Guest Post: Matt Briggs, sport PR and social professional and editor of The Online Rule, takes a look at Jermaine Defoe’s transfer to Toronto FC on behalf of NineteenEightyFour.

It had been in the pipeline for some time but there’s little doubt that Jermaine Defoe’s move to Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC provoked discussion in both the UK and the US.  As far as transfers go it was the biggest the league had seen since David Beckham decided to see out the final years of his career in Beverly Hills and knowing they’d pulled off a coup the Reds’ media team got to work immediately.

The club tasked creative agency Sid Lee with creating a series of TV spots in the build-up to the announcement of Defoe’s capture, which showed Londoners spitting their drinks all over their newspapers, themselves and others upon hearing the news.  It’s a ‘bloody big deal’ we were told, but did the transfer and subsequent campaign really capture the imagination of the internet’s football supporting fraternity?

While the will he/won’t he speculation meant the official announcement wasn’t a huge surprise for those supporters with their ear close to the ground, the first statement confirming Defoe’s signature still generated a lot of traction.  On Twitter the announcement of his arrival was engaged with a total of 231 times in the week since it was posted.  This far exceeds what the club could usually expect to generate, with the announcement of Brazilian striker Gilberto’s signing one month earlier only replied to, retweeted or favourited 89 times and the capture of US international Michael Bradley’s arrival 168.  It was a similar story on Facebook where the post celebrating Defoe’s arrival was engaged with a total 374 times.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/I6VtbRZkCf4[/youtube]

Toronto FC supporters really began to respond when the club shared the first images of Jermaine Defoe landing in the city.  A snap of the striker meeting the media at Toronto Pearson International was liked, commented on and shared by over 2,880 people on Facebook while another 1,150 also engaged with the image when it was shared on Twitter.  Those are pretty staggering figures for a club which only had an average attendance of 18,131 during the previous season.

With such a huge news story enveloping the club the popularity of Toronto’s social media channels have received a nice boost too.  Analysis from SportSocial shows that from the 8th until the 15th January, the week in which the Bloody Big Deal TV spots first aired and Defoe’s transfer was finally announced the club saw a 7% increase in the number of Twitter followers.  On Facebook the response was slightly more modest but still impressive, with the club seeing a 3% rise in the number of page likes.

One explanation for the disparity in increases between Twitter and Facebook could be how Toronto handled the transfer.  Defoe’s arrival was treated as a developing story rather than a one off event, with almost his every move chronicled by the club’s media team on their social platforms, a type of coverage which is better suited to Twitter than Facebook.

One of the best ways to gauge how much chatter this deal created is by checking out the #TFClive hashtag, which is used dutifully by the club and supporters on Twitter.  Over the past month 4,795 tweets had been sent using #TFClive with a whopping 92% of them between 8th and 15th January, the period during which the transfer was finalised and announced.

This was further helped by the city’s other franchises, all of which are owned by the same Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment as Toronto FC, as they got on board and helped generate buzz amongst their fans who may not have a keen interest in football.  It’s clear that this wasn’t just a club-only event, it was a citywide event.

A search for the player himself shows an even greater amount of attention.  This was big news outside the city of Toronto too.  There were over 100,000 mentions of the striker after the announcement of his move to Canada, accounting for 76% of chat about Jermaine Defoe over the whole of the past month.

As you might expect with a video-led campaign YouTube has also been a hive of activity.  The Bloody Big Deal video in which Defoe was announced as a Toronto FC player has been viewed over 100,000 times in just a week, making it the most popular on the club’s official YouTube page by quite some distance.  Of the top 10 most popular videos that the club has uploaded four are part of the Bloody Big Deal campaign.

The success of Defoe’s transfer and the Bloody Big Deal campaign has been threefold.  The move has not just resulted in an unprecedented amount of attention and engagement for one of Major League Soccer’s less fashionable clubs, but has had a demonstrable impact offline too.  The club saw season ticket sales go from 15% to 92% as a result of the deal.  Not bad.

Furthermore the capture of an England international has been another resounding success for the MLS brand, helping reinforce the league’s position as one of the biggest and best outside of Europe.  Additionally, as highlighted earlier, due to the club sharing ownership with Toronto’s other clubs they were able to increase exposure and turn what could’ve just been a celebration for the club into a celebration for city.

So far everything Defoe has touched has turned to gold; Toronto FC will be hoping that he has a similar impact on the pitch as he has had online.