Episode 250 Snippets: Aviv Levy Shoshan | Double Tap, AFC Ajax, FC Barcelona

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 250 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Aviv Levy Shoshan, Founder and Head of Double Tap,
Social Media Host for AFC Ajax.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the
full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast
platforms and at www.dsmsports.net.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 250: Aviv Levy Shoshan

Aviv’s Career Path
“I started studying international business in Amsterdam, which was okay
but I didn't really click with any of it. I really wanted to do something in
football and slacked a bit, [finishing] the four year bachelor [degree] in
six years so doing lots of side hustles in the meantime [while] trying to
just survive and finish.Then when I finished I started a job in data
analysis working for a media company, which was fine. I was always kind
of good with numbers, so I finessed it and it was fine. Then [when] I was
25 I decided that, yeah, I needed a break and I needed to make a move to
work towards football because, if not, I would never work in
football.That's where I decided to move countries, to Spain.

“There I did a master in sports management in Barcelona with just
one big dream — to work for FC Barcelona. It didn’t really happen
immediately, but then I got an opportunity like some sort of hidden
golden ticket through LinkedIn when a connection hit me up and said
‘Hey is 433 something interesting for you?’ 433, for those who don't
know, is a big football publisher, one of the biggest [with] now 60
million followers plus [on social media], probably the biggest in
football. They were just making their way back in [those] days,back in
the day they had like 50 million followers, but they were not really a
publisher yet and they didn't have their own content.

“They brought me on as a partnerships manager to start making
content and establish content relationships with clubs and players,
etc. So that's where I came in. We were a super small team, six guys,
everyone working super hard. Then from one day to another there
was this hosting opportunity because we needed someone who spoke
Spanish and we had only one presenter who only spoke English.
That's when I raised my hand and said, ‘Yo, I can do it.’... Then yeah,
it went absolutely fine. I continued interviewing players and going on
trips to create content. That was the birth of me as a content creator.”

On doing the hosting work in Spanish, not his native language
“I was lucky that I did my master’s in Spain because the master’s [program] itself was
in Spanish. And I kind of thought like, okay, it would be okay, you know, you come to
this master’s [program], you have Americans, you have French, you have people from
all over the world — and it really wasn't like that. There were 15 South Americans, 15
Spanish people and me. So my Spanish wasn't at all at a good level. It was a at super
basic level and I was really struggling for the first three, four months. I couldn't string
sentences together. Then after that year I came out like, bam, fluent in Spanish,
impeccable. So I just had to survive. So yeah, we had to make it happen and it did
happen…
“I think it also kind of shows like, when you're thrown a challenge like this, and you
have no choice, then you just have to make it out. It was either speak Spanish or I have
zero friends. So I went the speak Spanish option.”

On how he came to start Double Tap
“Fast forward – I passed through Barcelona, as well. I recently took a job at
[Dutch football club] Ajax, also as a creator and host. But when I was at
Barcelona it was kind of in a Covid era. I was just sitting home. You know
everyone I think [during] Covid had way too much free time and way too much
home time, and I was I was thinking, like, okay, I'm here, I'm doing all this these
cool things at Barcelona and until that moment I hadn't caught a break in one
and a half years. It was week in, week out, two games a week, intense crisis at the
club, firing managers, new players — there was always something and I just
couldn't have time for myself. And Covid was the first time that I really thought
for myself like, Yo, I'm doing all these cool things. I'm on a normal salary, you
know? But the experience is what counts and what am I going to do with my
future, you know?

“So I had this idea, it came basically from egoistic reasons, that I was a
kind of a content creator myself as well. Still am. And I thought okay,
with my reach and with my followers or with my content, why can't I
make money? You know, some extra cash and kind of thinking like,
okay, it would be really nice if someone would be out there fighting for
me or representing me. I kind of looked around and I didn't really find
talent management agencies representing content creators of my sort,
you know, like micro influencers, [with] somewhere between 50 and
100 thousand followers. It didn't really exist. So then I looked around
at all my other content creator friends and went to their bio, spoke with
them ‘Yo, you have an agency?’ No, no agency, no campaigns, no extra
money, just content and vibes. So I thought, okay, this has to change.

“So I called them all, starting with Fabrizio Romano. ‘Yo, Fabrizio, I'm
working on this project. What do you think?’ He said, ‘Yo, that's crazy
that you're asking because I was literally just looking for someone to
help me because I have so much work and I need some support.’ So
then we started talking and we found each other. Then I found some
other ones as well, and we kind of got it up and running on the side.”

On starting to create content and getting the opportunity with FC Barcelona
while he was at 433
“I was just a normal guy starting apart as a partnerships manager at 433 and
then I started creating content at 433 and posting some stuff as well on my own
channels. Back in the days it was more like pictures and stories and storylines
and, yeah, at 433, people who saw me, they had this natural interest because it
was really — now you go on Instagram and you see everyone is everywhere. Take
a football game — everyone is at that football game, everyone's creating the same
type of content from that football game, so you're really covered. But back in the
days, to cover the game on your [IG] stories wasn't really a thing. So we started
with that at 433 and I also extended that to my personal channels, just posting
stuff from my experiences, like pictures with players or videos or some cool
things, and followers from 433 liked it.

“Then I went to [FC] Barcelona and that's where you really noticed the global
impact that this club has because I was the first cog basically between the first team
as an entity and all the players and everything they put out in the world. I was the
voice, the face; on match days, I used to do like Instagram takeovers or sometimes
YouTube Lives…we were always on the ground, so whatever we showed, people
would go to our private channels, me and also the other hosts back at the days at
Barcelona, to see what's happening. I was always very aware of that community
that is there and how you could kind of use it to your favor.
“But I also like it. I always loved that ping pong between different communities or
one game saying something, looking up some Indonesian phrases and saying it on
the Barca stories and then receiving love from the Indonesian community and then
another time from the Moroccans and then another time with America around a
specific thing. So I always was very switched on with those kinds of moments.”

About the concept of a host for a club’s social media content and how it
came together at FC Barcelona
“Barcelona was very brave at the time because when I started at 433, the
first ever activation with a club that I did was with Barca. It was March
2018, like a round of 16 Champions League match Barca [vs.] Chelsea and I
was sent for 433 and this was one of the first times that I made content for
them. And as I made my Stories, it was my first ever videos and I posted
them to the 433 account, the digital guy from Barca comes up to me and
says, ‘Yo, wouldn't you like to do this for Barca?’ I played it cool, I played
hard to get. I said, ‘Yeah, but I have a cool job. We do cool things. But if it's
ever concrete, hit me up.’ Then three months later he said, ‘Yo, I need your
resume right now.’

“Fast forward six months later, I joined Barca, and they were really
the first club who made a decision to hire a host, specifically for the
Instagram channels, to cover all the first team trainings and also all
the first team matches. Now you go to any second tier team, like
second division in Italy, to a random team channel [and] you click on
a match day and there will be a guy or a girl hosting on Instagram,
which is bizarre thinking about it. But back in the days like five, six
years ago, it was not very common. You had the traditional presenter
or host for the club TV [content], but not a social host. And now it's
very hard to think away this this social figure.

“That's really when I noticed in 2019 [when] we went to the States and and Japan
for our summer tour, and just before the players arrived, we [the media team]
always used to arrive [first] in our bus, and when I got off the bus…I remember
Miami, people would go crazy. [We] would come off the the bus and people
would just shout ‘Aviv, Aviv, Aviv, [can we have] a picture?’ I'm like, whoa, and
my bosses [too], they were looking at the situation and they were tripping. They
were like, ‘Wait what is happening here? Why are they behaving like this? He's
just a host, he's just a normal guy, he's just a communications guy.’ I'm not sure if
they liked that evolution of idolizing one of the hosts, you know.
“So sometimes I think, okay, they were super brave [to do] this, but on the other
hand, they also tried to keep the focus really on the first team, which was also
justified.”

“What I said before about the global impact that Barca has also extends to all the other
sports they’re active in. It’s not very common; take the Golden State Warriors for example
— it's a basketball team. It's just a basketball team. So the New York Yankees are just a
baseball team, and also here in Europe, I mean, I'm now at Ajax, it's just a football team.
But Barcelona, it’s a football team, it’s a basketball team, it's an ice hockey team, it’s a
field hockey team, it's a rugby team, it's a handball team, futsal team, they have their
second [football] team. They have so many other sports that they're active in. Then you
also have the language barrier. As they're based in in Catalonia, in Spain, the province,
Catalonia, Catalan was our first language. So whenever you did something in Spanish, you
also had to do it in Catalan for sure. And when you did something in Catalanonian
Spanish, your’re a global team, come on, you need to do it in English as well. There was a
time on Instagram that we always had to put captions in three languages which looked
like a bit too much; it's a whole chunk of text in three languages. So we used to play a lot
between English, Catalan or all three of them. And on Twitter you could play with it a bit
more because you had language-specific accounts for the most important markets. So
Barca Arabic, Brazil, France, Japan, Spanish, Catalan, English.”

About local and global references with slang and pop culture
“Definitely you need to always keep in mind who you're speaking to in
your references. I always love to make references. The thing is I think
I was also very free in what I did because I managed Instagram stories
and Instagram, most of the time, is mostly the younger audience and I
was free to do whatever I wanted and most of the time it was well-
received because I was better connected. But I also did Twitter
English with another guy and that's where we started to play a bit
more with references. So sometimes we would throw in a movie
reference and like an American movie…”

“So sometimes we had — I remember one time that Messi chipped in training
and we posted something like Messi loves chips, with the chips emoji. It was well-
received overall, but of course [the word for the soccer term] chips is different in
every language. Or you have to kind of be careful with what you use. Now there is
a big reggaeton culture, Latin music kind of culture, so sometimes we use some
phrases from Bad Bunny or Bad Bunny songs or something similar, so it's more
about the culture and knowing as well [who] we are speaking to. I know that for
the Spanish account now, after I left, they hired some young kids who will
understand more of the media landscape but also what's the talk on social media.
What are the other people saying? What are the fan accounts saying? And they're
kind of playing with them using memes, speaking about, for example, important
figures like [a famous figure], tweeting about him or interacting with important
moments also that don't necessarily happen in the football world but in the
digital world. So it's interesting developments.”

On content strategy for football matches and social media fans of all
types
“I think in general it's just so hard to to come up with new ideas. And
that just goes back to the fact that basically every matchday is the
same. If you take a matchday at home, it's the same thing. The same
things happen all over again. So it’s matchday, you start with it, then
the players come, the players go to the locker room, they change, they
come out to the pitch, they do a warm-up; the fans arrived to the
stadium, you film some fans, [players] go back into the tunnel, they
change, game starts, game ends, and that's it. Everyone goes home.
And within those parameters there's not a lot that you can change.

“However, it was always a challenge. Like okay, today I'm going to focus on
fans. Today I'm going to, because we're playing against, for example,
Valencia away and Valencia is known for their orange juices and bats, we're
going to do something with that. Or they have a really cool mascot, so we're
going to take that. Or for example, I remember one time playing against
Liverpool in the semifinals and their coach Jürgen Klopp said that Camp
Nou is not a temple. So the first thing we do on matchday [is post]
‘Welcome to our temple’, kind of provoking. So always being aware of things
that happen around you and what you can use just to improve your content
a little bit. And because once you say that, for example, ‘Welcome to our
temple’ veryone is gassed, all of a sudden Twitter is like, ‘Wow this is our
admin, let's go, let's show them.’ So there's also this [way] you can unify a
fan base through this content that you make, and I think that's really cool.

“So going back to your other question like how do you diversify your content is I
always really liked as raw as possible. My personal preference is nothing too
edited, nothing too crazy. It's just, clicking play and seeing how the players would
interact with you, you know? Because at the end of the day, if you are behind the
camera, you're behind the camera, no one needs to know, but once they interact,
they interact with your direction. So we had a lot of times that the players would
come up to us or coming out of the parking and walking to the locker room and
we would be there just filming and they would just come for a fist bump, you
know? That was always super nice. And now you see every team in the world
[their] social media team is receiving fist bumps from their players. But I think it
kind of started somewhere around there. And players also would start realizing
like, Yo, if I don't fist bump that man, there's no no chance he will post me
because. So you at some point [had] all 20 players would just walk past you and
fist bump you and then you had to pick the best fist bump.”

On getting to know the players and which were more amenable to being part of
content
“I think if you take any random group of 25 guys together, you always have some
players who are a bit more relaxed, a bit more down to earth. Then you have a
few players that are a bit more outspoken, right? And you have a few jokers and
you have a few shy people. It's like a normal mini society all in one dressing
room. I think it all comes down to respect at the end of the day. So what you said
at the beginning, they know I make them look good. So there was a good proof of
concept. You know, I was there for a few months, they were all pretty cautious
with me at the beginning, like, who is this new guy? What's he filming? Is he
going to post some stupid things? Is he going to make us look bad? [There is] a
lot of cursing around around the pitch, is he going to pick up on that? Is
something going to leak?

On how formal strategy was around content and how it evolved
“I think since the first day that I was working at Barca to the last day there
was a complete change. Like if you compare those two periods of time
whenI first got in, it was pretty chill, do whatever you want, build the
storyline post as you wish. No graphics, no paid partnerships, nothing. It
was just like go as you as you want. Then by the end of my time I think per
game we had like ten paid partnership obligations. So you know, a
sponsored match day and then a sponsor of every goal and a sponsored
lineup and a sponsored halftime, sponsored full time, sponsored post match
stats by all kinds of partners that you were like, oh shit, okay, now if this one
scores I will receive a graphic from from someone, I need to download it,
then I need to put a link as well, then I need to tag the paid partners.

“The whole landscape changed completely as also they understood the
value of [IG] Stories and also monetizing it because at the end of the
day if you have like 4 or 5 million people viewing every story that's
very hard to reach for clients. So they were like, okay, we need to jump
on this. So as a social media employee, you're also one one of the first
salesmen as well. So if you messed up, you know, you also messed up
for them. So we always were made aware of that and also the high level
of graphics that everything needs to look unified and have one graphic
line across everything that you post all day. Those were the big
developments. And I think now every club does a really good job at the
end of the day now because the benchmark is so wide and you can
literally watch everywhere and you will see good examples.”

About working the FIFA World Cup in Qatar
“Man, the FIFA World Cup was such an amazing event to be in, especially
because I really wanted to be there. One of the things that I really believe in [is]
working towards things, and I really wanted to be there. So I made a little plan
in my head that I would pitch something to FIFA well ahead of time, trying to
get in touch with the right person because I also believe in contacts and trying to
find a way in always. Fast forward and finally we managed — that was also one
of Double Tap’s first big gigs to send four content creators, which one of them
was me, to the World Cup. So I was there for the five weeks creating content for
FIFA, which is in all fairness, it's a different beast, FIFA. I was lucky that I had
the experience of having worked for Barca to understand the magnitude of such
a big organization, so I was not overwhelmed by the occasion. Some others
were.

“But it's a different beast. You're working literally for the biggest
sports organization in the world during the biggest sporting event of
the world, which carries lots of joy but also way more responsibility
than that. For example, just the accreditation that we had was an all
access accreditation, so the temptation is like, okay, I can literally
walk anywhere I want; any training facilities, any training, any team
hotel, any stadium at any match at any given time. But you can't
because you're working, you have stuff to do and places to be at. But it
was so cool being on the inside.

“And going on your other question, which was the planning of the content — so it's
quite a big team. We had a bunch of editors but also a bunch of coordinators and a
bunch of people posting, but then what [we had] with Barca as well, we have people
posting for all the languages, so Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. and all the other
important languages of the world posting at the same time. But you also had us, the
content creators, which basically is a lot of time just content capturers, which is now a
big phenomenon — just go stand behind the goal and try to film the goal, because of
course you can see the goal on TV, but it's nicer if you see it from someone filmed by
phone, right? It's because it feels like you filmed it or you interacted with it directly. So
they made us kind of content capturers and I could honestly say it was probably the
best time of my life because I kind of pushed myself into following the Argentinian
fans. I said that I understood the Argentinian fans and and I made a sample in one of
the games, that was Argentina-Poland in which I went with a 360 camera in my mount
to the game and I was just in between the Argentinian fans and the content was just so
good that they said the games after today you're going to follow the Argentinian fans.

“So from start to finish. I was lucky, living all the Argentina matches
and then up until the final where I was on the Argentina side
capturing the emotions, the crying, the screaming, everything. So
yeah, that was pretty sick.”

On why mobile content works so well for social as a supplement to broadcast
highlights
“I could go back to my time at Barca; so once I filmed, it was a full Camp Nou and
we played I think Seville [in] the Spanish Cup and it was pre-COVID, so the
stadium was full. And I remember one of the guys scored, it was 6-1, and they
came and celebrated in front of my phone and I was just there. I filmed them, but
I didn't have a reason to film them because it wasn’t a La Liga competition so we
couldn't use that footage at all. Like we knew already, we can throw it to the bin.
So I was like, ‘Oh man, but this is sick content, right?’...So then we had a Cup
game after and it was Covid and it was in that crazy season where we won the
Cup, where we were losing all the games and we made crazy comebacks in the
last few minutes and I think it was me and only 20 other people in the stadium.

“And yeah, Griezmann scores in the last two last minutes sending us to
extra time and I'm just standing there with my phone filming. And from all
the other places on the pitch he chooses to come to exactly where I'm
standing. So we had this amazing, beautiful piece of content where the
whole team just screams and celebrates, and it's Covid, so stadiums are
empty so you could hear everything; every emotion, everything. So they
celebrate in front of my face. And next game [a] repeat against Seville, we're
losing 2-0, make it 2-2, Pique scores in the very dying minutes and he
comes to celebrate in front of my face again. So there was screaming, there
were these raw emotions that you cannot capture like through the camera of
a TV. And it's like people want to live it like it's their own phone, you know,
it's way more relatable than a TV camera. Which is weird when you think
about it.”

On working with global football news breaker Fabrizio Romano and the
objectives for his social
“I don't necessarily think there's a strategy. I just think there is news and there
are events to report on and he has the utmost desire to report on everything that
happens. It's kind of like what you see with the best football players, right, or
with the best people in their sector. I consider him the best in what he does. You
mentioned Adam Schefter, Adrian Wojnarowski, they're probably the best at
what they do. However, they also work for organizations. I think the big
difference with Fabrizio is that he's fully independent. He wasn't up until two
years ago, but now he's fully independent. He's built a network that is in a
position where everyone just wants to tell him everything. So if it's players,
managers, agents, sporting directors, club owners, friends, literally anyone wants
a piece of him and he wants a piece of everyone.

“He's a workaholic and one of the most hard working persons that I've
ever seen and also one of the most talented. I've seen him record like
three YouTube videos in 15 minutes, and three different YouTube
videos, three different storylines without a single ‘Uh’ or ‘Oh shit, let
me go again.’ He just presses play and says what he has to say, no
preparation, presses stop, presses play again, goes with another story,
and goes again. This man is a machine and that's why I think he's the
best in what he does. And I don't think at this moment he's satisfied
with what he has accomplished and he wants more and more.

“It's also now, you know, the cliche of what people say, it's like, okay,
getting to the top is hard, but staying there is also harder because now
with being at the top you gain a lot of haters as well. People want to
see him fail. People want to see him deliver news that's not accurate.
Or when he says Player A is going to Club B and then it doesn't
happen and it's like, ‘Ah, you see, Fabrizio this didn't happen. Suck on
this’, you know, people want to see him fail and he does everything for
it not to happen. So I think he is really an example to other people.”

“The thing is with Fabrizio is his own person. So I'm just there to support
and we support wherever we can. So for example, with YouTube, two
years ago he wasn't active on YouTube. It's exactly two years ago when
we opened YouTube for him and we explained in this project like, ‘Yo,
you have all this information but no YouTube channel. Just send us the
videos and we can edit them and make you a really cool channel.’ So we
found this way of working [together]. Same with TikTok. And the rest.
I'm not going to lie, the rest he posts himself. I think he does like per day
300-400 posts and he does everything himself. No one has the access to
any of his [text-based] social media channels.

“But for example, with TikTok we said, Yo, you need to be on there.
And he was kind of hesitant at the beginning because it had more the
[reputation[, there's young girls or dancing people on TikTok or
whatever, but we said, yeah, there are also journalists and you can
also bring your news and the football people that follow you there also
[are] on TikTok, so why not let's go make the same thing you do on
YouTube for four minutes, let's do it on TikTok in 30 or 45 seconds.
And that worked kind of kind of well — 7 million [followers] now. So
yeah, step by step.”

On adopting new platforms and Fabrizio’s approach to Threads and other
emerging platforms
“I think ultimately it comes down to, without sounding too harsh, it comes down
to who is paying. So most of the creators also want to be where they get paid
properly. That's what happened, for example, with I think one of the best cases is
with TikTok. So TikTok paid a little bit and then there was Instagram Reels and
they don't pay anything and they're kind of pushing Reels pretty aggressively and
no one really cares. And then you have YouTube Shorts and they started
monetizing their YouTube Shorts saying, ‘Hey, come give us your short-form
vertical content, post it here, we'll pay you.’ TikTok then replied, ‘Okay, we're
going to pay you guys more.’ If you live now in Brazil, France or whatever for I
don't know, for a million views you can get very decent money on those
platforms.

“So I think ultimately it will be a case of this, as well, like if Theads
finds a good way to monetize people's content and also repay them for
being on that platform, it could become really big. Also it has that
cooler look and feel. I mean I've been on Twitter for like all my life,
mostly voyeur for most of the time — sometimes I also put something
out there to troll and stuff back in the day. But myself I love Twitter,
but there were a lot of people, especially from the Instagram sphere
who never even touched Twitter or downloaded Twitter or never even
gave it a look, you know? And now because it's so easily accessible,
they start exploring that world. If Twitter doesn't become more
friendly for let's say the average Joe, then I fear that Threads could
become a bit bigger but still it’s a culture thing, I feel.”

On the outsized value news breakers like Fabrizio Romano provides for
Twitter and social platforms
“I saw an overview that was sent to me and also discussed with Fabrizio
that in the last 28 days, the most far-reaching Twitter accounts were — I
have the list right here. Okay, so the first one with 5 billion views [was]
the Twitter account non-aesthetic things. The second one was Fabrizio
Romano with 3 billion impressions worldwide. The third one is Elon
Musk with 2.8 billion impressions. And then like there was ‘humans no
context,’ ‘should have a cat,’ ‘internet hall of fame’, all below [Fabrizio].

“So this guy he generates 3 billion impressions per month for Twitter
as well because everyone's interacting with him. So he's a key
stakeholder and a key opinion leader on this platform, but yet he
doesn't see a single penny from the platform. So this obviously should
change because we're posting short videos on YouTube every day,
we're making money, as it should be, because at the end of the day, if
you want to be independent or if you want to get people to your
platform, they should be paid accordingly as well.”

The most memorable player interview or content that Aviv has
produced
“I think it was a seven second challenge that I played with Frenkie de
Jong, who is a midfielder. He was a Barca midfielder and just before
he came to Barca we flew to Amsterdam to capture some content with
him and everyone was just so thirsty to see him and to see content
with him. We made a nice piece of content and I think we had to this
day 3 million views on YouTube. So it was really nice. Everyone was
super eager to see something of him.”

The most viral content that Aviv produced or hosted
“I think that it was the celebration with Antoine Griezmann for his
first goal in Camp Nou against Real Betis. It was four years ago and
before the game he asked me to give him some confetti in red and
blue colors when he scored the goal. So I was waiting for him in the
corner when he scored and then he came to me and I poured confetti
in his hand and he did a LeBron James [gesture] like with the chalk
powder celebration and he did it with the confetti. It was pretty cool
to be part of that. Because it's forever, you know; like of course you
have memories, but like it's also there forever.”

The best game that Aviv has been at in person
“Up until not so long ago this best game was the Barca 6-1 against
PSG, which was a comeback in the Champions League after having
lost a four nil away. But now it's the World Cup Final when Messi
finally won his World Cup. That game was insane.”

The coolest city that Aviv has traveled to for work or for pleasure
“I'm going to go with with Buenos Aires and it's purely for football
reasons. I was also lucky enough to travel there five years ago. It was
with 433 and I was there five days and we went to four football
matches. So I was lucky to see Boca Juniors [vs.] River Plate, which is
a Superclasico, one of the biggest games on the planet. The
atmosphere was insane. But I also had the pleasure of seeing some
other football matches. And to be honest like Argentinian football
culture is unmatched, really unmatched. The football is really shit, but
the culture is unmatched, like how they live football and how they
cheer their team on is next level. So that was really enjoyable.”

The biggest lesson that Aviv learned in running Double Tap so far
“Alone, you cannot achieve anything. I think that's really what I learned because I was
always very individualistic in everything I did. So all the goals that I set for myself I
kind of went after them and achieved them by myself. But after starting my agency you
try to have some of those mechanisms, but you see it backfires most of the time. So
you really need a team around you. Collect good people, hard-working people, creative
people. And most of the time, give control away of things and put trust in someone
else because that's when the other person flourishes, when he or she feels valued, so
that they can do really cool things content-wise or business-wise or coming up with a
cool idea or a cool campaign or having insights that I would never even think of. So
I've learned to to give a lot of space and to give a lot of freedom to everyone I work
with, and to encourage them that there are no limits. Come up with the craziest ideas,
even if they're unreasonable, but don't think of them as unreasonable.”

The most important app that Aviv use to do his job (besides the social
media apps themselves)
“I think it's Greenfly. I use Greenfly a lot. I think it's a great tool for
the pictures and as a storage [tool] and, we work a lot with the tagging
of content so you get a good overview.”

The best meal to get in Barcelona and where to get
and the best meal to get in Amsterdam and where
to get it
“Okay, so Barcelona. I need to be careful here that
I don't forget anyone. But I think probably the
best food is in a restaurant called Jardin, which
means in Catalan ‘Let's enjoy.’ So you come in
there and think for the football or sports lovers
the walls are covered with football jerseys of
players who played there, or didn't eat there but
just send their jersey through some connection,
which is a nice plus but the food is amazing. Like
they have very good rice, which is paella basically,
a popular dish for tourists, amazing desserts. Just
a good experience altogether.

“[In Amsterdam] I would go for this
Italian restaurant called Pizza & Co.
Just really, really good. I eat there a
few times a weeks. It's just good pastas,
good pizzas. I don't eat pizzas every
day, but the pastas I do, which is just
really nice. In Netherlands we don't
really have Dutch food; you know, we
have some Dutch sweets, but we're not
known for our culinary achievements,
so we have to look at other cuisines
[like] Pizza & Co. is an Italian one, a
very good Italian restaurant.”

Who is the most recognizable non-football athlete in the Europe?
“Man, I just love Steph Curry. It's something, just a feeling. I'm not
going to enter in debates if he's, like, the best or one of the best or if
he's top five or he's top ten — I just love him. I love everything. I love
his aura. I love obviously his skills, his shooting, also what he
represents, how he is as a leader. Also the fact that he's not ultra
physical is also something that I really like, because in football, like,
I'm a Messi guy, you know, so Messi is flabbergasting me every time I
watch football and that's what Steph Curry does to me when I watch
basketball. [He] never fails to amaze me.”

In 2026, the men's World Cup winner will be _________
“That is a hard one because most of the European teams just closed cycles
so they did get significantly worse; I feel like all the good players are really
old. If I would have to pick one, maybe Portugal, either Portugal or Brazil. I
feel like people just always say Brazil for the fun of it and then it's never
Brazil…
“I think Portugal is an exciting bunch of young players with Rafael Leão,
Bernardo Silva. It's a tough one. Maybe France; it could be an obvious one,
but I feel they will lack some leaders in three years. So it's a very young
squad again; obviously Mbappe wants revenge, but yeah, who knows?

Aviv’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
“As it's the Women's World Cup now, I'm going to recommend a
female creator that is with Double Tap at the moment and her name is
Mercedes Roa (@mercedesroa). She's a Mexican creator, super big on
TikTok, like close to 10 million followers and really makes relatable
content. So everyday tutorials for everyone. Her skills are amazing
and she's also really cool and friendly in front of the camera. And
she's becoming really big not only in like Mexico and the States but
also globally.”

Where to find Aviv and Double Tap on digital/social media
Find Aviv on LinkedIn at Aviv Levy Shoshan and on Instagram
@AvivLevy
And find Double Tap on LinkedIn and on Instagram @DoubleTap

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
Thanks again to Aviv for being so generous with his time to share his
knowledge, experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me
on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net.

Episode 250 Snippets: Aviv Levy Shoshan | Double Tap, AFC Ajax, FC Barcelona

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Episode 250 Snippets: Aviv Levy Shoshan | Double Tap, AFC Ajax, FC Barcelona