Daily Fantasy Sports operator launches a social-listening exercise for the Premier League’s hottest young stars
London, February 17: Daily fantasy sports operator Sportito has launched a monthly Under-21 Fan’s Favourite award for the qualifying Premier League player who has garners the most mentions on social media within the past month.
The award highlights the young players that have excited the fans of each club the most within t
he period with the winner decided by the most total mentions on Twitter. Sportito employed SBC Media and social media marketing agency Pilot Fish to conduct the study.
The winner of the inaugural Under-21 Fan’s Favourite was Tottenham Hotspur’s Dele Alli, the current PFA Young Player of the Year and enjoying another stunning season at White Hart Lane. He topped the chart for a two-week period in January with just under 28,000 Twitter mentions, way ahead of fellow young England star Raheem Sterling who came second with nearly 15,000 mentions.
The global nature of the Premier League was highlighted by the fact that the biggest territory for mentions in total was the US, followed by the UK.
The ongoing project will see a player crowned each month as the Under-21 Fan’s Favourite. The data is collected via Twitter which determines who garnered the most mentions throughout the month.
Riccardo Mittiga, chief executive of Sportito, said the aim of the new Under-21 Fan’s Favourite of the month award was to attempt to leverage the interest in the English Premier League in an innovative way.
“By highlighting the interest of the fans as displayed on social media, we hope to link that enthusiasm with the ability on our daily fantasy sports offering to pick players out that you wish to follow,” he said.
“The popularity of the Premier League is there for all to see and we know that competition in the daily fantasy sports market is heating up, so in order to stand out from the crowd we thought a project linking directly to the enthusiasm of the fans would get us more noticed.”
Sportito, which launched its DFS offering at the start of this season, has been busy in recent months doing commercial deals, first with Championship side Fulham and more recently announcing itself as the fantasy sports partner with Premier League side Burnley.
“The Under-21 fan’s favourite award complements our work with both Fulham and Burnley and through the coverage we hope to gain we hope to further the Sportito brand awareness.”
Sportito and SBC Media will be releasing the name of the winner of the Under-21 Fan’s Favourite at the end of each month. The next winner will be announced in the first week of March.
