Tag: Sports

2015 Egyptian Super Cup has been able to oust all topics in the country’s trends list on social media with many controversial topics, after Zamalek and Al Ahly Super Cup match in Hazza Stadium – Abu Dhabi – UAE.
We collected the most discussed topics as the following:

1- Ramadan Sobhy’s stand on the ball isn’t forbidden in football unless…

FIFA regulations do not forbid humiliating dribbling tricks unless they’re not in the form of winning the ball or passing through the opposite team players. It’s left it to the referee to decide, however, the maximum punishment is a yellow card.

2- It’s not the first time for a super cup match to be played outside its original country

Egyptians on social media attacked the government and the football association for moving the super cup to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab of Emarites, calming that it doesn’t happen anywhere in the world!
That’s not true! The Italian Super Cup 2014 was played in Qatar, Saudi Arabia’s Super Cup 2015 was played in London.

3- Hazem Emam Jr. was out of Al Zamalek’s super cup squad, but…

However he was out of the team’s squad who allowed to play in the super cup, Hazem Emam came off the bench to invade the pitch and clash with Al Ahly players over Ramadan Sobhy’s reaction.
Zamalek announced a penalty of EGP 15,000 and a month in suspension on the player for such a violation and bad attitude.

4- Al Ahly won 9 super cup titles out of 13

The Egyptian Super Cup has started in 2001, since that time Al Ahly won the title 9 times out of 13 to be the ultimate winner of this special battle – A new record for Al Ahly

5- Zamalek won the super cup twice

Al Zamalek was able to win the first and the second super cup championship in 2001 & 2002 over Ghazl Al Mahala & Arab Construction Club.

6- Each time Omar Gaber scores first, Al Ahly wins!

When Omar Gaber scores first for Zamalek, Al Ahly makes a comeback and wins. This is the second time to happen, the first time was in 2013 when Omar Gaber scored first for Zamalek and Ahly made a comeback with 4 goals to 2 goals.
Have something to add to the story? Drop us a line in comments.

Few minutes ago, AS Roma ‘s official facebook page announced the launch of its Arabic version on facebook. We’ve been waiting for this update since Mohamed Salah’s transfer from Chelsea FC this summer.
Insiders told Digital Boom that it’s Kijamii, a pioneer Egyptian digital agency who won the AS Roma pitch and officially assigned to the task. That comes after the tremendous success with Chelsea FC.
https://www.facebook.com/488367507990022/photos/a.489608867865886.1073741827.488367507990022/489608627865910/?type=1&theater
Note: the date on cover is Aug. 30, but the launch of the page was on Sept. 14 (that indicates that the deal was done in August and Kijamii was waiting for the go-ahead)

Arabic AS Roma

AS Roma became the second European football club Kijamii wins in addition to Chelsea FC early last year, to be the first and only MENA-based agency with sports digital experience and focus.
Stay tuned for more updates.

Van Persie met his loyal 4-year-old fan in response to a viral video showing how vividly distraught Louis Diamond was over the football player’s transfer from Manchester United to Fenerbahce.

Louis’s Viral Video

https://twitter.com/samdiamond9/status/619615373789405185

 

Fenerbahce fans launched an online campaign to raise $2,000 to cover the cost of Louis’s visit to his idol in Turkey. Club President Aziz Yildirim covered all expenses after seeing the video, inviting the Diamonds to meet van Persie and attend the season’s opening match.

Van Persie met the family at the club media center, crowning Louis with his first match outfit.

How a father used social media to make his son happy? 

https://twitter.com/samdiamond9/status/632293042058362880

Robin van Persie posted a video with Louis on Facebook. 

Robin van Persie said in the press conference, “Football without fans is nothing like how it is now, fans make this game so special, but these kids, they make football even more special.”

Tottenham Hotspur is the first football club to broadcast their Final Cup kickoff show on Facebook.
The show was streamed on Sunday via Spurs TV on Facebook “for the first time” as well as their website. The match itself however was not streamed due to broadcasting rights. Fans still tuned to TV channels to watch their favorite team.

Matchday Show Teaser – League Cup Final – Chelsea v Tottenham

The Broadcast Right From Wembley Stadium, Streamed on Facebook, LIVE!

https://www.facebook.com/TottenhamHotspur/posts/10152779845158505

They provided audio commentary from Wembley for their fans.

Screenshot from Tottenham Hotspurs Facebook Page
Spurs fan base is estimated at 450 million with over 100 Official supporting clubs in more than 40 countries. The show was co-hosted by Ledly King who won the Cup in 2008. He answered questions from fans on Facebook and interviews with Spurs Chairman and members of the 2008 league cup-winning team as Woodgate and Jenas and celebrity Fans.
Source: Tottenham hotspur Facebook page

Head of Sports and Entertainment in Facebook Comment on Spurs Activity:

Glen Miller, Head of sports and Entertainment in Facebook, said “Facebook unites fans from all over the world even closer to their clubs and players. This broadcast by Tottenham Hotspur is another example of an engaging approach by a club towards its fan base, in an attempt to make it a “memorable day”
Although Tottenham lost to Chelsea with 2 goals, this digital broadcast was a stunning effort leading to over 100k increase in their likes in two days.
Analysis: Spurs Facebook fans growth

Why sport social media? The answer is simple; a larger and a quantifiable monetization stream. The most widely adopted business model for any sports entity is built on increasing the number of engaging fans, and make money out of it. The more fans they have, the more lucrative the sponsorship deals are. Therefore, when social media mania hit us, it was no surprise that Football clubs started to use social media to quantify their fans, and monetize.

Early this year, we’ve pin-pointed a gap & an opportunity for Chelsea FC in the Middle East market and especially after the transfer of the Egyptian player Mohamed Salah. Chelsea FC were quick to react and capitalize on the opportunity that was presented to them after the bombardment of its Social Media assets by comments of enthusiastic Egyptian fans eager to see their starlet to feature with such a prestigious club in Europe.

We have been following Chelsea FC building their case study in Middle East, attempting to identify their how they are building their fan base that later would become a very lucrative revenue stream. Chelsea started simply by introducing a Facebook page for their Arab Speaking community that was around 1.5 Million at the time presented by Mohamed Salah himself in a Video for the Arabic speaking fans. They shared Localized global digital content, in what we’d like to call ‘glocalization’, simply by translating their existing content they already shared on their global page, gaining more affinity amongst their new fans.

1- Launch of the Arabic Chelsea Facebook Page

The second stage was building digital content only for their Arab fans, it started by a unique celebration of Mohamed Salah, the only available Arab player in Chelsea FC, by sending out their greetings and complied some of these greetings in a visual post that ended out with one of highest interactions.  More than 20,000 likes with 473 shares of the post.

2- Seasonal Greetings

After its proven success Chelsea FC made sure not to miss one single relevant occasion without a proper greeting. It started with the Holy month of Ramadan, Fitr & Adha Feast, as well as Hijri New Year, generating huge buzz, and creating outstanding rapport between the club and the community. Many news portals shared Chelsea FC’s greetings adding to that buzz.

3- Blues Info-graphics

Following that, it was important for Chelsea FC to make this page about Chelsea FC rather than Mohamed Salah, so they decided to introduce the club history, achievements and statistics in an interactive and engaging infographics.

HYG, The Full Chelsea FC Social Media Case Study in the Middle East

Chelsea Wins Egypt

Numbers for the Arab fans on Chelsea Page more than doubled since the introduction of Chelsea FC’s Arab Facebook page last February reaching around 3.5 Million fans. About 2.5 millions of them are Egyptians, this encouraged the Egyptian telecom giant ‘Mobinil’ to sign a partnership deal with the blues to become its official mobile service provider in Egypt.

Chelsea improved their ranking in Egypt from 3rd to 1st (Jan – Dec) 2014 Egypt ranking has been improved from 7th to 2nd (Jan – Dec) 2014

Chelsea FC showed us exactly how to do it right, how to build, nurture, engage and monetize a community using social media. We believe that our market will witness more competition in that area, and we will be in for more interesting cases to follow.

Update 20th of Jan, 2015

Chelsea & Mobinil’s First Commercial Activity

Capitalizing on their recent partnership, now any mobinil customer can get a chance to attend Chelsea VS PSG in the UEFA Champions League, just send “9” in SMS to “1111”.

Screenshot from mobinil Facebook page

Chelsea has hired Kijamii, a Cairo-based digital media agency following the explosive growth rate of Egyptians invading the club’s Facebook page after Mo Salah’s move to the blues.

Few weeks ago, we advised Chelsea and other big four to start looking for digital media agencies from Egypt to communicate, engage, and promote the club in Arabic.

Mo Salah appeared in a video on Chelsea Facebook page announcing that the club will start soon communicate in Arabic on Facebook.

Chelsea +1 million fans from Egypt

As we’ve mentioned in the previous study last month, Egypt has the most active Facebook users on Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal Pages and here you go the ranking one month ago as following:

big four in Egypt

Verbatim from Egyptians’ reactions on Mohamed Salah’s video message

Chelsea Hired Egyptian Agency by Salah

 Actually, we would like to thank Chelsea for the great step, this’s considered as one of the most quick professional actions, tells us how professional Chelsea’s online team is, and how wise their predictions to the future. Hiring Egyptian agency isn’t easy because the market in Egypt isn’t still mature to manage such big accounts, i believe that Chelsea went through a sophisticated market analysis to reach a professional agency here in Egypt. Now Chelsea has a huge opportunity to invade the Egyptian market and become the most loved big four team for Egyptians and oust Man UTD. 

Why other big four teams have to follow Chelsea’s steps?

• Egypt is a key market to access the Middle East and the Arab world.
• Egypt has 18 million registered Facebook users, and around 12 million active users.
• Egyptians are into the European tournaments, especially the English premier league.
• Average 25% of the big four pages’ monthly growth is coming from Egypt.

We encourage Arsenal, Man UTD and Liverpool to take the same step and start engaging in Arabic.