We have a select view on the sports industry and the impact that Covid-19 has on that area. Use Case, best pratices and analytics at your disposal.

1. State of the Sports
Industry: COVID-19
Sports Industry Trends, Best Practices & Use Cases

2. How Did COVID-19
Change the Sports
Industry?
Summary of the most crucial challenges the industry is facing

3. The Cancellation of
Public Gatherings
Has Impacted Major
Global Sports Events
The Olympic and Paralympic
Games were postponed until
2021
Formula 1 races were
postponed or cancelled
The Euro Championships were
postponed until 2021
Wimbledon
was postponed until 2021

4. In Total, 500+ International Sport Events
Were Cancelled or Postponed in 2020
Since the end of April,
ESPN has been keeping
track of all major
postponed/cancelled sports
tournaments.
This means a more than
$620 Billion industry is
consolidating massive
losses that cannot yet be
estimated.

5. Sports Clubs
Are Having a
Hard Time
Much of their income relies on
the revenue of their games.
In some cases, sports clubs
have even started to support
each other.
Athletes have increased their
Social Media presence, even
though some have been
infected by COVID.
Source
Source
Source

6. Esports, on the other
hand, is thriving
Ironically, while it was long debated if Esports is
a real sport or not, electronic sport are now
taking the world by storm. Source

7. Main Financial Challenges
for the Industry
No games means no
revenue from television
and local income from
stadiums.
No television and local
income means no
advertising and no
merchandise sales.
A crisis environment also
decreases the willingness
of sponsors to invest in
clubs and advertising.

8. Shifting the Focus to the Opportunities
As an industry that relies on the participation of their fanbase, the possibilities
are limited – but there are ways out of the crisis!
Ghost
Games
The most logical
solution (if crowds are
the issue): playing in
empty stadiums and
broadcasting the games
live to people’s homes.
Going
online
Become creative!
Sell merch online, let
players play online
games against each
other, etc. Also: use
your teams’ online
communities.
Debate
spendings
As with any industry, it’s
a time to identify which
spending is really
necessary. Do we really
need a new stadium for
a 10k bigger audience?

9. Industry Close-up:
Learnings from Football
Clubs
Let’s explore the best practices of global football teams

10. Heroes On The Field and Beyond
fifa.com
“Although tournaments everywhere have ground to a halt, football’s fight
against COVID-19 continues right across the globe as diverse members of
the football family go all out to help overcome this crisis.”

11. Social Media
in Times of
Crisis
Analyze the data and adapt your
online strategy accordingly

12. COVID-19 Significantly Increased the Number of Posts
Sources: The Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Channels of the top 30 UEFA Football Clubs (ranked by points) from 1st of January 2020 to April 5th,
2020. Postings exclude @replys on twitter and posts from fans on the respective timeline. Data is available and can be made available.
At the beginning of the crisis, when games were
canceled, the volume of posts increased significantly,
especially on Twitter!
COVID-19 related content rose in accordance with the
crisis, and it’s still peaking on Facebook and Instagram.
Overall Volume Of Posts Volume Of COVID-19 Related Posts

13. COVID-19 Posts Generate High Engagement
Sources: The Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Channels of the top 30 UEFA Football Clubs (ranked by points) from 1st of January 2020 to April 5th,
2020. Postings exclude @replys on twitter and posts from fans on the respective timeline. Data is available and can be made available.
Interactions increased at the beginning of the COVID-
19 crisis and dropped right after. However, they didn’t
drop as significantly as the overall volume of posts –
showing a constant interest in industry posts.
Interest in COVID-19 content remains high. It resonates
with the sports audience and creates engagement. When
it comes to interactions, Facebook and Instagram
perform the best!
Volume of Interactions Volume of Interactions with COVID-19 Posts

14. Football Fans Remain Supportive, Even in Times of Crisis
Food Retail Football Industry Telecom
When compared to service industries, such as food retail or telecom, football audiences
engage with the Football Industry in a much more positive way.

15. Adjust Your
Content
Strategy
Get inspired by the most
engaging COVID-19 content

16. Show Compassion
Solidarity
Posts
Donate CTA

17. Entertain Your Fans
Fitness
Routines
Games

18. Bring Back Famous Moments
We Miss
Football
Legendary
Matches

19. Get Inspired
By Top
Performing
Posts
A deep dive into the best Football
posts, based on engagement,
comments and retweets

20. ● Personal stories of famous athletes and their
daily routine are the most engaging topic on IG!
● Players infected by COVID-19 and posts
supporting them are also popular.
● Juggling with toilet paper is the most viral
challenge on IG!
Personal Stories & Challenges
Most-Engaging COVID-19 Posts

21. Throwbacks to the most iconic matches are
the most commented-on posts on Facebook
across the whole football industry.
Nostalgia
Most-Commented COVID-19 Posts

22. When it comes to most-retweeted posts, the
#stayhome & #bewellsoon posts were the best-
performing posts among the audience!
Stay Home & Throwbacks
Most-Retweeted COVID-19 Posts

23. How Can
Socialbakers Help?
Leverage Socialbakers workflows to handle the crisis

24. Move the Conversation
Online and Connect with
Fans at Scale
• Never miss a comment or a message.
Organize all incoming messages and
increase team productivity.
• Use answer templates to respond quickly to
frequently asked questions.
• With automated sentiment analysis, identify
negative messages and prevent negative
waves from growing into something larger!
• To get the full picture of your community
management, measure response rate,
overall sentiment and agent activity.

25. Identify COVID-19 Content
with Automated Labeling
• For a streamlined analysis of all COVID-19
related content, set up Rule-Based Labelling to
identify specific keywords, hashtags and
phrases such as:
#StayHomeSafeLives
#FromOurHomeToYours
#Stayathome
• Set the ground for reporting & benchmarking,
without the tedious manual work of finding
specific COVID-19 related content.

26. Get Inspired by Top-
Performing COVID-19
Content
• Use COVID-19 related keywords to find content
then save your search queries for easy and
quick access later.
• Sort results based on relevant KPIs:
Interactions, Comments/Replies,
Shares/Retweets.
• Identify content that received a lot of positive
comments with the new sentiment filter.
• Bookmark inspiring content in Content
Collections and share it with your colleagues.

27. Track Performance With
Hands-on Dashboards
• Keep track how the crisis is affecting your
own and your competitors’ performance.
• Use Flexible Widgets to create custom
reports and analyze social media
performance holistically.
• Use rule-based labeling to quickly label
COVID-19 related content and other topics

28. How to Manage Your Social with
Socialbakers Suite During the COVID-19 Crisis
Tasks
Automation
Set the ground for future
reporting & benchmarking.
Automate content &
comments labeling, ensure
you turn on automated
sentiment analysis.
Suggested keywords:
coronavirus, covid-19,
covid19, covid_19, covid 19,
corona virus, covid2019, covid
2019, covid-2019, quarantine
Content Trends
Get inspired by top-performing
content in Content Hub. Save
and share content with
colleagues via Collections.
Apply sub-labels to analyze
your competition.
Filter content based on
what’s relevant – industry,
language, country, platform
Analyze competitors
behaviour: are they posting
about prevention, sharing
insights about operational
changes, working with charities,
etc.
Hands-On
Dashboards
Keep track of how the crisis
affects your and your
competitors’ performance.
Create custom Dashboards
using Flexible, Cross-
Platform widgets.
What to focus on:
New fans acquisition, post
frequency and COVID-19
topic coverage, effect on
engagement and content
sentiment.
Customer Care
At Scale
Ensure best-in-class customer
care. Check how your team is
handling the influx of DMs and
comments.
Deliver aligned messaging
across all social networks
using answer templates and
streamline teamwork by
assigning agents to tasks.
Tips:
Collect FAQs & put together
personalized answers for
refunds & cancellations.
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29. Thank You