If you are interested in soccer, you may have heard of Juventus.
Juventus is a 127-year-old Italian football club with a long and successful history. In the Italian league he won 36 titles, in the UEFA Champions League he won two and dozens of other championships.
If you're a TikTok user, you might be familiar with this club. Boasting 32.7 million followers, Juventus' account is the fifth most followed soccer team on the platform, and its audience is larger than his NBA and WWE. It also ranks sixth in the world across all social media, according to data from soccer analytics platform Football Benchmark.
Juventus' social media growth is hindering the team's performance on the pitch. In the words of the club's CMO Mike Armstrong, the team is going through a “tough period”. The team was the Italian champion for nine consecutive years, but fell out of the top three from 2020 to 2023, and is currently in third place in this year's ranking.
They have also lost some of their top players in recent years. That includes Cristiano Ronaldo, whose 630 million Instagram followers were a reliable source of social traffic, as well as players such as Paulo Dybala and Angel Di Maria.
“Most months on the platform we value most, we can be in the top five in the world without relying on the core pillars of performance or players,” Armstrong told Business Insider. I think it is,” he said. “Obviously, we hope one day we can get a star player who does well and helps us reach, but in the meantime, this is building a sustainable business.”
Customized social media approach
Since becoming Chief Marketing and Communications Officer in 2021, Armstrong has helped transform and internationalize the business with the aim of reaching a younger and more global audience.
“We've done a fair amount of research and we've seen in our research that fandom has changed significantly,” he said. “The definition of a sports fan or team fan has evolved today compared to the past. The biggest factor that draws young people to sports clubs now is satisfaction.”
Armstrong said he has expanded marketing and focused on building a “lifestyle brand with soccer at its core.” The club has partnerships in the fields of fashion and music, for example.
Much of that effort is also focused on video. In 2023, the club is increasingly investing in its social presence, producing two documentaries about its players for Amazon Prime.
Armstrong said he has built a digital team of 40 employees and contractors, prioritizing hiring people who are “constant” on social media.
“One of the guys we hired actually built our biggest Instagram fan channel himself,” he said. “We had a great opportunity to actually take him inside Juventus and hand him the keys to the Juventus account.”
The company's strategy has also shifted to being “obsessed with data” and creating bespoke content for each platform. For example, the team produced nine of his long-form, documentary-style videos for YouTube, while on TikTok they're focusing on short-form, trend-driven content that aligns with the more casual nature of the platform.
Partnerships have also been key to this strategy, from creators and freestyle soccer (including an exclusive deal with a freestyle soccer player who became one of the club's official athletes) to gaming.
Gaming and esports are particularly important to Armstrong, in part because of his previous experience in the field.
Collaborations in this vein include video game developer EA Sports and esports brand Optic Gaming.
creator lab
The club's latest initiative is the “Creator Lab.” This is a multi-functional space that includes content editing, production and press offices, as well as several content spaces such as a streaming studio, photo shoot space, green screen and backdrop area. , living room with LED wall and gaming console.
The space is designed to be a crossover between an LA-style content house and a game studio, the company said.
At the same time, Juventus is launching new partnerships with creators and content organizations. Among them are star soccer YouTuber Celine Dept, who is now her partner in creators, and 433, her girlfriend in one of the world's largest soccer communities.
Although Armstrong and his team ultimately want Creator Lab to become a hub for digital teams, players, and creator partners to collaborate and create content, Armstrong believes they will He also acknowledged that “we're building airplanes while we're flying airplanes.''
“The idea was that if we don't look, walk and talk without physical representation, we risk looking like every other sporting organization,” he said. . “If you ask me what a content production hub for a sports team looks like, it’s probably something like a sports desk with a middle-aged white guy standing or sitting behind it, with a very specific production style. We don't think that's what storytelling is today or is going to be, so we needed to reflect that in a physical representation.”