Football Media

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

There’s a football bloggers / writers meetup happening in London next week, Wednesday (yes, the night of the England-Croatia game).

Kick off is at 7pm and those fine folk at Football3s are putting on some food and drink while we watch England qualify for the World Cup.

More details / register here: http://socratesmeetup.blogspot.com/.
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Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Blogging Comments: 0

Championship Manager and IMScouting have signed a strategic partnership that will give Championship Manager access to IMScouting’s player data, which comprises detailed information on hundreds of thousands of different players from major professional football leagues in the world.

CM will use this information to ensure a much higher level of detail on players across the world, adding more depth to the CM playing experience.

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

This competition is now closed.

The 09/10 Football Media Fantasy Football league is now open for business.

There are a host of prizes to win, it’s free to join and it’s based on the popular and very easy to use premier league fantasy football game.

How To Play

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

Shiny Media went into adminstration recently – and the fallout has been less than ideal.

There have been reports that Shiny Media had already been bought before this happened, but as things stand the jobs of many bloggers and freelancers are in limbo and access to MovableType, on which most SM sites were running on, was shut down as well.

What does this have to do with football? Shiny Media used to own Who Ate All The Pies – and still host the website despite having sold it to Anorak Media – and access to Pies has been lost along with access to other Shiny Media sites.

Chief blogger / founder Oliver Irish explains:

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

Many of you already know that Football Media is more than just a blog about football business – we also provide consulting to other football businesses and on top of that we’re also a network of football blogs.

Apart from Soccerlens and Republik of Mancunia, our network also boasts of mainstream sites like Soccer News as well as team-specific blogs like Red Rants and Anfield Red.

We’ve added a few new sites to the network over the last few months and I’d like to extend a formal welcome to them – I hope you will visit their websites and add them to your RSS readers:

Gunner Central – Arsenal news blog written by Aidan – refreshingly honest and balanced for a football fan.
Arsenal FC Blog – The #1 Australian Arsenal blog – written by ‘Spanish Fry’, also boasts a podcast and a very active Facebook following.
The Chelsea Blog – TCB was voted the best new blog in 2008.
Aston Villa Blog – a collaborative effort by Aston Villa fans.

Bloggers – thank you for joining Football Media and as we’ve done with ROM and RR (and with NUFC Blog and FCB News before their departure), we’re going to make sure that your blogs are in the top 3 fan sites for your clubs in the next year.

We’re going to open the doors to the Blog Network next month and I’ll be putting up more details on what criteria we use to accept sites into the network and what the terms and responsibilities are for all sides. Stay tuned.

You can see all Football Media sites here.

Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Site News Comments: 1

For football publishers, the big money is to made in four areas – football betting, live online football, football tickets and football gear.

We’ve talked about different monetization strategies in general but with dwindling advertising budgets and companies focusing more and more on performance-based advertising, these four are the way to go if you want to make serious money from your football site.

This is part one of a four part series where we cover each of these topics in more detail and show you how to target your audience to get them to spend money with you. For this article I asked Russell Wall, Soccerlens’ resident betting expert, to tell us more about the different type of football fans that are attracted to betting and how to target each group individually.

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Posted by: Guest Authors Posted under: Football Betting, Football Business Comments: 0

Setanta’s recent financial troubles have been splashed all over the press and the fallout from the TV company going bust could be considerable, not least for the SPL where several clubs rely on TV income to keep them afloat.

Yesterday I received an email saying that Setanta had paused all their online marketing acitivity as a result of their uncertain future. I posted this on twitter and some people questioned the source, so here is the email (sent to the Subside Sports affiliate list on AffiliateWindow.com).

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Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Business Comments: 2

So you want your football blog to make more money / get more readers / get more comments / get better search rankings / help you meet football players.

To be honest, when it comes to blogging about football, my first and foremost motivation has always been ‘just talking to friends about football’, but I’ve been lucky enough to have built a decent business around that motivation. I’ve seen many good football bloggers build kickass blogs over the last 3 years, but I’ve also seen some very good people fail despite their best efforts because they didn’t know what to do.

It doesn’t have to be that way. You can, and you should, get help when needed (provided that you’re willing to follow the advice given to you).

Soccerlens and Football Media have done well, but I know I could be doing more to improve them. If you’re like me and you want to improve your blog (football, personal or otherwise), I recommend that you do the following:

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Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Blogging Comments: 2

Over the last week, three different football brands blogs launched their football tshirts:

• Dirty Tackle
• Soccerlens (This shirt was sent out to Soccerlens readers as a Christmas present last year).
• Studs Up

Both Dirty Tackle and Studs Up have set up shop with WhoAreYaDesigns.com, while Soccerlens went with Subside Sports.

I talked at length about making money blogging about football but the harsh reality is that the way most football bloggers blog is a) for fun, not for money and b) not at all conducive to selling betting, tickets or live online football subscriptions.

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Posted by: Ahmed Bilal Posted under: Football Business Comments: 1