Fresh AFL content has become essential as fans search for relatable social media content beyond the usual round recaps and match highlights. Some clubs are embracing the expanding social media landscape in order to find new ways to engage with fans.
The Greater Western Sydney (GWS) Giants have recognised this changing media landscape and are one of many teams to have transformed their content to successfully appeal to a new demographic. They have managed to humanise their players through engaging with social media trends across TikTok and Instagram. Often the players will be quizzed with impossible questions, asked about their star signs or to reel off their most memorable movie quotes.
GWS content manager Jacob Gaynor has led the charge in removing the barrier between players and fans. He says clubs have begun putting the players’ personalities in the spotlight alongside their athletic ability.
@gws.giants Sorry boys 😂
“In the market that the Giants are in, we have to do things differently and stand out,” he tells upstart. “We just use social media as a tool to do that. One of the big things we like to say is that we’re a team like no other.”
Gaynor says he sees social media as a great way to grow the GWS brand and expects other clubs to follow in their footsteps.
“That was a misconception about social media for a long time, that clubs were just there to tell stories and report on what was happening … but it’s more of a brand, a personality,” he says.
Amidst a change in coach last season, Gaynor says his team had an opening to modernise the content they produce, and the numbers reflect that it was the right decision. He and his team started to curate light-hearted posts about themselves and their losses, poking fun at their misfortune. When they win, they will often celebrate by creating a meme or video to make fun of their opposition in a bid to engage better with fans.
“We had a little bit more fun with it and saw it was working and that’s when we decided to go full steam ahead,” he says.
“People like being relatable and I think that’s what the club is good at doing.
“Whether that’s something to do with another club or a topical subject in the AFL. Whether that be suspension or tribunal [we’re] just having a little bit more fun with it.”
Former AFL player, now content creator Daniel Gorringe says that clubs have realised that fans want to know more about their favourite players. They want to see them as more than just “robots” programmed to play football once a week.
“The game is two hours of a week,” he tells upstart. “We actually like the stuff in between. We want to know what happens on a Monday in the gym.”
Gorringe creates AFL content across various forms of social media including his Dan Does Footy podcast and Instagram page which have a combined 230,000 followers.
He will often post himself laughing or crying over the football scores and giving his unfiltered opinions on the latest AFL news. Gorringe says the authentic nature of his content is something that fans gravitate towards.
@dandoesfooty Hok just ended it all #fyp #viral #xyzbca #foryoupage #foryou
“I think our stuff is very much raw and I think people have really taken to that. It’s appealing and it’s not sugar-coated, it’s not dressed up as this nicely-packaged thing,” he says.
Gorringe says that players are now able to express themselves as people away from football, something that has continued to evolve since his retirement in 2017. He added that the way players interact with social media platforms now would’ve been unacceptable during his career.
“No way would you be able to express yourself on social media or a team would get a little bit cocky and rub it in the other team’s face,” he says. “That was just not going to happen. But now the way that the times have evolved we’ve kind of relaxed.”
Teams like GWS and Hawthorn have also utilised the fact that they have a young team to, in some ways, guide the content they produce and the way they market themselves.
@hawthornfc What’s up hoks brothers ☝️ #hawthorn #afl #skech #jackginnivan #willday #whatsupbrother
Individual players are even taking to social media to express themselves with Hawthorn’s Jack Ginnivan and Collingwood’s Nick Daicos leading the charge. The pair have more than 400,000 Instagram followers between them, which is larger than any entire football club.
Gaynor says the rise of TikTok and Instagram have allowed teams and players to flourish online. Despite being a newer team, the Giants have amassed more than 230,000 followers across both platforms.
“I think TikTok is an amazing tool to connect people,” he says. “If you don’t get on the front foot, then you’re going to get left behind.”
However, Gorringe says this change isn’t always well received, noting that some older clubs with a deep-rooted fanbase rely on tradition and don’t like disruptions to what they consider as the norm.
“Eventually we’ll come into a nice balance, but at the moment it’s so polarising because it’s so different,” he says.
“There’s an old generation that like that, and there’s a whole new wave of followers that like this, and they’re just miles apart, but eventually they’ll come back in the same realm.”
It remains to be seen if the AFL itself will continue to move further into this new media landscape and embrace more fun, carefree forms of content. But a noticeable shift is clear as more clubs desperately try to keep up with a new way of engagement.
Whatever the AFL does, Gorringe says the future is bright for all footy fans and feels the ever-changing social media landscape offers something for everyone.
“It’ll be great for footy lovers in general… it’s different and scary, but it’s exciting at the same time,” he says.
Article: Ella Zammit is a second-year Bachelor of Media and Communications (Journalism) student at La Trobe University. You can follow her on Twitter @EllaJZammit.
Photo: Supplied by Blair Burns and is used with permission
