BEST DIGITAL / SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM
Birmingham City FC
The Birmingham City Media and Content team is helping to drive the story of the Blues under exciting new ownership.
The Club could become one of football’s most talked about in the next few years as it strives to realise bold ambitions.
And the digital and social media arm of the Club is at the forefront, showing significant progress in regards to key metrics.
This has been down to determination to think outside the box and become more relatable through its tone of voice.
Despite the challenges brought about by relegation to League One, the Media and Content team has achieved the following:
Video views up 200%; total number of engagements up about 20%; average daily total number of engagements up 25%; average number of engagements per post on Instagram up 66%; 17m TikTok views (which beats Premier League Fulham and Southampton); 1.78% engagement rate on Instagram would rank Blues 2nd in the Premier League.
The team works closely with other key departments from within the Club, including Brand and Marketing. This collaboration led to almost one million impressions being generated for the Club’s Home Kit launch, numbers which surpassed anything previously recorded.
Chelsea FC
At Chelsea FC, our men’s and women’s social media teams are equally important to the club’s digital success, each operating at different stages of growth. The men’s team, with an established global following, focuses on deepening fan connections and maximising engagement. In contrast, the women’s team is in a rapid growth phase, prioritising audience expansion, brand identity and commercial value within the evolving landscape of women’s football.
In 2024, both teams delivered innovative strategies tailored to their goals, setting new benchmarks across the industry.
For the men’s team, the focus was on enhancing matchday content, amplifying hero moments and evolving the club’s visual identity. This drove record results, including a 56% increase in video views, a 31% rise in engagements and the highest Premier League engagement rate among the top 10 clubs. Viral moments such as Cole Palmer’s four-goal performance against Brighton also contributed to commercial success, with the ‘Palmer Again’ t-shirt becoming the best-selling non-kit item of the year.
For Chelsea FC Women, the strategy focused on growing a younger, female audience through TikTok and player-led storytelling. This helped CFCW become the most-viewed women’s club globally in 2024, while digital campaigns drove record ticket sales and sponsorship growth.
Heart of Midlothian FC
In 2024, Heart of Midlothian FC turned 150 years old. Across all social and digital platforms, Hearts made it a year to remember for their fans and the wider football world. With a stunning new 3rd kit taking centre stage, this entry is about how the oldest club in Edinburgh took a club’s rich history and made it accessible and engaging for their support.
Liverpool FC
Liverpool FC is proud to be recognized as the most sustainable football club by Brand Finance, leading in digital engagement and global reach. With over 200M social media followers, we achieved 1.51bn Premier League engagements in 2024, reinforcing our position as a digital leader.
In the 2023/24 season, we were the most engaged Premier League club, surpassing rivals by 400M engagements. We’re focused on growing our Women’s channels and targeting 1 billion engagements moving forward. Highlights include the Danke Jurgen campaign, generating 72.1M engagements, and League Cup victory where we outperformed other European cup winners with 48.2M engagements—surpassing the Super Bowl’s 6.2M.
We continue to create powerful content, like celebrating Isaac Kearney on International Day of Persons with Disabilities, and lead the digital space with our EA FC ratings video. Our Digital Media team drives engagement year-round, delivering impactful global content.
Servicing our global partnerships, worth £272 million, plays a pivotal role in enabling deals that provide funding for investment into the playing squad and significant exposure for AXA, Standard Chartered, Expedia, Nike, and Google Pixel.
At Liverpool FC, we’re not just a football club—we are a digital and and commercial powerhouse, dedicated to innovation, fan engagement, and global expansion.
Plymouth Argyle FC
Since gaining promotion to the Sky Bet Championship in mid-2023, the social media, website and comms team at Plymouth Argyle have taken on a challenge – competing as a small fish in a big pond. To compete against its new divisional rivals, the club have expanded the team to upwards of ten people, creating club-branded digital content, comprising graphics, photos, videos and more.
The importance of transparency was important for the club too, with exclusive behind-the-scenes content filmed with Head Coaches Wayne Rooney and Miron Muslic, and Chairman Simon Hallett, providing an insightful look into the running of the club.
Argyle’s engagement has increased to record numbers, smashing internal club targets, and revenue is at an all-time high. As Argyle continues to pursue its goal of becoming a top-six Championship club, the digital content team are matching this aspiration with high-quality output at a new level.
The FA – England, Emirates FA Cup & Adobe Women’s FA Cup
The FA’s social team has the objective to grow, engage and convert online audiences in line with the organisation’s overall strategy and business plan. As a not-for-profit organisation, it’s vital that we generate commercial income to re-invest into the game and our social channels are becoming an increasingly important part of that imperative.
Across the 2023/24 season, The FA’s social media team celebrated record performance levels through the production and distribution of digital content. On the England national team’s channels, coverage of the Three Lions’ UEFA EURO 2024 campaign yielded more than 100 million engagements while our video content was seen over 700 million times.
There was similar success across both the Emirates FA Cup and Adobe Women’s FA Cup, too. Through the season, the Emirates FA Cup’s channels generated 142 million engagements (up 39% on the 2022/23 campaign) while Adobe Women’s FA Cup content was seen more than 100 million times across the season (2022/23: 23.9m) with video content being viewed 76.5 million times – up 2,336% from the previous campaign. Engagements rose from 258,661 in 2022/23 to 5.3 million – a 1,978% rise – while the accounts attracted more than 200,000 new followers.
