From Haaland to Messi: How teams announce the arrival of star players

The departure of Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund (BVB) has been one of European soccer’s the soap operas of the season. The young striker has a promising career ahead of him, and the club that managed to get hold of him would be signing a player with great potential. Manchester City was the lucky winner, so we wanted to analyze the team’s announcement of Haaland’s arrival across the British club’s social networks.

The Sky Blues confirmed Erling Haaland’s arrival through a post where the Norwegian striker wore his old team’s kit (Borussia Dortmund). The post was shared on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook — where the Manchester City has more than 90 million followers. Those 15 posts received 75.9 million impressions, 3.4 million engagements, and €1.9 million in media value for BVB’s kit mater Puma and front of kit sponsor 1&1 IONOS. Man City’s jersey sponsor Etihad was noticeably absent.

Since the beginning of the 2021-2022 season, dating back to July 1, 2021, Borussia generated 13.8K engagements per post for their front of jersey sponsor. The 15 posts shared by Man City earned an average of 222K engagements per post, 16 times more than BVB.

Star trades — What should teams do on social media?

A team’s social networks are a powerful platform, allowing them to reach their fans and supporters throughout the world. Because teams have control of their content, when they land star players it’s a perfect time to celebrate and take advantage of the fandom. What we see many teams do with new player announcements: make sure the newly acquired player is donning the team’s jersey and not the former team’s. This gives offers opportunity to give jersey sponsors top value earned media exposure.

Let’s take a look at how Real Madrid, PSG, and Manchester United announced the signings of David Alaba, Leo Messi, and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Leo Messi to PSG

Ronaldo to Manchester United

David Alba to Real Madrid