A-League clubs launch $1m social media campaign in bid to turn around sliding fan interest
Concerned at the declining interest in the competition, A-League clubs have come together to mend the dwindling interest with a major social media campaign targeting the younger generation of fans.
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The A-League clubs have begun a $1 million social media campaign, as the first step in a concerted bid to arrest years of sliding fan interest.
Aware of the damage to the brand of the competition after a lengthy battle to gain control of it, the A-League owners have sanctioned the campaign across five social media platforms to try to re-engage a younger audience and start selling the competition’s story.
It comes on the back of research conducted for club owners which they believe show there is a latent market of consumers interested in the A-League but not currently going to games – and which may show declining TV ratings are to a significant degree attributable to viewers migrating to streaming games via the internet.
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It comes after persistent headline figures of fan interest that don’t make palatable reading for the owners now that they have their hands on the A-League’s steering wheel. Crowds are down by 3.5 per cent on the equivalent number of rounds last season.
TV ratings have fallen more significantly or at least those watching on Fox Sports which shows all games every round – down some 24 per cent to around 39,000 a game. The switch from Ten Bold to ABC1 as the free to air broadcaster of one game per round, at 5pm on Saturdays, has delivered a 50 per cent increase on the last few rounds of last season, though from a small base up to an average of around 53,000.
The owners are candid that the competition suffered from a lack of marketing during the bitter battle to achieve separation from Football Federation Australia, which involved FIFA and the AFC and was finally resolved just over a year ago.
Though the deal is still to be completed, the owners are effectively in control of the A-League and beginning to make long-promised investments in marketing and promotion.
The social media campaign will use a mix of bespoke content, highlights, memes and fan-driven material, particularly seeking to engage younger sections of the near 2 million Australians who play the game but only a fraction of whom go to or watch A-League games.
However, the exact level of that number – as relates to those watching – may not be down as much as the headline Fox Sports figures show.
The increasing variable for all sports has been the rise in streaming, with viewing figures not yet distributed to the sports they show, let alone the wider public.
Optus Sport and Kayo, two of the biggest sport streaming content providers, have revealed their total number of subscribers at more than 700,000 and 382,000 respectively – but not viewing figures per event.
However a body of research undertaken for the A-League owners by a global data analytical company has provided some clues.
It was shared with senior club officials on Friday, who say the focus-group based research shows a reach for games via Kayo and the Telstra MyFootball app of more than 100,000 for each of last weekend’s four games – in some cases getting closer to 150,000.
In a wider context, the research is said to show around 750,000 people engaged with the four A-League games via various mediums, including TV, radio and news papers, streaming and social media. Some 500,000 engaged with the W-League games on the same weekend.
It is, officials say, only one weekend’s data, but the exercise will be repeated weekly to gain a deeper understanding of what potential audience there is, and how to reach them.
Research for Roy Morgan this week also showed almost two million Australians watched at least part of an A-League game in the past year, reinforcing the need to re-engage this audience if the A-League is to prosper.