
Transfer Madness: Creative Ways to Announce New Signings
We entered the third week of transfer madness! The football season in Europe is on vacation. There are no games and events so every day we can read about millions of different transfer deals, about ten or even hundred millions of Euros the clubs will “most certainly” spend on some players, and, of course, 99 percent of those “news” are only rumours and speculations. Some of those news are even created by media to raise their sales and clicks on their websites. Some of us love it, some of us hate it, but only a few of us can actually stay immune to those kind of news.
Sometimes, some of those news are real, and clubs actually acquire those players. Club’s fans are eager to hear about the new announcement; they want to know that their club is active in the transfer market. So once the club purchases a new player, it should do everything to make use of the curiosity of their fans and announce the new player in the most creative way possible.
So, let’s take a look at some of the most original transfer announcements that the clubs had in the recent period.
million € is the price of the biggest transfer so far - Alexandre Lacazette from Lyon to Arsenal
transfers were made from 1st to 8th July 2017.
Our favourite is AS Roma’s announcement.
On the big screen, the 85th minute of the game on the newest FIFA is being played. Roma is attacking in a balanced and tense match. The score is 0:0. And then – gooooooal! The scorer of the winning goal turns in celebration and with his thumbs shows the name on the back of his shirt – Pellegrini.
Then, the camera turns to a player who scored a goal with the virtual Pellegrini. It’s the original, a new reinforcement of Roma, who pronounces “Forza Roma” with a clenched fist.
Roma had really great, original and creative idea to announce it’s 21-year old new signing from Sassuolo, but absolute winners of the transfer announcing during the current transfer period are the English clubs. Let’s take a look.
On Liverpool FC’s social media accounts, we see a person scrolling on their cell phone’s news feed on Twitter with the keywords “Announce Salah Now”. “Announce Salah, announce him already”, we can see the posts of the inpatient Liverpool fans who have been reading for a few days that their favorite club has purchased the Egyptian winger from Roma. But there is no official announcement.
The camera then turns to our unknown protagonist – it’s Mohamed Salah sitting in a chair, waving to the audience and saying: “Salah Announced”!
Leicester City used Instagram stories mode to announce the arrival of its newest signing, Vicente Iborra from Sevilla for €15M. The story stared with the “Tap to complete the jigsaw”.
A club from the English Championship was also found on our list. A famous club from Birmingham, Aston Villa, published a video of the club’s imaginary Whatsapp group with the president of the Club Tony Xia, the manager Steve Bruce and Aston Villa’s players.
Bruce asks his president: “Any news, Tony?”, “Captain. Leader. VILLAN!!!!!”, the president answers. “It’s done?”, the Bruce is inpatient, but Tony is mysterious “50% + 50%“. “Come on, Dr. Have we got him?”, Bruce asks again.
“Just adding him in”, says the president and adds former Chelsea defender John Terry to the group! “Great to be here boys! Let’s get this club back up to the Premier League!”, says Terry, a new Aston Villa signing.
The Villa players then started welcoming Terry, and some of them, like Gabriel Agbonlahor, went so far and wrote: “Got to be the best defender we’ve had at this club”. After that entry, Villa’s defenders Martin Laursen, Olof Mellberg and Paul McGrath left the Whatsapp group 🙂
The last one on our list is Arsenal’s new signing, Bosnian left-back Sead Kolašinac. Arsenal posted on its official Twitter account a quick quiz. “The following 10 players have been signed by Arsene Wenger – can you spot them all?
In the video, they listed nine names: Koscielny, Overmars, Ljungberg, Anelka, Sagna, Inamoto, Nacho, Arshavin, Campbell. But, where is the tenth signing? You can see it if you read only first letters of nine names: K-O-L-A-S-I-N-A-C!
📱✍️ pic.twitter.com/G2DxMQhAv6
— Aston Villa FC (@AVFCOfficial) July 3, 2017
Right, time for a quick quiz…
The following 🔟 players have been signed by Arsène Wenger – can you spot them all? pic.twitter.com/ewEpmDRRs4
— Arsenal FC (@Arsenal) June 6, 2017
This is our short list of best transfer announcements. Digital and social teams are becoming more and more creative every year, which is great for all the fans and followers because it gives them more of a reason to follow their teams during this “quiet” summer period.
If you have good or better examples please share them with me by sending them on my email address niko@promoovertime.com or on my Twitter profile.

Niko Rukavina
Overtime Sports Marketing
If you have any questions about sports marketing, feel free to contact me at niko@promoovertime.com