The return of the football season signals the usual feelings of elation, despair and pure frustration that these leagues can provide. However, the end of this month also signals the start of the Professional Footballers’ Association monthly awards.
The PFA’s most prestigious award comes in the form of the PFA Player of the Year, voted for by the players themselves and won last season by Mohamed Salah. Snack Media’s involvement however, lies with the PFA Bristol Street Motors Fans’ Player of the Month award. This is Snack Media’s second season with the world’s longest established professional sportsperson’s union, having taken over from Sky Sports last year. For the duration of the season, fans have the chance to vote for their player of the month across all four leagues.
Run by Activations Account Manager, Oliver Huddlestone, the team is tasked with sourcing panel members from across the world of digital sport including former players, social media influencers, broadcasters and most importantly, football fans themselves. Previous panel members have included Guillem Balague, Dan Walker, Bianca Westwood and Calfreezy. This panel of seven chooses a shortlist of finalists that the public can then vote for, sometimes via videos uploaded onto the site.
⚽️ Goals, assists, clean sheets… here’s the six that have been shortlisted for the PFA @BristolStMotors #PremierLeague Player of the Year!
VOTE HERE ➡️ https://t.co/Akc1JJwGzC#PFAAwards pic.twitter.com/zi3K9ISPkK
— Football FanCast (@FootballFanCast) May 20, 2018
Snack utilises their network of 26 millions sports fans to drive traffic to the voting website, Snack’s owned and operated channel, Football Fancast (FFC). Fans can either vote via the website or via widgets. These widgets are featured on social media as well as on official club sites, player accounts and in regional press in order to get more fans voting across the country. Last year the campaign generated over 1.4 billion social impressions and received over 430,000 votes.
As part of the campaign, Snack designs engaging social media infographics, videos and GIFs for every nominated player in the lead up to the awards and once the winner has been announced. Our team of writers also provide articles that inlcude shortlists of the monthly nominees and a look back to why they have earned that nomination.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhbTyJmlEPl/?hl=en&taken-by=the_pfa
The in-house tech team built both the website and the API that underpins it. The technology has been carefully designed to handle high traffic and a high concurrency of votes. Since last season, the site has been redesigned with new colour coding for the leagues, a new background image and small adjustments to improve the overall user experience.
After the announcement of the winner, Olly works with Bristol Street Motors to capture live content of the player receiving their award. Often, this is a short interview which is then put onto FFC, the PFA social channels as well as Snack’s own channels. Fans also have the chance to be apart of this and meet their heroes via competitions on the site thanks to Bristol Street Motors.
Our writers at Snack Media have looked back on last seasons winners as well as looking forward to the new season.
To have your say this season, make sure you cast your votes via the website from the 31st August for the Premier League, 3rd September for the Championship, 5th September for League One and the 6th September for League Two!
