England to provide live updates via direct messages during the EUROs

England Football will deliver live updates directly to Twitter users’ inboxes during their match against Wales in Lens on Thursday.

Formally announced on Wednesday, all fans will have to do to receive live direct messaging updates straight from England’s official Twitter account during their matches is to follow @England and send them a direct message saying “Play”. From then on, fans will receive regular updates in their Twitter inbox.

The adoption of the service by the national side comes off the back of a successful season in which Southampton FC implemented the feature. For the EUROs, the service will be available throughout the group stages, right through the knockout round.

The feature will also be available for five other #EURO2016 competing nations, again just follow and DM their team handle: Wales (@FAWales), Northern Ireland (@NorthernIreland), France (@equipedefrance), Spain (@sefutbol), Germany (@TwitterSportDE).

Head of digital communications at the FA Mark Gilbert said that they’re confident the implementation of the feature will be a success.

“The immediacy of Twitter makes it a really useful tool for England fans to keep up-to-date with key moments in matches when they are otherwise unable to do so. We’re confident offering fans goal alerts via direct messages over the platform will go down well with our followers and we’re pleased we can partner with Twitter to do this during Euro 2016.”

One of the most surprising facets of the announcement is that it’s rather rare to see such a big addition to a digital strategy during a tournament with something like this typically part of a team’s digital strategy long before being put to use.

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CORRECTION: On 14/06/2016, Digital Sport suggested that teams stayed away from the direct messaging feature when instead, the feature was not yet available to them

About author

Matt Tewhatu
Matt Tewhatu 155 posts

Matt is the editor of Digital Sport and Chief of Snack Media's rugby division and has a journalistic background both here in UK, Australia and in his native New Zealand. Follow him on Twitter @mtewhatu

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