West Ham: a player social media deepdive

West Ham started trialling ScorePlay as their media asset manager in July 2022 as they looked to upgrade their digital strategy and use the valuable assets at their disposal. They were wasting time searching for photos and videos, missing key opportunities for visual storytelling, and struggling to deliver content to their players and partners to take advantage of their most important ambassadors. They started the 2022/23 season with ScorePlay, the only all-in-one media hub that suited every problem and bottleneck they had.

How they use the platform

From photographer via FTP, all the way to the social and partnership team West Ham saw an opportunity to implement it across their organisation for seamless media collaboration, and ultimate efficiency. Since they started, they have classified and centralised over 45,000 assets using ScorePlay’s AI to tag their partners and athletes. This provides them with a completely searchable and curated library of content that can be accessed at any time. From top to bottom, they have over 50 users on the platform, and over 90 ScorePlay Athlete App users, as the academy, Women’s and Men’s teams all use it to receive their content. For a team full of international stars, it is so important for sports organisations to get the right content at the right time in order to maximise their brand reach and visibility by taking advantage of their biggest ambassadors.

In the 6 months since West Ham joined ScorePlay, their athletes have downloaded over 7,000 assets in just over 10,000 sessions. Their top downloaders include Saïd Benrahma, Nayef Aguerd, Michail Antonio, Jarrod Bowen, Brooke Cairns and Lukas Fabianski - showcasing the international audience West Ham has if they provide them with the best quality assets immediately after games and training sessions. We already examined exactly how this access translates into increased posting here, where you can see the numbers behind the increased posting, club-related posting, and the increased engagement experienced thanks to a more engaged athlete with his fanbase.

‍

Social deep dive

A deep dive into their social media over the past 6 months with ScorePlay shows the value of having a media asset manager that can make you adept on socials with a library of searchable content. One of the reasons ScorePlay worked so hard on perfecting player distribution is that we know that international rosters present a key opportunity for teams. Take for example, the signing of Lucas Paquetá, a Brazilian sensation and international star with a following of over 9 million compared to West Ham’s 2.3M (Instagram). This signing gave West Ham the opportunity to suddenly capture the attention of Brazilian fans, which shows as some of their best performing posts from the last half year have been his first goal (2.6M impressions) and signing announcement (10.7M impressions - Twitter + Instagram). ScorePlay allows them to focus on their digital strategy, and leave the manual tasks for the AI.

During the World Cup, four Hammers went to Qatar to play for their country (Declan Rice, Nayef Aguerd, Lucas Paquetá and Alphonse Areola) representing England, Morocco, Brazil and France. Despite not playing, West Ham were able to get a huge boost in followers (~100K) thanks to their high-performing athletes. Paquetá himself earned over 2M new followers on Instagram over the course of the tournament, while Aguerd earned 700K on Morocco’s run. This shows the value of having an international squad, that can be harnessed and leveraged to grow your own brand - through a solid content strategy powered by ScorePlay.

Overall, since starting to use ScorePlay, West Ham have amassed 500K new followers on Instagram and Twitter, have had 19M engagements, as well as 521M impressions. Interestingly, despite the rise of short-form video, images accounted for 133M impressions compared to 100M for videos, with higher visibility and engagement too - showing the value of a media asset manager designed for both photo and video. West Ham's account grew not only its post-related numbers, but also their social value: their account is now worth more than $11.2M, 7 times what it was worth on the previous period (from January to June 2022).

About ScorePlay

ScorePlay is your best-in-class media solution that provides an automated architecture to centralise, distribute, and classify your digital assets, whether photos, videos, or live broadcasts. We are transforming sports organizations, automating their creative processes and growing their brands and unlocking new revenue. We are the bridge to the future of sports storytelling, from content capture to fan consumption. Automate. Grow. Unlock.

Credits
Photo credit: West Ham United