Bringing Value Through Player Powered Blogs

Athletes are finding ways to offer real value to fans. Nevermind that women’s soccer doesn’t feature much on mainstream media in between the Olympics and the World Cup, there’s a growing trend in soccer players blogging and tweeting their soccer news – essentially becoming the media themselves. Just to give you an idea of the media gap that exists, the global soccer tournaments provide a spike in media coverage but history shows that the years in between are when media attention goes dark. In the USA, a country that tends to be one of the most progressive supporters of females in sport, network television coverage of women's sports was less than 2% in 2009 (in 1999 it hit a high at 8.7%)*. 

Player powered blogs are bringing value to fans in that they deliver something they can't get elsewhere in an easy, timely fashion. Beyond delivering information like results

Our Game Magazine, a digital magazine dedicated to the women's game, jumped on this trend as a way to deliver more value to their readers. They partner with player blogs, aggregate and publish them and the results are pretty incredible. OGM offers blogs by professional players, college players, youth players, and coaches.

Professional player Yael Averbuch has her blog featured on The New York Times Goal blog, an example of a player-generated content being published by mainstream media.

Collegiate athletic programs have activated player blogs to complement the sports information giving a behind the scenes look into a team ethos. The University of Portland Pilots designate a player to deliver blog postings all season long.

Canadian National Team player Rhian Wilkinson incorporates her blog into her personal website, which has seen over 200,000 views since it went live in 2006. Wilkinson has her personal and team sponsor logos featured on her site giving her partners visibility to her fans and supporters.

Although not all players have the initiative to document their soccer experiences (and in some cases off-field adventures also) via blogging many engage with fans through Twitter, which can also offer a special behind the scenes all access connection. Watch for a future blog post on this.

Athletes "being the media" provide a greater connection between fan and player, which ultimately has the potential to engage more interest in the sport.

* Source: Messner and Cooky (2010), "Gender in Televised Sports", Center for Feminist Research, University of Southern California.