Football Media

Football Media is proud to welcome Tottenham Blog and Match Fit USA to the fold as members of the Football Media Network.

Dan and Jason are passionate and articulate, and in transfer-speak, they are smart acquisitions with great future potential. More than the blogs and communities that they’re bringing on board, we’ll have two more smart brains working with us in the background to make Football Media better.

And while we’re on the subject, here’s how you can join Football Media.

Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Site News Comments: 0

Having looked at different publisher models in football blogging over the last 4 years, I see two big trends for the near future (a lot of this has happened and is happening right):

1. Democratisation of access

People will access content in a myriad of ways. Mobile, RSS, Website, YouTube, Audio are just the surface. You’ll see a lot of syndication, aggregation, widget-based content use, mashups, data-driven content, casual games, interactive apps, etc etc.

Search engines. Other bloggers. Twitter. Facebook. Retail stores. Product lines. Competitions.

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Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Blogging, Football Business Comments: 0

The North American Soccer League (NASL) has announced the hiring of renowned journalist and blogger Kartik Krishnaiyer as the Director of Communications and Public Relations.

He is best known as the host of the podcasts of EPL Talk and Major League Soccer Talk, although he’s done quite a bit more in the world of football – he was host of the American Soccer Show on Champions Sports Radio Network (2007-2008) and has been a prolific football blogger on EPL Talk, MLS Talk, Soccerlens and lately on The Kartik Report and the Manchester City Blog.

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Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Business Comments: 0

If you’re looking to get more traffic to your football website, news aggregators are often the easiest and quickest source. The big one in football is NewsNow but there are several other smaller but still effective headline aggregators.

Here’s a full list:

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Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Promotion Comments: 0

FootballMedia.com was relaunched this week with a brand-spanking new design. Check out our new front page, and we’ve also overhauled the Network and Advertise sections and after many, many requests, we’ve re-launched the ‘Join Us’ section.

A big thanks to Michael Heald of Fully Illustrated (who’s also designed the new version of Soccerlens) and props to Nicolas Pin of Snowy Day Design who did all the behind-the-scenes implementation.

Let us know what you think in the comments below – praise or constructive criticism are both equally welcome.

Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Site News Comments: 2

As an Omnisport.tv affiliate, we received a notice via email today stating that “as of Dec 1st 2009, Omnisport.tv will be ceasing all affiliate marketing activity due to the imminent closure of www.omnisport.tv.”

This isn’t as big (or far-reaching) as Setanta going bust but it’s worth remembering that just two months ago Perform Group, Omnisport.tv’s parent company, partnered with Kentaro to bring the England-Ukraine World Cup qualifier live online to hundreds of thousands of England fans.

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Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Business Comments: 3

Written by Chris Mann, a blogger at the Soccerlens football blog.

Make no mistake about it, social media is changing the way in which we interact with the internet and the way we interact with each other. Websites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, amongst the great monoliths of cyberspace, are making our lives more closeted and yet more open to the world than ever before.

Social media does not only change and manipulate (both positively and negatively) the way in which we socialise on the individual and collective levels, it has also spilled over to influence communications between and amongst particular worldwide groups of people and organisations bound by common interests. The media has been radically democratised and football has been influenced to as great an extent as any other worldwide pastime or profession.

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Posted by: Guest Authors Posted under: Social Media Comments: 1

Written by Chris Nee, the editor of twofootedtackle Blog Network and a social media planner at Porter Novelli.

Many of you will have come across PR people in your football writing careers and may have developed positive or negative perceptions of the industry and its people based on those experiences. Here at Football Media we’d like to help you make the most of your relationship with PR.

Public relations is the marketing discipline which looks after a company, brand or individual’s contact with – and image in – the media. While the digital age has ignited a frantic landgrab between a number of disciplines, PR can be said to own many of the key areas including media relations and, increasingly, blogger relations. It is also making strides in search, social media and other growing areas of the new marketing mix.

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Posted by: Guest Authors Posted under: Football Business, Promotion Comments: 2

England play Ukraine in a World Cup Qualifier (they’re not going to stop just because England have qualified, you know) on October 10 (10/10).

The reason this is news for other than footballing reasons is because the match will not be shown live on TV – instead, it will be shown online as an exclusive Internet-only offering.

Why is this not on the telly, you ask?

The media rights to the game were sold to Kentaro (a sports rights company) by the Ukrainian FA. Kentaro in turn sold on the rights to Setanta, but after their collapse the rights reverted back to Kentaro. Instead of trying to sell the rights again to a TV channel, Kentaro decided to trial an online-only format for this game, and have partnered with Perform (who already have experience in selling premium video content online) to execute this idea.

Kentaro has had no offers from UK free to air or pay-TV broadcasters and has decided to seek the widest possible online audience.

Will it work? Kentaro believe that it will, and Perform have put their significant weight behind the idea of charging for streaming live matches online (as well as highlight packages) through their Omnisport.tv portal for quite some time.

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Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Business Comments: 6

by Adrian Clarke

I’d always imagined FIFA’s Zurich headquarters to be vast and ever-so-slightly space-age in its design and it didn’t disappoint me on either count when my taxi pulled up with little over 15 minutes to spare before Coca-Cola’s official launch of their sponsorship of the 2010 World Cup.

Tucked away high in the hills that drape over the beautifully quaint Swiss city, the well guarded home of world football’s governing body is every bit as perfectly immaculate, tranquil and modern as I expected. A vast reception, the size of half a football pitch greets visitors and it is here that I perused a gleaming trophy cabinet holding ten of their 11 major international prizes (the World Cup was missing) before being whisked upstairs in an ultra modern lift to the spectacular second floor auditorium.

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Posted by: Guest Authors Posted under: Football Business Comments: 1