Manchester United Fans Trying To Do “An Obama” With Social Media?
It’s not often that I get to write about my great passion of sport on this blog but I have noticed something brewing around Manchester United and seen a few early signs that merit looking at it further. Without going in to too much detail Manchester United are now owned by some fairly dodgy Americans who seem intent on ruining the club as they plunge it in to over $1 Billion in debt to help line their own pockets. A fans revolt has been brewing for the last couple of years but things seem to have stepped up a little recently and it is not just because fans are getting angrier but just that the protests are getting noticed by more people mainly because the fans have recruited a very powerful force…The team behind Barack Obama’s online election campaign…Blue State Digital.
Who Are Blue State Digital?
Blue Sky Digitial are an Internet marketing, strategy and crucially online fundraising agency who are widely regarded as one of the main reasons that Obama got in to office. Blue State Digital’s campaign for Obama resulted in more than three million individual donors contributing more than $500 million and they have been recruited by the Manchester United fans to do exactly the same sort of job for their club.
Why Would They Do It
Blue State Digital seem to be specialists at mobilizing large groups of people and getting them to rally behind a cause and dig deep in to their pockets. With over 300 Million Manchester United fans all over the world you are looking at an amount of people even larger than the population of America. The Glazer family who own Manchester United are said to have no interest in selling even at a $1 Billion valuation so the cause would seem like an impossible one but some would have said a couple of years ago that it was impossible to elect a black man to the White House.
How Are They Doing It?
Social Media To Spread The Word
The key with this capaign is the social media element and getting the word out to mobilize the group troups (the Manchester United fans) in to action. The mialing list has more than trebled from 30,000 to nearly 90,000 in just a couple of days and the campaign is already starting to feel as if it is taking hold. This will be a long hard slog and many channels will be used over the course of the campaign but early signs are that Blue State Digital are already starting to make some great traction.
Rally the troops
The first thing they have done is to target fans who attend matches by telling them to start donning the colors of the original Manchester United team or green and canary. This will start to hurt the owners in the pocket and crucially get the word spreading from the hard core fans on the terraces out to the millions of fans around the world. For all of Barack Obama’s online presence he was incredibly powerful on television and in the real world so for any campaign to succeed you need that catalyst.
The Money
There have been countless fan revolutions in the past but none that have involved this sort of money. To prize the club away from the Glazers this new movement is going to have to raise north of a Billion and that sort of money is not easily come by. It will be a combination of some institutional money but also fans are expected to be asked to get involved.The number become a little easier when you think that each fan would only have to donate $3 each to raise the billion dolloars.
Will It Work?
Trying to take control of a football club is a very different animal to trying to get somebody elected. The biggest stumbling block is that the owners say the club is not for sale and if they keep that stance there is simple nothing that fan power can do no matter how much money they raise or how well they leverage social media to reach out to the 300 million Manchester United fans. The one thing that is apparent is the need for change and the fact that this very noisy and passionate group of people want change. This was the same emotion that fueled Barack Obama’s run at the white house and with Blue State Digital behind them you never know, the Manchester United fans might just get the change they are looking for.
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