UEFA vs. European Super League from a Brand Reputation Standpoint

Football (Soccer) aficionados around the globe are reeling from the scorning press release put out by UEFA which warns of potential colossal actions taken against organizations involved with the European Super League. Read it here: https://bit.ly/3dqt9kR

There has been an absolute flurry of events that have happened recently, so bear with me as I try to connect the dots, get you up to speed & pose some important questions around brand reputation. This report is made possible because of Gnowit, the online media monitoring tool with free resources available. Lets take a look at some visuals from the dashboard below. Track the story here as it develops in the software: https://bit.ly/3alJFR6

As we can see from the metrics There has been over 1200 Articles written from 263 Publications. The trend curve for the conversation around the keywords of "UEFA" AND "European Super League" shows a sharp rise. Although some commentaries say it's a long anticipated situation.

So far, the real-world impact of this story includes the sacking of Jose Mourinho, Manchester United standing down from the ECA & Ed Woodward stepping down from UEFA roles. World leaders like Boris Johnson & Emmanuel Macron commenting with their disappointment and the creation of a Multi-Billion Dollar European Football League. Youtube & Social Media posts garnering millions of views and thousands of retweets, not to mention millions of footy fans around the world sitting on pins and needles to see what happens next.

What is coming may include many, many more people losing their jobs. In fact, law suits and grudges may lead to 12 Iconic Football Clubs including the likes of Liverpool FC, Manchester United, Barcelona FC & Real Madrid, all being kicked out of their home and European Leagues steeped in rich history.

Organizations like Tottenham FC, one of the 12 founding members of the new European Super League have put out their press releases to the media & publics. What we are finding are cases where Juventus & Manchester United shares rallying as the situation matures, according to Yahoo Finance. Read here: https://yhoo.it/2QzBJEY

Lets start with some figures around UEFA (Union of Football Associations) the leading European body in the football industry. Above is a visual of the levels of viewership they have, the top 3 being all UEFA related.

Tracking the story, I found a video from Sky Sports News featuring former Manchester United star Gary Neville criticizing the club and their motives, stating that "greed" is prevailing. He suggests an independent body be created to install checks and balances to make sure that the fans aren't taken for a ride any more. The video had 1.2 Million views overnight and counting. Watch it here: https://bit.ly/3x7PCuV

Commentary on social media has split audiences, with so many fans flocking to the various platforms to share their opinions on what is going on. It includes the likes of UFC MMA Star Khabib Nurmagomedov who posted a reaction that I don't really understand (below). I think it does a great job of capturing how flabbergasted this story makes people feel. Imagine people with tattoos that have the Premier League Logo next to the Liverpool logo - that would probably not age well in the impending new abnormal!

Twitter was an excellent source of information on the story as it broke with commentators sharing vital information to help journalists piece together information accordingly. It's building up steam and even trended as #1 for sporting on Twitter for me in my home country of Canada.

The Super League Chairperson, Florentino Perez (Also the chairperson of Real Madrid) shared some statements as well. We can expect more statements coming in due time from other contributors and spokespeople from football commentators, to ex-players, to politicians and influencers alike.

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Now that we're up to speed with what has happened, it's important to start to focus on our mission. As always, we're interested in looking at the media from the perspective of a PR & Communications Practitioner. Evaluating earned media coverage implication across various stakeholder groups - tracking the stories as they gain real world traction in the form of what we call Outputs, Outtakes & Outcomes.

Outputs include metrics like the most shared headlines, volumes of coverage in top tier publications with respect to their UVPM (Unique Visitors Per Month), and understanding which reputational areas of the organizations involved are being activated by each piece of coverage (ie: Staff & Workplace, Financial, Governance, Trust & Affection).

From there we try to understand the Outtakes, which are the ways the publics and various other influential stakeholders change in their thinking. This is the beginning phase of any actions that can be taken as a result, which we call Outcomes.

Some important questions to ask ourselves as we continue to track the coverage:

• Who are the stakeholders involved (other than UEFA & Super League)?
• Who are the primary contributors in coverage? Spokespeople etc?
• What is the share of conversation of each stakeholder?
• What are the main strategic messages that are coming through?
• What influential voices are coming through on Social Media?
• What is the impact on Employment across stakeholder organizations?
• What is the financial implications of this story? There are Billions at stake.

As a PR Practitioner myself, I'm used to seeing crisis events around the world and measuring the impact of these on public perception. But one of the big challenges is to establish a baseline, in other words being able to look in the past and see what the resting state of the coverage looks like is instrumental when checking to see how the needle is moving.

As this story and its repercussions are likely to still unfold as time goes on, the important thing for now is to set up a workflow that makes sense for you. Research accordingly using desktop tools, but also be ready to set up a framework you can slot future events into. This is another pro-tip that will allow you to update your organization in due time.

Setting up a mailing list to keep your team updated is also another important action item on your to-do list as a modern communicator. Set up a distribution channel to share updates with a list of recipients within and linked to your organization. One thing you can do is tag the stories you care about within the Media Monitoring Software and push it using APIs to a place holder on your Mailchimp Emails. This way you can use the design functionality that you love, but also supercharge the content with stories found in the software.

In closing, I just want to re-iterate the need for overriding old metrics like AVEs in reporting and replacing them with more modern standards of evaluation for communicators. The leading body in the world in this discipline has provided an integrated evaluation framework for your consideration as well as a guideline called The Barcelona Principles 3.0. Of course, I'm talking about the higly respected AMEC. If you're not familiar with them, you can read up and explore more here: https://bit.ly/32qDFCz