Partner Article

User generated content in sport

It’s sports focus week on Bdaily. Here, Asaf Peled, founder of FTBpro.com, the largest fan-generated media platform in football, analyses the future of sports media consumption.

The way we consume our media has changed almost beyond recognition over the last 5 – 10 years.

In this digital age of smart phones, tablets, 24 hour news channels and websites, bloggers, and social media it is sometimes hard to remember the days – in the not very distant past – where most people relied on a daily newspaper or the evening news as their main source of information about the world around them.

Never is this more obvious to me as a consumer of sports news than on a Saturday afternoon. The classified results on the BBC used to be the way football fans in the UK found out the state of play across the English Leagues. Now, a quick search online or a scroll through Twitter provides them with all the live, up-to-the-minute goals as they happen.

If the last ten years has seen such a monumental shift in our media habits, what then, does the next ten years have in store?

One development that has started to gather steam in the last 12 months and, in my view, will continue to do so in the future, is the growth and increasing popularity of user generated content, particularly in the world of sport.

Sports fans, and in my view particularly football fans, are incredibly passionate and in general very well informed. They are also often very vocal and don’t hesitate to share their views and opinions with others. Likewise, other fans are happy to listen… and then debate, discuss and dissect every element of any given argument at great length.

It is this love of hearing other fans’ views and opinions that has been behind the growth of FTBpro.

We are now the largest user generated content platform in the world of football. We have many millions of monthly users and over 1,500 regular contributors who between them produce in the region of 300 articles daily.

Our contributors enjoy writing about the beautiful game, and our readers like consuming these musings from other experts… the fans. The content on FTBpro ranges from discussing England’s chances in Rio next year (we’ve seen a marked increase in optimism from our writers following the 2-0 win over Poland), to looking at the top ten summer signing flops of all time.

Importantly, the content is varied, opinionated and well-written. We have an in-house editorial system to ensure that the most popular and highest quality content rises to the top, and our rich content generation tools – including polls, slideshows and team line-up widgets – encourage interactivity.

I am very confident that ‘the fans’ voice’ will continue to grow in popularity over the coming months and years. We are currently seeing a 50% quarter on quarter increase in traffic to the platform and the number of contributors we have is rising all of the time. This means we are able to cover even more leagues and teams in greater detail and depth.

We are also seeing a number of more traditional media platforms show great interest in our content and in the written voice of the fans. Newspapers and other media companies are constantly looking at ways in which they can increase and diversify their content, and we therefore now have a number of ‘traditional’ media partners who are taking FTBpro content to complement their offering.

Fan opinion and articles will, of course, never replace the content that is created by professional sport journalists. But it does add another complementary layer to the media mix available to sports fans.

The growth of user generated content is just one small part of the ever-changing media landscape.

Reflecting on the changes that have occurred over the past decade, it will be fascinating to see what the next ten years brings. I am, however, confident that UGC will have a prominent part to play.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by FTBpro .