Social Media Best Practices: European Soccer

Social media is constantly changing, which means teams must do so in order to stay relevant for fans. To make your life easier, we’ve put together a cheat-sheet on some of the best practices we’ve seen from European soccer during the 2022/2023 season.

Action Shot Photography

While action shots may not always be picture perfect, it’s essential for teams to post them — especially when displaying their jersey sponsors. Some of the top performing content on social media for soccer are action shots because they are an exciting part of the game. Teams can use these moments as opportunities to gain exposure for partners. The more exposure across social media, the more value teams drive for sponsors. Here are some great examples from FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, FC Bayern München, FC Internazionale, and Paris Saint-Germain where the jerseys are front and center in the frame.

TikTok Trends

If your team is not on TikTok, run, don’t walk, to create an account. TikTok is rising exponentially across professional sports, and soccer is no exception. TikTok allows teams to post unique short videos of in-game highlights, BTS footage, player interviews, and more. The social platform has made soccer and its star athletes more accessible than ever for fans across the world. 

To succeed on this app, you need to be on top of trending content. Influencers earn top engagement by using trending TikTok ‘sounds’ and jumping on content themes. Check out this post from Manchester United that received over 854K engagements by using the “If we were a…” content and sound trend.

TikTok Challenges
A distinctive feature of TikTok is the challenges. Whether it’s dancing or showing off a player’s skills, the teams are always up to try something. For example, Real Betis got their entire stadium dancing to ‘Despechá’ by Rosalia.

Content Series Sponsorships

Sponsored content scenes are utilized by the top teams in Europe, many of which use Blinkfire. These teams create significant revenue streams from their top performing content series because they can show their value using Blinkfire’s Scene Value Report. 

Soccer shares similar social content scenes to other top sports, including action, score graphic, birthday, and training. One scene that is unique to European soccer is player arrival. While American athletes come to games dressed up in the hottest fashion, European soccer players normally wear their team gear and warmups, which feature team sponsors. This creates another great opportunity for teams to capture sponsors in engaging content.

Valencia CF’s player arrival scene gives visibility to several sponsors by using the team bus that drops players off at the stadium on a game day.

As the soccer continues, we’ll continue to update you on best practices we see as well as best practices from other sports like hockey, basketball, and baseball.

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