I keep reflecting on the experience I had. Let’s put some context. This event is a football match in which two teams of content generators led by DJMariio face each other in a sports setting to be witnessed live by thousands of fans and broadcast live on YouTube where millions more can follow the actions. .
The historic stadium of “La Romareda” witnessed this soccer game that brought together more than 15 thousand fans with paid tickets and the streaming video has more than 4 million views in three days. If we translate it numerically and without being exact, the transmission on YouTube is equivalent to between three and four rating points (RTG) in Mexico, something that some teams do not even reach on open television.
I have heard many times that children and young people are no longer interested in football. However, what I saw tells me the opposite. If they are interested, as long as you offer it in the right format and engage their interests and passions.
The sport, if it manages to place a fan in the understanding of it and gives him enough repetitions, he will manage to win it because the sport has natural emotions with which any human can connect. The issue is that those first approximations are no longer as simple as they used to be.
Seeing so many kids, youth and families at the stadium made me wonder, do they just come to see their favorite generators? Will they be able to get excited about players who are certainly not professionals? And I got the answers from the same audience: they chanted the plays, they got excited with a dribble, they sighed with a promising play, they lamented the missed shot, they jubilantly celebrated a score and applauded the effort. That is, they were able to get excited about the game.
There is something more here than the simple affirmations that we usually make. I also had to see the debauchery of young people to have a photo or even a greeting from their idols. Tears of emotion, screams, the “fandom” to everything that gives. The event had everything it needed: Idols, an exciting sport, sponsors, production, etc. So what we can preliminarily conclude is that the components of values and emotions are still valid, and that is something that I will not tire of affirming: sport has universal values that transcend time.
The theme is more about the content and the show. These content generators ended up putting on a great show for their audiences. They moved the online experience to an offline experience that makes them feel that they are very close to their fans. For this reason, the popularity of personalities such as Ibai Llanos (who was one of the casters of the event) has skyrocketed and even the sports celebrities themselves value him more than a traditional medium.
This reminds me of what happened with the music industry: Napster, imesh, limewire, etc., were a disruptive element that shook the industry that did not know how to react initially to the technology that allowed sharing digital files (in the case of songs, the famous mp3), everything led to a change that today we consume in the form of subscriptions such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc.
Sport, as an industry, has to understand that these new generations have a very different way of consuming entertainment. It is time to start thinking about Official Casters of the teams, presenters/conductors of the content generated by the clubs, light content mixing own and external assets, for example players + content generators of the sponsoring brands on a regular and constant basis. . Define when to make short content for TikTok and when you can stream on Twitch for several hours. Incorporate Gaming and eSports as an essential component of the “content mix”. Because this is how these new generations consume content. It’s time to put a face to the essence of each club. This represents challenges and breaking paradigms, and it will not be easy for many to understand. Like everything, it will take time, but the innovators and winners are those who dare.
It’s not rocket science, you just have to see what works and how to implement it. And four million views on a video, more than 15,000 people gathered in a stadium to watch amateur soccer players play, say it loudly.