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.

PR and you

The PR industry is ever-evolving and becoming increasingly versatile and complex. But from our side of any partnership with public relations, it effectively has two roles. First, it should respond to incoming requests for news, comment, review items or content. Its second role is proactive and is the “selling-in” of news items or feature proposals to media titles. Within both there are nuances, but most contact with PR (outside genuine relationship-building activity which is all too rare) falls into one of these categories.

The football media being as it is, it’s most likely that you will be contacted proactively on most occasions, and this is where PR’s perception often suffers. It can involve cold-calling and blind emailing – it’s not sales, because they want you to write rather than buy, but it can feel obtrusive nonetheless.

However, unless you’re interested in commenting only on events on the field, you’re probably better off cultivating a good rapport with at least a few PR contacts. Despite their job dictating that they must send you an unsolicited email once in a while, the vast majority are very sharp, very smart and – whisper it – very useful (disclosure: I work for a global PR agency, but not in a media relations role). This is because they can send you a note when they have juicy content and also because of their reactive role.

PR, Football Media and you

With that in mind, it’s good to know who you might want to get in touch with and who might want to get in touch with you. But just to make matters a little more complicated most brands of all sizes will be looked after by an agency, and this is no different for football brands. Often there is no easy way to work out which agency looks after a company’s PR, so to make things run more smoothly we have decided to open a collaborative database for brands and their agencies.

You can view the document here, and it has also been embedded below.

The first column is a list of brands which are either directy involved or somehow synonymous with football. The next two columns contain the names of PR agencies which look after those brands. In most cases these slots are currently occupied by either the global or UK agencies, but it is important to be aware that there may be other agencies involved. It is a complex industry characterised by complex structures.

Just to add another layer of confusion, we’ve also included a column for media buying agencies. These are the guys who buy your advertising space and get you involved in affiliate marketing. Again, we think this information is useful.

Caveats

Please note that this list is not perfect. It does not contain every football brand, a few of the agency details will be out of date (companies change agencies all the time, for a variety of reasons) and in some cases the brands will have different agencies for each area of their business. As such, amendments to the list may be required. There is also the issue of geography, and having been initiated in the UK the list will contain mostly UK or global partners. There are also many gaps, left in as “would like to know” items. Sorry about that.

The simple fact of the matter is that the only way to guarantee the veracity of this information is for it to be added as a result of recent and up-to-date experience. It’s not easy to accurately find out which PR agency a company uses for its football brand without (a) it having recently changed, (b) having been contacted directly already or (c) just knowing. That’s where you come in.

Why, with imperfect information, have we gone ahead and published the spreadsheet? Because we think this will benefit from being a collaborative effort. We can only add in what we know from having been contacted and what we could establish from the very sketchy information available from educated Googling. So let’s help each other. You can edit the document above with changes or additions, and we’d be grateful if you did.

How to update the grid

Here is your step-by-step guide to adding your information:

1. Sign into Google. If you don’t have a Google account, you really should sign up. It has some superb tools for bloggers and writers and definitely comes with my seal of approval
2. Click on this link to access the spreadsheet. Everybody with a Google account has editing rights
3. Add/edit the brand name in the first column, the PR agencies in the next two, or the media buying agency in the fourth. If you’ve been contacted directly by any of these brands, please state “In-House”
4. If you are adding a brand, please add your name to final two columns. If you are editing an existing item, please add your name to the final column only
5. Click “File” and then “Save & Close”
6. What’s in it for you? The bottom of this post will include a (hopefully) growing list of acknowledgements. When you edit the spreadsheet, please leave a comment here and we will add your chosen site to the list. Furthermore, you can be satisfied in the knowledge that you have helped others

We hope this document can develop into a really useful tool for football writers everywhere but we can’t do it without you. If you have any comments or suggestions, please get in touch. Happy hunting!

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.

As reported in the Guardian earlier this month, Kentaro and Perform approached a handful of online newspaper websites to strike a deal where the publishers would be able to stream the live coverage free of charge and would receive a share of the revenue generated from the event. Perform (Omnisport) generates revenues through pre- and post- ad rolls in their video content, and this model in simple terms is their standard affiliate agreement that they have in place at Omnisport.tv. This would also mean that newspaper websites would be charging their viewers to see the game on their websites.

According to Simon Denyer, chief executive of Perform, the biggest UK newspaper websites have a combined audience of around 24 million users. To give you an idea of how those numbers stack up, the Football Media network has a combined audience of about 5 million users.

“The strategy is to have around 10 big publishers with [sites] which have between 2 and 5 million unique users in the UK,” Denyer said.

According to Perform, the Ukraine-England game will be a one-off event and not be channeled through Omnisport. The game gets its own website – www.ukrainevengland.com – and the marketing push for the event will go live starting 5th October, with the initial (early-bird) pricing pegged at only £4.99.

£4.99 for a no-consequence qualifier? There’s a significant debate here around whether rights holders in football should be turning to the Internet to offer legitimate premium content (discussed in detail elsewhere on this site), but for me the initial sticking point will be the price. You can buy an year-long subscription to ‘illegal’ streams for £9.99. For as many games as you want to watch, from around the world.

Compared to that, charging £4.99 for a game doesn’t make it a great deal for fans to ’switch’ over. But then again, they’re not targeting the hardcore fan – they’re after those fans making the transition from TV to Internet.

And in that scenario, £4.99 is nothing.

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.

Here, sat flanked my a hundred or so other invited media guests from all corners of the globe, we watched ESPN broadcaster Ray Stubbs host a 90 minute presentation from Coca-Cola that involved FIFA president Sepp Blatter, Coca-Cola chairman Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola’s chief marketing officer Joe Tripodi, FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke and Cameroon legend Roger Milla. The event was organised to launch their 86 nation six month World Cup trophy tour, their sponsorship of the ‘Best Player Goal Celebration’ award for next summer’s World Cup finals, their new catchy anthem, as well as Coca-Cola’s marketing campaign for next summer’s tournament.

Interesting speeches from all five distinguished guests interspersed a slick and informative presentation which included a special guest appearance from the ‘real’ World Cup trophy itself. Admittedly, my eyes were constantly drawn towards the trophy I, and most other boys, dreamed of one day lifting, but in between periodic flashes of John Terry lifting it above his head next July, I did attempt to concentrate on the proceedings in hand!

Highlights included Sepp Blatter squirming at a number of tricky questions from the floor, his microphone failing to work and a comical, albeit slightly embarrassed Roger Milla attempting to recreate his famous 1990 celebration dance around a strategically placed corner flag! It was nevertheless an impressive launch.

After acquiring an obligatory souvenir snap of myself with the World Cup trophy (while being watched intently by a ‘gloved’ security guard just in case I ran off with it!) I was whisked upstairs to interview African legend Milla. It was particularly satisfying to be granted the second one-on-one of the day, shortly behind FourFourTwo and it was indeed a pleasure to speak with the amiable 57-year-old – via a translator – who gave an animated and interesting interview, which can be found here on Soccerlens.

A lovely buffet in the cafeteria adjacent to a stunning full size pitch followed (with a selection of delightfully fancy desserts my own personal favourites) and before I knew it, it was time to go home, leaving Mr Blatter and co to get back to their day job overseeing the world’s greatest sport.

by Adrian Clarke

World football’s greatest football trophy is set to embark on its longest ever global tour, with FIFA and the Coca-Cola Company taking the real solid-gold trophy to 86 countries on a 225-day journey that will allow thousands of fans to enjoy a rare close-up view of the authentic World Cup Trophy.

“Through this event, we are really engaging football fans on a global scale, giving them the unique opportunity to have their picture taken with the most prestigious prize in world football and to embrace the excitement surrounding the FIFA World Cup,” said Sep Blatter.

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/.

I’ll be there representing Soccerlens and Football Media, if you’re planning on being there, hit me up on twitter or our FB Football Writers Group and we’ll catch up next Wednesday.

If you want to join us, please e-mail socrates[at]the-onion-bag[dot]com.

Venue details:
“The Open Sauce”
Mint Digital
W125-127 Westminster Business Square
1 Durham Street
Vauxhall
London
SE11 5JH

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.

IMScouting.com is being used by football professionals such as scouts, managers, coaches and agents across Europe looking to get an edge over their rivals in finding the “next big thing” in football. The service blends updated information, including injuries, estimated market value and skills ratings, with an advanced search engine that is the first of its kind in the world of scouting for professional footballers.

IMScouting will gain a lot of exposure (and to some extent, legitimacy) from this deal and will be hoping that it helps generate more interest in their paid service.

Championship Manager, who position themselves as the ‘original’ football management simulation, now have another angle to help them against Football Manager – more ‘authentic’ and more ‘detailed’ player information. It’s also a not-so-subtle shot against one of Football Manager’s most trumpted marketing angles – that the game is used by managers and scouts to check out players before signing them.

Now Championship Manager can use the IMScouting partnership to gain an edge over Football Manager in that department, and if the game does gain penetration in that sector, it will only help IMScouting become a more legitimate source for scouting.

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

1. Visit fantasy.premierleague.com and sign in (if you’ve never registered at the site before, click on this link to register). Depending on your account history, you might need to add your team and pick your team colors before moving to the next step.

2. After logging in click the ‘Leagues’ link in the left navigation panel, enter the Football Media league code (see step 3 for how to obtain the code) in the ‘Join a League’ text box and click the ‘Join League’ button.

3. Get the league code by signing up to the Football Media Fantasy Football newsletter:

That’s it. You’re good to go. If you’re new to fantasy football, read this excellent introduction to fantasy football games.

Let’s get started already – come on in and sign up!

Prizes

The following prizes are offered by Football Media and apply only to members of the Football Media fantasy football league:

1st Prize

The winner will receive:

• An authentic signed football shirt of their choice from Icons.
• The latest football boot of their choice from SoccerPro.
• A Soccerlens Evolution T-Shirt.

Monthly Prize

At the start of every month Football Media (in association with Subside Sports) will give away a free shirt (up to £39.99 + delivery in value) to one lucky player in the FM fantasy football league. This player will be picked at random and there are 9 shirts to give away in total (Sep to May).

The following prizes are offered by Fantasy Premier League and apply to overall winners.

1st Prize

The overall winner of Fantasy Premier League 2009/10 will win a VIP trip for two to a Barclays Premier League match (the identity of which is determined by The Premier League) featuring a team of the successful player’s choice. The Winner’s Prize includes travel, two nights’ hotel accommodation, two match tickets, pre-match meal and £250 spending money.

Monthly Prize

This season the person who finishes top of the monthly leaderboard will be declared Manager of the Month and will win a digital camera, an mp3 player, and a Premier League club replica kit of the Winner’s choice.

Sign up today.

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:

Anorak Media owns Who Ate All the Pies outright, but there was an arrangement made for Shiny to host Pies for a short period – no more than a few months – after the sale was completed. The site is set to be moved to a new, non-Shiny server later this year.

That move is unlikely to happen now, given that Shiny Media is in administration and legally everything on their servers is now unaccessible to current (former?) staff or to Anorak Media.

It is understood that a new company, imaginatively called Shiny Digital, and owned by a combination of Shiny Media’s founders and a venture capital company, is poised to take over the company’s assets.

But a disagreement with a minority shareholder has seen one director have his mobile phone and email switched off and blocked, and as Ollie suggests, this has also extended to limiting access to blog software for whoateallthepies, which remains in limbo.

“As editor of Who Ate All the Pies, I currently have no access to the site.

I am locked out effectively because of the dispute between Shiny and the ‘minority shareholder’, which is incredibly frustrating – not to mention costly – as Pies is not involved in said dispute.”

And while the blogosphere will (and already has on Twitter) rally around Pies, public pressure is unlikely to have an impact on the situation.

Ollie:

“Unfortunately I don’t think public pressure will resolve this. Pies is caught in the middle of something that may well end up in the law courts.”

I hope that access to Pies is restored this month or that they are allowed to move the site away to a new web-host soon enough. Ollie has done a great job dragging Pies back to life in the last couple of months after it went dormant last year, and another long wait will push them back to square one.

As blog networks go – and this applies to individual blogs as well – here’s a good article to read on businesses in decline and how to deal with them the right way.

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.

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.

You can divide the football betting audience into three types – the newbie, the semi-regular and the veteran.

The Newbie

His reason for gambling is due to a couple of factors, most importantly he has money he’s willing to spend on gambling. The new bettor will most definitely look for the free betting offers (promo codes, etc) to get him going. That’s why this group is a bit easier to hit. They’ll literally go where the best promotions are and bet there. Once they lose their money (and they will), they’ll look for the next best promotion to get them going again.

Free money is king to this bettor, and that’s why you’ll see the most popular betting promotions focusing on this segment – easy come, easy go, lather, rinse and repeat.

What makes them so great

So long as we have good promotions they’ll flock like bees to honey. It’s just a matter of giving this group new promotions on a monthly or every two month basis to keep them opening new accounts. They have little to no knowledge of money management, so I’d say it’ll take them about a week or so to lose it all and add more money to their account.

What makes them not-so-great

They’re usually skint and don’t bring in much when opening an account. Other than that this is probably the easiest group to hit.

Anyone who helps new bettors to learn how to make money is also likely to get them to start putting more money into their betting account.

The Semi-regular

This is usually someone who’s bet before, won big and is now looking to make another run. That initial run is the equivalent to getting your first high and then trying to recreate it again. I’ll tell you that only the best will ever be able to do that. They tend to place bigger bets and have a semi-good knowledge of money management.

However, once they get on a losing streak they’ll tend to chase their tail and make some bad bets that end up draining their account. These bettors still look for promotions but, at the same time, also look for good lines. They’re now spending more money and want to have a low vig if they make a large punt.

What makes them so great

They put more in their account and that ends up looking good for the affiliate if they’re opening up a new account. To attract and keep them you’ll need to find a bookmaker that offers good promotions and is fairly reputable – they’ve been around the block a bit and are more choosy when it comes to selecting offers.

What makes them no-so-great

Not much. These are the bettors that we should really target if we want to get this formula right. They spend more and have a tendency to follow good lines and decent promotions. The only problem is that if they find a good book to bet at, chances are then pretty poor that they’ll switch and open an account somewhere else.

The Veteran

Toughest group to get as they usually always have a book in place. They look for the best lines and nothing else. I am in this category and can tell you that once you learn money management and patience, it can be near impossible to get rid of these guys! I can tell you that I wouldn’t be arsed if someone asked me to move books unless they offered me amazing lines couldn’t get anywhere else.

It doesn’t make sense to bet large if a book has inflated lines that don’t go in your favour.

What makes them so great

If you can land one based on quality lines, there’s a good chance he’ll open a very big account.

What makes them no-so-great

Promotions mean absolutely nothing, and in this game that’s what bookmakers use to lure bettors in. You’ll need a strong brand and a solid reputation, along with some great promotions, to reel one of the veterans in.

I hope this helps you do better in your efforts to make money from football betting. If you have any questions let us know in the comments, and remember to subscribe to our rss feed so that you can keep up to date with the latest advice from Football Media.

Written by Russell Wall, introduction by Ahmed Bilal.

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).

Dear All,

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience this causes and thank you for your loyalty and cooperation.”

Does this mean they’re closer to ‘failure’? Of course not, but someone somewhere has obviously made the decision to cut costs as much as possible (remember, Setanta were unable to pay SPL clubs recently) and it’s filtered down to online advertising as well.

For the SPL’s sake, for Setanta’s sake and for their customers’ sake, I hope they pull through and find the investment they need.