Facebook

Source: The FA

Words: Art Bugmann 

England’s qualification for the Quarter Finals of UEFA’s Euro 2012 tournament was accompanied by a dominating performance over Ukraine earlier this week during the sides' final group stage game.  

Sound like a tenuous conclusion? That’s because we’re not talking football, we’re talking about the England Team’s performance on its Facebook page.

While England’s football was widely regarded as adequate on the night, its performance on Facebook was far superior to Ukraine’s according to research from social media agency.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Taking into account posts and fan engagement, Wildfire found that despite a slow start, the England’s Facebook fan page grew throughout the match, in terms of comments, ‘Likes’, score predictions and shares.

Source: Wildfire

Even after taking into consideration the vast disparity between the size of the two pages to get a fair comparison (England 1.5m fans - Ukraine 10,023), England’s posts still got up to twice as much engagement.

England was also ahead on the absolute figures. For example, regarding shares on Facebook posts, England scored more than 32,000 while Ukraine only got 711.

England’s Facebook page used comments and direct questions to boost engagement with fans, see below.

Meanwhile, Ukraine preferred to use more picture-based posts from the ground itself, see below.

Source: Wildfire

So what can we draw from Wildfire’s analysis?

England’s population is marginally greater than that of Ukraine, so it is evident that England’s fans are far more inclined to engage with their team on Facebook than Ukraine’s fans.

In a 60,000 seat stadium, England’s 4,000 fans were far outnumbered by the vociferous home crowd. Yet England’s Facebook performance showed that the team did not lack for support online. 

What of Ukraine’s lesser Facebook showing? It was the biggest game in Ukraine’s football history, so maybe Ukraine’s fans were in and around the Donbass Arena, rather than in front of their computers. 

Speaking of the English football team and ‘Likes’ we decided to link below to a documentary following the national side’s doomed bid to qualify for the 1994 FIFA World Cup where then manager Graham Taylor coined the malapropism: ‘Do I not like that?!’ 

Wayne Rooney social portal launches as England return looms

Source: Official Wayne Rooney

Words: Ronan Shields

Just as Wayne Rooney prepares to re-enter the England-fold against Ukraine this evening, he has launched an official website to aggregate his social media feeds.

The site, imaginatively named Official Wayne Rooney, combines the star’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube feeds so users can trace the posts on each forum in a chronological order.  

For instance, yesterday the England and Manchester United star used the website to comment on his widely expected return to the England starting line-up as his national side prepare to line-up against Ukraine in the side's final group game of the UEFA championship, see below.

The site also contains a timeline featuring highlights of the player’s career such as his first team debuts, even those dating back to his youth whenever he was a mascot for his boyhood club Everton aged ten.

The site was created by digital agency Lightmaker, which was also behind a number of Manchester United sites, and in a Q&A attributed to Rooney, the striker said it was meant to bring him closer to fans, see below.

"I want it to be the place where my fans and partners can see what’s really happening in my world. There will be some big things happening on the site to mark the 10^th anniversary of my Premier League debut on 17 August and lots more to come after that…"

– Wayne Rooney 

In the interview, Rooney goes on to say the website, which has been optimised to be used on desktop and mobile devices, will be a place where fans can see what’s really going on in his world.


However, in a world where footballers have become brands in themselves, the more cynical elements within the Total Digital Football’s team can’t help but wonder if this is another exercise in PR control.

Source: Wayne Rooney's Twitter feed

After all having a central hub for all Rooney’s user-generated content gives the player’s PR team a perfect opportunity to vet said content before it becomes publicly available. Although, we can never be certain. 

Let’s face it in the days when the press have limited access to top-flight footballers a single tweet from a high profile player, such as Rooney, Rio Ferdinand or the ever-provocative Joey Barton, can be enough to generate acres of media coverage.

Total Digital Football has documented this phenomena before with Joey Barton's end-of-season Twitter rant still ranking as one of the most popular posts ever to have been published on this blog. 

Given the fact that Rooney is prone to the occasional outburst of temper, this seems like a sensible move from the player’s own brand management team, remember the below verbal attack on a certain section of England supporters post England's 2010 FIFA World Cup 2010 game against Algeria?

Wayne Rooney's verbal attack on fans

Source: YouTube

Uefa looking to exploit American market during the Euro's.

In recent years, viewing figures for televised sports have suffered a downward trend. The causes for this are two-fold: the proliferation of televised sport and sport channels, and the shift from free-to-air to pay-TV. Particularly during the global financial crisis of 2008, the collapse in advertising revenue made it difficult for free-to-air channels to compete with high-bidding pay-TV channels.

However, fear not! Football is as popular as ever and more so: The live cumulative average audience for the 2010 World Cup was Eight-billion, and each game at Euro 2012 is expected to draw an average world-wide audience of 150million viewers.

If such figures stack up, it will make Euro 2012 a ratings spectacular equal to, or greater, than if each match were a Champion’s League Final; a match which is already more popular than the NFL Super Bowl.

FIFA’s average earnings per match in South Africa was $56.7million while the same for matches in Poland and Ukraine is set to be $51.6million. Perhaps this reflects the widely held view that if the FIFA World Cup has the most prestige attached, then the UEFA European Cup has the better quality.

‘We would never claim to be bigger than the World Cup… But you can see in certain territories, if your own national team is doing well you get some very good numbers,’ said David Taylor, chief executive of UEFA Events. ‘You can see it is mega… when we are talking to sponsors and others, they are interested in the wider global impact.’

Kick-off times in South Africa were tailored to suit the Asian market, and this year UEFA has made sure that America can enjoy Euro 2012, with kick-off times conglomerating around their early afternoon. In 1998, the USA was ranked 23rd in the world’s largest football markets, but has now grown to 7th in 2010. Clearly, UEFA is hoping to tap into the potential growth areas away from the traditional football-loving but saturated South American and European markets.

Traditionally, the two most watched teams at the World Cup have been Brazil and England. Brazil are anticipated for playing attractive ‘samba’ style football, while England benefits from the ‘home of football’ moniker and the global appeal of the Premier League. Alas, Brazil will not be featuring at Euro 2012, but the team who had the largest average audience after Brazil in South Africa - Germany, will be. The diversity in their team, which boosted interest from nations like Ghana, Poland and Turkey, contributed to their appeal.

So with England set to kick off a few hours away, we can expect a massive audience for the kick off against France from across the world.

By Art Bugmann

Will Tweeting England players push the team onto glory?

The England team for Euro 2012 has been told to be wary when using Twitter. The Spanish and Danish teams have been banned from its use during the tournament. Clearly, some football  establishments fear the potential repercussions of 'wayward' Tweeting. 'Players need to be told what they can and can't say. As long as there's emotion and somebody can make a statement at the end of a mobile phone, there will always be social media cock-ups', says

Peter Wood, social media account manager at Steak, a digital marketing agency.

Yet, however important it may be to avoid a Barton-esque Twitter row during a major international tournament, the argument against limiting the use of social media is simply put: the Danish goalkeeper Tomas Sorenson, described it as a 'shame' to be unable to speak with fans, and the Danish Sports Minister, Uffe Elbaek,declared it 'a violation of freedom of speech.'

A curb on freedom of speech it may be, but football managers have made their feelings plain  on the matter. Just ask Neil Warnock, who blamed Twitter for losing his job at QPR. Ask Alan Pardew, who said that, 'putting something out instantly can be very, very, damaging - not only to a football club but to any organisation.' 'Sir Alex shared with me quite ferociously how difficult this Twitter issue is for clubs, particularly managers.'Last August, Pardew issued legal warnings to Newcastle United players that criticising the club was a breach of contract.

Perhaps the FA is particularly worried about what might emanate from certain England players at the upcoming tournament. Wayne Rooney is suspended from England's first two matches at Euro 2012 and will have time on his hands. He has not been afraid in the past to express disenchantment.

He notoriously criticised England fans after the dire game against Algeria during World Cup 2010 in South Africa, and caused astonishment last year when he offered to fight a 'fan' who had insulted him on Twitter. The FA might well be glad that Rio Ferdinand is not part of the squad going to Poland and Ukraine, since he has had his fair share of Twitter

controversy. In April last year he famously exchanged insults with Piers Morgan for four hours on Twitter.

The advent of Twitter and its real-time communication between players and everyone else has rejuvenated and accelerated an age-old issue. If you limit or block someone's communications  then you are infringing their right to freedom of speech. If you allow unlimited freedom of speech then you will inevitably get abuses of that right. Which is more important for England's representatives at Euro 2012? An unadulterated though silent focus on the tournament? Or their right to speak out when and how they wish?

Understandably the FA is inclined to support the former and take no risks. They hope that wariness of Twitter will slow potential exposure of off-pitch controversy and reduce the potential for distraction.

Steven Gerrard told a news conference on Friday that, 'We've been told not to be Tweeting anything unnecessary.' Maybe England's players will be spending more time than they should,

wondering whether or not one of their Tweets be unnecessary.

By Art Bugmann.