Digital transformation has impacted football not only via platforms, but also on-pitch with the introduction of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR). A study analysing over 300,000 comments left on FIFA's official YouTube videos revealed that about 60% of fans disliked VAR. Fans typically associated VAR with three negative aspects: favouring bigger nations, non-neutrality of technology, and destruction of traditional football. They perceived VAR as another tool used in modern football's commercialisation and mediatisation.
Digital Revolution? Persisting Gender Inequalities in Digital Sports Broadcasting: The case of FIFA TV on YouTube
A research comparing men's and women's FIFA World Cup videos on YouTube found that while men's videos have more views and engagement, women's videos received more likes per view, showing signs of favorable engagement. These findings suggest that the digital revolution has not fully disrupted gender inequalities in sports media, but there are hopeful indicators of an increasingly equitable consumption of content.
Have Social Media Disrupted Football Consumption?
While researching to write a chapter on digital and social media disruptions on the consumption of football for an upcoming book on The Business of FIFA I went about collecting data from a particular social media platform - YouTube - to discuss the possible transformations that the so-called digital revolution has caused on sport. For... Continue Reading →
Media and Digital Transformation in Sport 