How’s this for nerdy? On my journey home last night, my mind began wandering and eventually settled on a lengthy consideration of the Age of Information Overload in football. Something that’s been bothering me lately, both in football and in other areas of life, is supply outstripping demand. Or, more specifically, suppliers creating demand. Take 3D TV. Nobody asked for it, barely anyone really wants it. There was certainly no desperate mass clamour and the technology itself doesn’t feel like a natural evolution in the same way as high-definition did.
And yet, here we are, with plotless movies being launched left, right and centre just because they look pretty, 3D TV sets being forced down our throats and - unfortunately - 3D being the next great technological development in the displaying and viewing of the beautiful game. Fine, if we’d all been champing at the bit to have El-Hadji Diouf gob at us. But we hadn’t. It’s being pushed, not pulled.
Sometimes, a PR person really thinks they’ve got a story, and approach bloggers in exactly the right way, but something about what they’re selling just doesn’t quite sit right. I’m going to pick on an outfit that I’ve got a lot of time for here, somewhat unfairly. Before the World Cup, ITV launched ITV Live. I’m a defender of ITV. They haven’t got quite their TV football offering right and seem prone to serious error, but the football people there are genuine football people who I like a lot. They get it.
ITV Live itself is a stunning piece of technology and worked well, give or take an iffy opening night. It provides instant replays, chat functions, stats and facts - all sorts, and all at the click of a mouse while you watch the match live on your laptop or your TV, something they initially tested in another form for the 2009 FA Cup Final. It’s brilliant. I didn’t use it.
The Guardian created a Fans’ Network for South Africa 2010, pulling in tweets from fans all over the world, including me. Again, the intention was to create greater interaction, particularly during matches. Again, it was excellent, save for my non-football tweet that contained both a naughty word and the name of a participating country and the stern talking-to that resulted. Again, I didn’t touch it.
These two media firms are not the only ones to target football supporters. Countless companies I shan’t name have created tools targeted (that’s an important word) at fans that we just don’t need. Some of them are impressive in isolation from their objectives, some of them are total bollocks. But almost all of them seem to be feeding this apparent need football supporters have for more information, more interaction.
I’ve been asked about this kind of thing at work and it always amazes me that people think that supporters (a) need to be told how to watch football and (b) are incapable of dictating and creating their own interaction during a match.
The question of supply and demand applies here, because I truly don’t believe that anybody wanted or needs any of the above. Except, that is, the people who created them on the back of a fan engagement brief.
What football supporters want online is evident elsewhere. Take Zonal Marking, for example. Jonathan Wilson, given an amazing level of insight, a noteworthy book and a platform to voice his knowledge, helped fuel a fashion for molecular tactical analysis. ZM, blessed with a similar eye, is meeting that demand. Wilson helped whet the appetite and create demand, and the site that best meets it is now riding the crest of a wave. I wonder how a certain company’s “pub-finder” website is getting on.
And finally, the straw the broke the camel’s back. This week, a brand I won’t name because they did everything right except for having a product, or rather an experience, that makes me want to punch football in the face, approached me to try out their in-game football information overload offering. Like ITV Live and all these other “making football more interactive” products, this particular set-up is designed to bombard football supporters with information about the game they’re watching.
I finally cracked, but I’m pleased to say I was very polite to the PR in question. This wave of information, this constant industry-created desire for interaction, it’s all guff. It’s no way to watch football. I’m not a luddite. I’m a complete Twitter evangelist, and I credit it with the continuing existence of this very site. I watch games online like it’s going out of fashion.
But I can arrange all that for myself, do my own statistical research, talk to the people I choose to talk to. I don’t need a big brand to create some kind of interactive web cocoon for me and then plaster ads all over it.
My broader concern, though, is not one of push marketing, but of the joyless way people are beginning to watch the game. Given the choice between having my brain jammed full of passing percentages and historical results by a big brand-sponsored piece of dazzling technology or sitting in the rain drinking Bovril, there’s no contest. Get out of the internet, people. Enjoy football, analyse but don’t over-analyse it. It’s supposed to be a game, remember?
Tags: Football Statistics, Football Technology, Information Overload
Great article and I have to say I thoroughly agree with your points. It’s easy to sit on the Internet and garner enough stats and facts to wow your friends, but you soon lose sight of the reason you fell in love with the game and a few live matches soon remind you what it’s really about: experiencing the game first hand.