Category Archives: Euro 2012 – France

UEFA Euro 2012 Quarter Finals: Spain, Germany, Portugal and Italy. Winning Teams, Winning Stars. Media Coverage Analysis

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We continue our series about media impact analysis of football UEFA Euro 2012 championship.

Quarter finals results

Last eight teams were confronted in a single knockout round, in quarter finals, to determine the last four semifinalists.

Games were played between 21 and 24 June 2012.

Teams and results were:

Portugal – Czech Republic 1-0 (Cristiano Ronaldo)

Germany – Greece 4-2 (Lahm, Khedira, Klose, Reus // Samaras, Salpigidis)

Spain- France 2-0 (2 Xabi Alonso)

Italy – France 0-0 (penalties 4-2).

So, the semifinals of the tournament are:

Portugal Vs Spain

Germany Vs Italy

Media value in the final stages of the competition

It’s time for glory for the teams reaching the final stages of the competition. There are less and less teams competing, there is much more now at stake. Media coverage increases and focusses in the remaining teams and players. Just three big games to play (two semifinals and the final), but they have the power to create new winning and prestigious teams, and launching new heroes of football, or confirming and strengthening the established football stars.

Media impact measurement of the decissive matches provide us the information about how big is the reward that teams and players will receive from sport success and which players will win the more after each game. As explained in previous posts, the massive media coverage that some football players are receiving in Euro 2012 is translated into increased media value. Football media value is an almost direct mesure of future commercial power of players of football stars.

The crucial games are still ahead. But quarter finals were already a very important step and have their own impact in terms of media value.

Comparative media impact analysis

We propose in this post a different analysis concerning post game media coverage of games.

We show this time comparative analysis of all four games. We will show also team Vs Individual media impact.

We use as in all previous posts about Euro 2012 media impact metrics based in image content analysis of photos published in newspapers the day after each game.

We have chosen news published in British media, except for the match Italy Vs England. In order to avoid media bias we have chosen media coverage in Spanish newspapers for Italy vs England.

We present as first result the distribution of media coverage received by each team. In the following figure, we present the share reached by all eight teams in quater finals. Green bars refer to qualified teams to the semifinals. Red bars correspond to eliminated teams.

Winning teams control between 64% adn 72% of all post game media coverage. Losing teams receive between 36% and 28% of the post game media attention.

According to our results, the game with the highest orientation towards the winning team was Portugal Vs Czech Republic. 71.6% of all post game coverage about the match turned in favour of players from Portugal. Second team most massivelly followed was Germany (68%). Winners Spain and Italy shared media space with losers France and England.

The increased attention in favour to Portugal reflects that the game was seen as very unbalanced and that the Czech Republic players did not deserve much attention because of their lack of sport performance. It also reflects the increased expectations created by Portugal. At the beginning of the competition, Portugal was just the seventh favorite team to win the championship, according to Bwin odds. After the end of the group stage, Portugal jumped to third favorite, ahead of other prestigious teams in the quater finals (all teams that were eventually eliminated, plus Italy).

Team Vs individual stars media impact

In this section we proceed to the analysis of the media coverage given to each match, by focusing the attention to the place given to individual stars versus team success.

We have applied the following strategy. Applying image content analysis, we have distinguished the images showing just one player (or the coach) to photos showing several team players, tipically celebrating a goal or the qualification for the next round. This analysis allow us to study how do media perceive the sources of the success of the team: individual versus collective contributions. Of course, media choices are strongly determined by the actual development of the match. There are matches with clear individual heroes who capture almost all media glory, while in other cases there are more than one heroe or key protagonists of the match are unclear.

Based on the results of the four games, we should expect  a huge individual media coverage for Spain (Xabi Alonso scored all two goals), and Portugal (Cristiano Ronaldo scored the only decissive goal, he had other clear scoring opportunities). As for the other two winning teams, we count with the extreme cases. We have a lot of protagonists in Germany, as there are four different scorers, and even the man of the match was another player, Mesut Özil. As for Italy, we have no clear heroes, as there were no scorers during the regular time. In the penalty series, Nocerino missed his shot, goalkeeper Buffon just blocked one penalty and Pirlo reached protagonism using an unusual soft shot (Panenka style). Andrea Pirlo became eventually the Man of the match.

We present our empirical results in the following four figures.

We find that Portugal is the team were media coverage is more oriented to individual players, with 48% of all images about the match. The vast majority of them show Cristiano Ronaldo as protagonist.

We have discussed in some previous posts the relevance of Euro 2012 for CR7 individual interests. According to our results, Leo Messi is the most valuable player of the season in terms of media value (see the post about Football media valur report 2012). In the last four seasons, the most valuable player by media value got thereafter the Ballon d’Or. Our prediction is thus that Leo Messi will win the FIFA Ballon d’Or 2013… except if Cristiano Ronaldo continue to emerge as the decissive team leader and Portugal reached the final or even win the title. In any case, we can confirm that the quarter finals had an excellent positive impact for Cristiano Ronaldo.

As expected, second team more oriented to individual post game reward is Spain. Individual images refer mainly to Xabi Alonso. Individual share is 35% of all news. This is quite less that the share reached by Cristiano Ronaldo (48%).

As for the other two winning teams, we find that individual images reach 22% value for Italy, and a mere 14% share for Germany. Images explaining Germany outstanding performance against Greece is reflected in collective images showing the strength of the group.

(more content coming)

Top Teams in Euro 2012 Group Stage. Media Views in Germany, Britain, Italy

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We propose a new analysis about media impact of football Euro 2012, after our series about individual matches analysis (see some posts below, or click in ‘Categories’ section, under ‘Euro 2012′).

Now we conduct the analysis of the media coverage given to this sporting event since its start by 8 June 2012, till the end of the Group stage, by 20 June 2012.

For those not familiar with this sport event, UEFA Euro 2012 is the major football (soccer) event in Europe at national team level. It takes place every four years, and it takes place now as final tournament, in Poland and Ukraine.

There are 16 teams playing in this final tournament in Poland and Ukraine. There is a group stage each one with four teams. Two of them classify for the knock-out stages (quater, semis and final).

The teams qualified for the knock-out stage are:

Group A: Czech Republic, Greece.

Group B: Germany, Portugal.

Group C: Spain, Italy.

Group D: England, France.

Powerful football teams eliminated: Netherlands, Sweden, Russia, Croatia, and local teams Poland and Ukraine.

Sport mega events and place branding

The event receives massive media attention in Europe, and some broadcasting and media coverage outside Europe in countries with strong football tradition and fan base.

Organizing and hosting sport mega events plays a major role as city and country branding and rebranding tool. This is particularly the case for places with rather low international visibility or a poor brand profile: mega events can create a lasting positive effect in city and country brand… if things evolve correctly. Bad news during mega events can reach the status of afwul devastating news for the brand equity of organizing places.

We observed one of such incidents during this Euro 2012 that become a nightmare for country organizers and PR team: highly rival countries Poland and Russia played a decissive match, the day of Russia Day, to be played in Warsaw. Introduction went directly to natural conclusion: there were a number of violent clashes between hoolingans from both parties just beneath the stadium, with the presence of international press.

We proposed a flash media impact measurement of the clashes, that you can access here: Image Impact for Poland of Clashes Between Polish and Russian Fans. This was bad news for Poland branding.

The other cases that we have explored in this blog about Euro 2012 are the identification of top stars of a singular match based in the post game analysis of the images shown by the newspapers about the game. In some cases we have also proceed into a pre-game media coverage. As said, if interested, you can access the analysis of a particular team by chosing it in the ‘Euro 2012′ chapter of the ‘Categories’ section.

Now we study how the initial Group stage has been ‘viewed’ by the media in different countries.

We have conducted the analysis using the same approach applied in all previous cases about Euro 2012: through image content analysis of photos of news about the Euro 2012.

We count with a number of relevant items concerning media coverage given in each country, like the extent of images about violence and protests, the presence of official logos and sponsors, or images about fans, stadia and city views. We will eventually show the results about these elements in a future post in this blog.

Here in this post we restrict the analysis to the media coverage given in each country to each one of the 16 competing teams, in news published by local media during the initial group stage, between 8 and 20 June 2012.

Media coverage and sport business

We have monitored media coverage given in three big countries in Europe in terms of population, economic power and football fan base and tradition: Germany, Britain and Italy. Teams from all these three countries compete in the tournament, and all three have qualified for the knock-out stage of the competition.

We have shown in a previous post that our research center, MRI Universidad de Navarra publishes an annual report about media value in football, based basically in the same approach shown here: rankings are based in media coverage received by football players and teams during the season.

This is the post concerning the basic results about season 2011/12.

Football Media Value Report 2012

The figure below shows the list of top 10 football players 2012. Seven of them are currenly playing at UEFA Euro 2012.

As explained in that post, rankings about media value in sports are not just a matter of curiosity. It provides a relevant information in sport business, as media value of players and teams is the best tool to predict their commercial power.

In this sense, the media coverage that football players are receiving thanks to their sport performance and the success of their team has also direct implications in footballers’ media value, that stay after the competition ends.

As explained in the mentioned post about Football media value report, we find that in the last four seasons, top football player by media value according to MRI Universidad de Navarra eventually received afterwards the FIFA Ballon d’Or. Argentinian star Messi (FC Barcelona) is the most valuable player of the season. But number two is Cristiano Ronaldo (Real Madrid). The Portuguese star is receiving tremendous media exposure thanks to his decissive contribution to team success. Added media value by Cristiano Ronaldo could have a crucial influence in changing the trend observed these last four seasons and be awarded as top footballer of the year.

Thus, media coverage analysis of Euro 2012 provides information relevant not only for football fans, but again for professionals and people interested in sport business.

Local media coverage

What is the expected media behaviour in a country concerning the coverage of a sport event where your national team is taking part? Of course, we expect a strong bias towards the local team, and eventually also towards direct rivals of the local team.

Finding this result will then not be a surprise, nor a very relevant result. But again, as always, things become more interesting and useful if we are interested in knowing the ‘how much’ about this bias: how much media attention takes the local team in the news and how much space is left to the other 15 teams? And, excluding media coverage provided to local team, which teams are most followed by the media in the different countries? Do all countries follow a common path? Finally, what is the picture emerging from the sum of individual biased views?

Let’s go for empirical answers based in the analysis of the case Euro 2012 for media in Germany, Britain and Italy.

Euro 2012 media coverage in Germany

We show first results about media coverage in Germany.

We present in the figure below the media coverage given to all 16 participating teams by German press. Values refer to the percentual share of the total media attention received by each team.

We have the first answer concerning the extent of media bias towards local team, applied to Germany: German team is the reference of one third of all images about the Euro 2012. This is more than three times than media coverage given to the secong team in the list. This is Spain, with 10% of all images. Among top 5 teams we find two rivals in Group B: Netherlands and Denmark. There was apparently less media attention to Portugal, the other team in Group B. We also find 6 teams qualified for next round among top 9 teams by media impact in Germany.

Media coverage in Britain

We move now to the analysis of media coverage given by British media.

There is almost exactly the same pattern in terms of media bias in Britain: media attention to local team reaches some one third of all photos included in news about the Euro 2012 by British media.

As for the teams behind, we find also here that the main reference is Spanish team, the current title holder and one of the leading favorites to win the championship. Quite surprisingly, we do not find a substantial increase of media exposure of England rival teams (France, 6th; Sweden and Ukraine, 14th and 15th). Media attention is focussed in top traditional football teams: Spain, Italy, France, Netherlands, Germany.

Media coverage in Italy

Our third case is news coverage in Italy.

Same story, once again. Bias towards local team is translated into a media coverage of slighly more than one third of total media coverage. Rival team Spain takes again leading positions, but the second place is taken by England. Portugal takes a privileged position in comparison with media in other countries. Almost all attention is focussed in Portuguese mega star Cristiano Ronaldo. Team rivals (Ireland, Croatia) receive a higher media exposure in Italy than in the other countries.

Comparative media coverage

We have observed some commonalities among the three cases selected. They can emerge more easily if we merge the three figures in one, as shown in the figure below.

We confirm the presence of an almost same image in terms of covering the local team. In all three countries media choose Spain as the leading reference. We find more variability concerning media coverage given to other teams. For instance, we find that Italy provides smaller media attention to Netherlands than in the other countries. France and Portugal are underrepresented in German press.

Among teams that reached the final eight teams, we find low media attention towards Czech Republic and Portugal. They meet together in quarter finals.

Combined media impact Euro 2012 Group stage

Now, the next step is to derive the combined result emerging from media coverage given in all three countries. Results are established by a simple average of the individual results, excluding media coverage given to local teams.

Results are purely illustrative and do no reflect a systematic and true ranking of media impact of teams. We have chosen just news from three countries. Even if they are big markets, the representativeness of the results requires to include Spain, Netherlands and eventually some other countries.

But the results we show below reach the goal we are looking for. They show a non representative but informative ranking about global media coverage received by each one of the 16 participating teams.

We find that the top ranked country in this fist stage of the competition is Spain, followed by England and France. Quite surprisingly, we find low valuations for the German team (just seventh position), even if they are the unique team obtaining three wins and being considered one of the favorite teams of the competition. We find that seven qualified teams appear among top eight teams by global media impact. This confirm as always in all our analysis the direct relationship between sport performance and media impact. This is also why media impact leads to commercial power.

The other conclusion behind the results of this ranking is that we confirm once more this so surprising and appealing result relying in our analysis of sport media value: national media coverage is always strongly biased towards local readers’ interests. But the sum of all strongly biased views, by adding news coverage from different countries, creates an emerging picture which progressively eliminates biases. The elimination of bias can be measured by the increase of the relationship between global media impact and sport performance, as this link is lower at national level.

This is also telling us that the calculation of rankings of media impact about brands that are global, like sport brands, requires taking measurements from all over the world; otherwise, result will be strongly biased and irrelevant. This is what we do in our reports and rankings about media value of football teams and athletes.

(more content coming)

Stars of France Vs England Euro 2012 1-1 Game 1 Lescott, Nasri

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We continue with our series of posts about the Euro 2012.

Now we cover the analysis of the match France vs England. It’s to be played 11 June 2012 6pm CET.

This is another classic in football. Recent performances give a sligh favoritism to France. For instance, the implicit winning chances at online betting firm Bwin give 39.4% winning chances to France and 21.9% to England. There is 31.5% chances to reach a null game.

As in the previous post, we show which teams are selected in the photos of the news articles about this game, just published today, but before the match starts.

We present results concerning the following linguistic areas: English, French, Spanish, German and Italian.

We find as expected a local bias towards the national team in French and English media. This is practically a mirror (column one and five). Both regions deserve more than 60% of all images to pics showing exclusively local heroes. There is less than 20% of photos reserved to rival team photos.

Moving to ‘neutral’ media, we start with news in Spanish (column two), we find that in this case it is strongly oriented towards covering French team images. 66% of all news refer exclusively to French players. Some 21% to English players. How to explain this strong bias towards France, which is not driven by a so strong sport favoritism? This strong bias is probably due to the fact that one of the leading stars of the French team, Karim Benzema, plays in the Spanish Liga, with Real Madrid. There is also another French players with lower media value that plays in Spain: Adil Rami, in Valencia. By contrast, there is currently no English star playing in the Spanish Liga.

We find a very similat pattern when we consider media coverage given in Italy. Very similar to media in Spanish, providing a little more room to photos with shared protagonism, reducing thus the weigth of images with French stars only (moving from 66% to 52.4%). Both in Italy and Spain there is a clear bias towards French team. We cannot use the explaination of French stars playing in Italian calcio, as there aren’t.

We find a completely different picture when we analyse the results concerning media coverage given to the before the game news in media written in German. Now we observe a preference for images about English team players. Photos about only English players represent 53% of all pictures, while photos about French players are just 30%. This complete shift of preferences in comparison with media choices in Italy and Spain cannot be explained again by English stars playing in Germany, as it is not the case. It can be partially explained by the recent Champions League final opposing local german tem Bayern Munich against English Chelsea. Some stars from Chelsea are the leaders of the English team, like Terry, Cole or Lampard.

Whatever the reasons behind, we observe a very divergent media treatment of this game depending on the linguistic areas in Europe. Latin countries tend to give more attention to France, and Germany prefers English stars. May this result also reflect geo politic preferences?

The match

As commented, France was considered the favorite team of the game. Final result of the match was a draw, 1-1. England opened the score in minute 30, by Joleon Lescott. France was able to score in minute 39, a goal by Samir Nasri. Nasri was named the Man of the match.

The stars of the match

We present now results concerning media impact after the match. We have chosen in this case news coverage of the match by media in Spain. We know that media in Spain presented a bias favorable to French players. We cannot chose news in English as this is one of the affected parties and post game result analysis would be completely biased.

According to our results, post game media attention has refelected quite well what happened in the pitch, as photos concerning players of each team are almost equally distributed in newspapers in Spain, with a sligh advantage for French squad, a share 51-49.

As for individual stars, we find that the main star of the game in the media is again a scorer and the Man of the match (a distinction established by UEFA organization), Samir Nasri, with 15.4% of all photo news.

The second star of the game is the scorer of the other team, England. Lescott receives 14% media impact. We find that both scorers are the relevant stars of the game, as there are no other players reaching a similar level of media attention.

Third and fourth stars of the match are French players: Frank Ribéry (10.4%) and Karim Benzema (8.5%).

We have then three players from England, but their level of media attention reached is rather low. This is the list of top 10 stars. This is the first time that we find a coach among top ten stars of the match. French trainer Laurent Blanc takes eigth position, with 3.5% share of images about the match.

Annex: Tactics analysis

This is the verdict by zonalmarking: ‘France dominate possession but creativity stifled by England sitting deep’ (see all analysis here).

Quotations from their analysis:

Formation battle 

This was a fairly simple battle. England had two banks of four, with Ashley Young and Welbeck paired upfront – a mobile, energetic duo that looked to work the channels with support from the two wide players. Steven Gerrard and Scott Parker sat much deeper.

Blanc asked Alou Diarra to stick tightly to Ashley Young when Young came deep, and play deep in front of Young when he moved forward to partner Welbeck. Yohan Cabaye was higher up near Gerrard, and Malouda tried to drift past Parker into space. But there was little space for France, as England packed their own half with eight very narrow players. The space was generally in the wide zones, and although Mathieu Debuchy and Patrice Evra got forward well, they rarely caused significant danger. Playing the ball out wide tended to result in lots of corners, which England sometimes defended nervously.

Conclusion

On the whole, the first round of Euro 2012 matches have been relatively open and entertaining, but this was a slow game. The two sides wanted to ‘not lose’ more than they wanted to win, so a draw seemed likely from early in the second half, with only France’s long-range shots threatening.

England’s shape was good, but their transitions were disappointing because of Young’s anonymity. He’s a key player for this system, and France did well to nullify his influence. Hodgson will also be concerned about the space between the lines, and the Parker-Gerrard combination needs to be a little more disciplined, and make sure one of them is occupying that zone, rather than chasing the ball or being drawn to opponents.

France were certainly the more positive side, but moved the ball too slowly to draw England’s players out of shape, and maybe needed more variety and movement from their midfield triangle. They put England’s defensive unit under persistent but never particularly strong pressure, and seemed to be waiting for the other two group matches.