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Opinion

Manchester City now advertise for fans – The end of football as we know it?

4 years ago
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It could have been Newcastle United and not Manchester City that Sheikh Mansour could have bought.

Just let that sink in.

It was widely reported that he looked at buying Newcastle United and just imagine if Mike Ashley had sold NUFC to the Sheikh, just how different things could have been…

There again, maybe best not to.

Sheikh Mansour has made a net investment in Manchester City of over a billion pounds, delivering star player after star player and trophy after trophy. He has also invested in expanding their stadium and also spent millions on social schemes to improve the lives of local people.

Mike Ashley on the other hand has simply used Newcastle United to try and make himself and his retail empire richer, with no ambition when it comes to the football side of things, other than surviving in the Premier League to ensure PL revenues and that sports Direct gets worldwide TV exposure.

One thing Sheikh Mansour has found a struggle is filling their stadium.

No matter how many star players and trophies he supplies, there are empty seats at pretty much every Manchester City match.

This is especially so when it comes to Champions League games.

Last night I watched as Manchester City took apart Atalanta.

Two things struck me, well three if you include the quality of football.

They were: the thousands of empty seats, as well as the fans who were there – even when Raheem Sterling got his hat-trick so many of the ‘fans’ hardly reacted, these didn’t look like the Manchester City fans I used to see before they were bought success.

Then it all kind of makes sense when this morning I came across this advert, using marketing platform Tribe, Manchester City have been advertising for fans!

Manchester City have advertised for ‘influencers’ to help to try and attract new/more fans, especially to their Champions League games.

They say it is a problem playing against ‘relatively unknown teams’ and they are worried that not enough ‘core supporters’ will turn up.

They want influencers to ‘get across the great atmosphere of the Etihad’…

Manchester City are trying to get male students, young professionals and people new to Manchester, aged 18 to 55, to put out content that will ‘tell an authentic and genuine story of what it’s like to be at a game’…

The influencers have to have at least 5,000 followers on social media and in applying they need to submit something that shows ‘the electrifying atmosphere that only Champions League live football matches can deliver’…a fee will then be agreed for successful applicants.

The advert comes as new research has shown that the majority of Manchester City followers on social media channels are fake.

Social media agency Pilotfish Media estimates 58% of the Manchester City 15m Instagram followers and 33% of 7.2m Twitter followers are fake, which when combined adds up to over 50% of followers across both platforms.

Here’s an idea, if Manchester City don’t have enough fans to fill the ground, why don’t they just give thousands of free tickets away to local kids, rather than try to attract ‘fake’ fans and neutrals?

Or better still, why doesn’t Sheikh Mansour just sell Manchester City and buy Newcastle United…

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