Football fandom in the multi-platform world: Andreas Christensen’s SuperOne is ready to step in

SuperOne's founder, Andreas Christensen realized a few years ago, that traditional TV sports broadcasting is in decline. New-age platforms, driven by social media, are on the ascendant. This is the world in which the modern football fan lives and breathes. This realization was actually the very beginning of the Andreas Christensen’s SuperOne Fandom Metaverse we know today!

Access to a large flat-screen TV and a costly subscription service is largely irrelevant to the scope of their fandom and overall appreciation of the sport. In the complex, piecemeal jigsaw of contemporary content consumption, football action can be soaked up in a multitude of ways:

• Live illegal streams advertised by other fans on Reddit
• Goals relayed through Twitter as “near-live” events
• Highlight packages after the event on YouTube
• Free streams offered as sweeteners on betting platforms

The display quality of screens on even mid-range smartphones is now so good that a fan can even take the game with them wherever they go with minimal cost and maximum convenience. The global breadth of the game, in which millennials from Africa, India, and the Far East alike have latched onto the appeal of the big European clubs like Manchester United and Barcelona, has exploded.

A real alternative to NFL in America

Football is even weaning young Americans off the traditional diet of NFL, ice hockey, basketball, and baseball. “With domestic sports brands like NFL experiencing an identity crisis at the grassroots level, ‘soccer’ is well placed to increase its following amongst young Americans.” In essence, it is very easy to be a football fan.

It is very easy to follow a particular team closely, not only if they are based on the other side of the world from you but EVEN if they don’t play in one of the major leagues around the world, and geographical/family influence on your choice of team are dwindling.

In most suburbs of north London in the years surrounding Arsenal’s undefeated campaign of 2003–04, the local kids wore Arsenal kits to their Saturday training sessions in their hundreds. These days, with the “Gunners” slipping towards mediocrity, the red-and-white kit is almost a novelty. It’s just one of a sea of strips that might include the all-red of Liverpool, the blue and red stripes of Barcelona or the black and white of Juventus.

Choices, choices, choices

After doing a lot of market research, Superone's founder, Andreas Christensen found out that the millennial generation has lots of things to count on when choosing which team to pledge allegiance to (a selection they are likely to have made as a child, in truth). They want their club to tick several of the following boxes:

• Contemporary success to bask in
• History (how many trophies have you got?)
• Spending power — transfer market activity
• Peer authority (do any of my friends support them?)
• Ethical reputation (does the club have “good” values)

So if multi-platform media distribution helps create a huge, expectant audience, clubs need to find ways of steering potential new fans their way, rather than towards a rival. How do they do it? In essence, there is a conveyor belt they need to join and it generally involves money.

Very few clubs are able to dine at the top table without an eye-watering injection of cash from a megarich owner. Assuming that box is ticked, what’s next? Fan engagement is key. And it’s not just about retweeting fans, inviting them to enter competitions on Instagram, or giving them exclusive content on Facebook.

Case study: Everton putting in the groundwork

Everton is an example of a club that was huge in the 1980s but has lost the local argument to Liverpool of late given their rival’s remarkable recent run of success. It needs to work hard to stop fans from turning their backs on the blue half of Merseyside to join the Reds.

Everton’s official charity is famed for its social programs that support the local community, it boasts a 96.7% annual season ticket retention rate, and has a record number of fans on the waiting list. It has a complex customer relationship management system that allows it to run personalized emails and automated communications including birthday messages from players to fans.

These generate an open rate of 45%, about 20 times the typical open rate for a marketing email. Everton even announces big club news via personalized emails. And sometimes the little things count the most. For the first home game of the 2019–20 season, Everton gave a goodie bag to every new season ticket holder aged 13 and under.

The club cannot afford to rest on its laurels. The proposed £500m stadium, due to be opened in 2023, will increase seating capacity from 39,000 to 52,000. At the moment, the club needs to maintain its dynamic marketing strategy to ensure those new seats can be easily filled when the time comes.

SuperOne: Building a platform before game launch

Andreas Christensen and SuperOne are a bit like Everton. He has worked very hard to build a community of like-minded people pushing towards the launch of a game that has the power to be a transformative presence in the lives of football fans.

The SuperOne community is putting the world’s most popular sport at the forefront of its game and it sees millennials brought up on mobile gaming as its key target. But it has opted to be patient. It has spent time gathering some of the best affiliate marketing minds in the world — and they are enticed not just by the exciting potential of the game itself but the direct ownership model that gives them a stake in SuperOne.

Just like Everton doing the hard work now ahead of their new stadium launch in 2023, Andreas Christensen’s SuperOne is not resting until the force of our business partners is fully equipped and in position. After that, it’s party time!