UEFA’s activity on YouTube – great efforts overshadowed by poor results

EURO 2016: UEFA’s activity on YouTube – great efforts overshadowed by poor results

CAUTION!

Due to UEFA restrictions, which do not allow their YouTube videos to be embedded in other sites, great video content cannot be seen in this article! This is probably the main reason they had such a low number of views on their official YouTube channel. Although this article is lacking video content, the textual part is more then enough to get the main point accross.

The 2016 UEFA European Championship is already behind us and we can say that the Union of European Football Associations did a decent job in covering this competition on social networks. One of the main tasks of this governing body is to promote European football and social media once again proved as a perfect tool for this kind of job.

With a number of interesting materials on the official website, Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Google+ and Instagram pages, UEFA showed productivity, creativity and remarkable activity on their YouTube channel as well. With everything being said, global video-sharing website undeservedly found itself in the shadow of earlier mentioned social media giants.

“Because YouTube is focused on a lot of different types of content at the same time, it has many opportunities, and the hardest thing is to figure out which ones you shouldn’t do, and focus on the ones you should.” – Robert Kyncl, Chief Business Officer at YouTube

approximate number of videos published during EURO 2016 in France

UEFA’s official YouTube channel has over 330 000 subscribers and almost 50 million views. Since the beginning of this competition, around 250 videos were published and divided into 4 groups – EURO match highlights, EURO 2016 team training sessions, EURO On This Day and UEFA EURO 2016 (compilation of previous groups with additional materials).

With an average of approximately 8 videos per day, UEFA definitely made sure that football fans received all relevant information about current and interesting happenings in this prestigious international football competition.

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Video description:

The animated guide to UEFA EURO 2016, giving you the lowdown on all angles of the showpiece in France ahead of the big kick-off on 10 June.

teams participated on this EURO ( for the first time in history)

First steps

The whole story actually slowly began few weeks before the first whistle on Stade de France stadium. UEFA made a few short videos with some of the biggest stars in European football with a goal to regain consciousness that a big sports event is just around the corner. Some of the names that found themselves in those videos were Germany coach Joachim Löw, England captain Wayne Rooney and France coach Didier Deschamps.

The other set of video materials was there for the introduction of teams that will fight for glory in this competition. Each team was presented in 30 seconds which gave us basic information about their country, schedule in France, key players, coaches and best performances.

The third group of videos showed highlights from previous matches of the teams that were going to meet in this tournament.

Activities during the competition

Some of the videos from three earlier mentioned groups were published during the competition as well, with addition of “Starting lineup videos”, “EURO On This Day videos” – which reminded us on some of the most memorable moments from history, “Training videos” and few bonus videos that included things like fan activity, different guides and other interesting moments inside and outside of matches that were being played.

“I think Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the cornerstones of any social media strategy.” – Chad Hurley, co-founder and former CEO of the video-sharing website YouTube.com

Conclusion

Although UEFA showed great efforts with plenty of interesting materials, this EURO proved that social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram draw significantly more attention than YouTube. Most of the videos had less than 20 000 views with a few exceptions reaching over 50 000. By far the most popular video during this EURO, with almost 4 million views, was the one showing opening ceremony.

The biggest problem, in this case, was UEFA’s poor promotion of those YouTube materials. Most certainly, other social networks could have helped with this… The other issue are UEFA restrictions on their video materials which cannot be embedded on other sites. This way, huge efforts and good work did not meet the maximum potential.