A few days ago, the Chinese women's football team used the Sixteen-Year Asian Cup championship to bring all domestic football spectators the best gift of the New Year.
For a time, Weibo hot search list dominated, the circle of friends "bull" brush screen, even if you have not watched the live broadcast of the game is difficult not to know about it - it seems that everyone around the night paid attention to the women's football game.
Under the unprecedented pomp and circumstance, some people also call on us not only to come to visit when they are winning the laurels, but to pay more attention to women's football events in peacetime, which is more useful for the development of players and women's football than to join in the fun.
How much attention there is in women's football matches, fans in the game forum can provide a unique perspective: the sponsors of men's football matches are the tens of millions of sales football game "FIFA", the women's Asian Cup final side, but only the fading West Hill "Pro Evolution Soccer".
Strictly speaking, due to the complex differences involving sponsors and organizers, this ridicule is actually not accurate, and the recent disappointing men's football round of twelve matches, the sideline advertising is also a disappointing "pro evolution soccer".
However, from the content and specifications of the billboard on the side of the stadium, it is indeed possible to get a glimpse of how much attention the event has received. What it reflects, and its relationship with the game, is much more than that.
1
The initial commercialization of football was far less exciting than the current gold dollar war between financial giants.
More than a hundred years ago, the first ads on the pitch appeared in the audience stands. At that time, the only people who could watch the ball game were the live audience who bought tickets to enter the stadium, wrote a good text and stood next to the seat, and the target customers of these advertisements were them. Due to the limited audience, the commercial value of these ads is also very limited.
Until the 1960s, the gradual popularity of television around the world not only promoted the popularity of football, but also carried the commercial value of ball game advertising higher and higher.
It's just a football game in the TV camera, and the audience doesn't have too many shots, so the sideline standing advertisement that surrounds the stadium and can always rub into the broadcast screen came into being. And in the growth of football TV audience, it has slowly become the most important window for football game advertising.
At the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, fieldside advertising was already visible
Under the virtuous circle of commercial operation, the demand for football fieldside advertising in this period is increasing, and the monotonous advertising board can no longer meet the needs of discerning advertisers. So in 1994, when LED technology was very mature, Real Madrid in La Liga first installed LED billboards on the side of the stadium, and the fieldside advertising entered the electrical age.
The billboard moved, meeting the more complex requirements of advertisers, and at the same time giving the event organizers more rolling advertising space, and also avoiding the embarrassing scene of a certain corner advertiser without a few shots.
Now many people call advertising eating, the amount of large tube full, the next time it is time to pursue nutrition and absorption. Today's online advertising relies on algorithms and has achieved accurate delivery focused on individuals, and although the billboard on the side of the stadium has not yet achieved this step, it is not far away.
In 2017, the "virtual replacement technology" that is similar to AR and green screen was the first to land in the UK. By capturing the position of the billboard in the lens beforehand, you can replace the content of the billboard. According to the differences in the region of the broadcaster, advertisements with different contents are placed to attract viewers watching the game more efficiently.
In the hot search for "Chinese billboard counterfeiting" incident during the European Championship last year, the focus was on this technology. Because there were too many Chinese ads on the sidelines, someone posted that this was a regional advertisement that used virtual billboards, and it was later clarified that it was not.
This technology has not yet been fully popularized due to many problems, such as the accuracy of player "keying" and the synchronization of image movement rate. However, now that this technology has been introduced into the Bundesliga, there has been news of related technological breakthroughs, and it seems that the future of fieldside advertising is still a virtual billboard for late synthesis.
At this time, if there is a salesman on the advertising platform side, 80% of his mouth is full of the layout of the "meta-universe advertising market". As the predecessor of the virtual industry, although the game has not carried out the so-called meta-universe layout, it is indeed far more than one or two sponsors on the billboard, and the completely virtual "meta-universe billboard" has long been not new in the game.
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In football games such as FIFA and Pro evolution soccer, the high degree of restoration of reality has always been a major selling point for them, and the standing advertising on the side of the court is naturally no exception.
It's just that in the game, these originally colorful billboards, in most cases, only have game icons or event names, and there are not many real ads. In the end, it is very simple, or the advertiser's money is not in place.
Although the fieldside ads in the game look the same as in reality, the commercial value is not an order of magnitude. Even leaving aside the huge difference in the number of online players and the number of game viewers, the billboards in the game are aimed at players who are fully engaged in manipulation, and there are not many shots on the sidelines; the audience of the ball game is less focused spectators, there are many non-panoramic close-ups, and most importantly, the advertising effect of the latter no longer needs to be proven.
It's just that for the visual differences that are glimpsed by the sideline ads, there are also more real players who pursue details, trying to smooth out the difference between virtual and reality. Looking at the MOD communities of "FIFA" and "Pro Evolution Soccer" in the past, you can find player-made billboard sticker MODs, which do have a bit of a finishing effect for the realism of the game screen.
Of course, the fieldside advertising in the game has its own commercial value, even if it can't catch up with the real ball game.
In recent generations of the Soccer Manager series, it's common to see real ads in addition to game names and event names, scrolling on the sidelines. According to the feedback of foreign players, if you check and agree to the personalized customization option in the game, you will also see content that is more in line with your preferences, and you will achieve accurate delivery one step ahead of the real fieldside advertisement.
For this type of in-game virtual material advertising, even a special platform has been born, Bidstack is such an in-game advertising bidding site. According to their official website, in addition to the "Football Manager" side ads and jersey ads, they have also cooperated with many games such as "Dust", and can also make ads into the trackside advertising flags and open world game windows.
The figure of the real advertisement in the screen of these games will not appear more abrupt, because there should be advertisements on the billboard, as long as it does not affect the normal game experience. It's also an advertisement for EA's games, and players react much more peacefully to the sideline ads in FIFA 22 than the full-screen ads in Ultimate Champions Fight 4 that were scolded by players to be urgently withdrawn.
Not affecting the user's normal experience is the bottom line of player tolerance for advertising, and the same is true for the ball game audience. The side billboard chronicles the evolution of technology from planks to LED lights to virtual replacements, but it also makes a lot of jokes because of the more vivid and eye-catching effects.
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Probably the most famous of these is the famous scene of players passing the ball to billboards.
In a Premier League match, Swansea's Renato Sanchez flicked the ball to the red logo on the side billboard without being forced to grab it. The camera of the coach hiding his face and being speechless is a good representation of the audience's mood when they see this scene.
At that time, Renato Sanchez had just been loaned to Swansea City by Bundesliga giants Bayern, and fans on both sides were expecting the former European golden boy to play back here, but they did not expect to stage such a play.
The overly bright red logo on the billboard does have an impact on players who rely on color and dynamic vision, and although the player problem is large, it is not entirely responsible. It was only after this famous scene that Sanchez's wind rating plummeted, and this foot advertiser's ecstatic passing really became a stain on his career.
Another case of passing the ball to a billboard is really an unjust case. A few years ago, on the sidelines of the Premier League, there was always a Dachshund kicking the ball and running around on the sidelines. Arsenal player Ramsey kicked the ball off the sideline during a match when the puppy just appeared and looked like he had caught the ball in front.
There was a quick discussion online about whether the players thought the dogs running on the billboards were teammates. Soon some netizens pointed out that this dynamic advertisement uses the aforementioned virtual replacement technology and does not interfere with the players, and then the relevant discussion changes shape with the trend, becoming a condemnation conference on how this advertisement distracts the audience.
The unchanging protagonist of the pitch will always be only football, and although the billboard has tried its best to restrain its impulse to scratch its head on the sidelines, it is inevitable that it will occasionally interfere with the players and spectators.
Off the field, the most intuitive impact of the side billboard on an event is how much cream it can squeeze into the cake of the event. The more well-funded the club, the higher the level of competition, the higher the attention, and the more investment can attract a virtuous circle.
This brings us back to the concern issue mentioned at the beginning. The billboards of "FIFA" and "Pro Evolution Soccer" cannot be equated with the impact of men's and women's football matches, but the investment in this square inch can truly reflect the situation of both sides of the advertisement and the attention of the event.
Even people who don't understand the difference in volume between EA and Konami and the gap in word-of-mouth sales between the two games can only see the gap between two sponsored games from the side of the court: one is a customer of the AFC League, and the other is in the hottest football event, the Champions League. From this point of view, the real situation is still difficult to hide the huge decline in the face of "FIFA", a rival that was once on par.
Another example is the top team in the Premier League, the Manchester City men's and women's teams, which are home to Manchester City Stadium and Manchester City College Stadium, the former can accommodate about 53,400 spectators at the same time, with four rows of side advertising space, and the latter has only 7,000 spectator seats and a circle of billboards.
Manchester City women's team home (left) and Manchester City men's team home (right)
The top league of men's football can easily attract the sponsorship of first-line customers such as sports brands, banks, airlines, etc.; women's football league teams are difficult to win the favor of these financial owners in addition to the main sponsors of the club, and the difference in attention between the two can be seen.
Compared with the men's football team, the women's football team with less exposure and less sponsorship resources can only get phenomenal attention after two games have fought a miracle. But no athlete is willing to work hard for ten years to be a hero for only one day, and it should not only be "set off by peers" to realize their own value - further expanding the attention that sonorous roses deserve, and exploring the commercial potential of women's sports, may be more important than one-time prize money.
Finally, I will use the ridicule at the beginning again, and wish the richer "FIFA" to appear on the sidelines of the women's football competition as soon as possible. As for the two brothers who are constantly testing the bottom line of the audience, I wish them to climb back into the ring together as soon as possible - after all, it is difficult for you to distinguish which of the "Pro Evolution Soccer" players and the Chinese men's football audience is more miserable in a while and a half.