Arsenal and Man City show that football clubs are becoming content curators too

It’s all about curating news, at the moment.

Not only does it seem like Facebook and Twitter have become curators of all of the day’s news, but sports teams are at it, too.

In a world where there is so much information coming at you from all angles, it feels like catching up on what you’ve missed is becoming a bigger job than staying abreast of it all in the first place.

In a week where we’ve seen Arsenal hook up with Amazon to bring fans of their club news and match build-up – as well as live commentary and post-match analysis – straight into their homes via Amazon Echo, it’s becoming clear that keeping your fans in the loop is no longer just a job for the press release or even the Twitter feed. It’s no longer just your own country you have to worry about either.

From the likes of Bayern Munich creating a dedicated US Twitter account to Borussia Dortmund Tweeting in Japanese, football clubs clearly understand their worldwide fanbase – or at least that they have one. But just engaging on social media is no longer enough: fans around the world aren’t just devotees of a club they have no connection to, they’re fans just as London-based fans of, say, Arsenal might be.

This week, Manchester City announced a partnership with Chinese content company BNN which will see the club get its content onto the Xinhua news app – one of China’s biggest news outlets.

Whilst there’s more to the partnership than that – such as the development of a coaching programme or prizes like trips for Chinese fans – it’s the fact that the club are creating content specifically for a Chinese audience is the next step.

Sports teams are beginning to understand that their fans want more and more news coming out of the club, and when it comes to the Premier League, there is so much of it, and it’s such a big job to find all of it.

Curating it, then, may be the best gift a club can give its fans.

About author

Chris McMullan
Chris McMullan 831 posts

Chris is a sports journalist and editor of Digital Sport - follow him on Twitter @CJMcMullan_

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