Category Archives: Euro 2012 – Spain

Country Branding and Sport Success. The Impact For Spain of Becoming the Football UEFA Euro 2012 Champion Vs Italy 4-0

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This is the last post in our series about media impact of football UEFA 2012.

We have monitored the impact of football matches during this top national sport competition in Europe, and we have addressed different issues using this common framework.

In all previous analysis about this competition, we have used image content analysis of photos used in published news as raw material for our metrics analysis.

We will use again image content analysis in this post.

Now the element we want to address is to propose some measurements about a much talked issue: the impact of sport mega events and championship for the hosting countries or for the champion team.

There are a lot of discussions and studies about the economic impact for the organizing country. There are also some studies and conversations about the benefits that a country can obtain after winning a top sport competition, besides the purely sport triumph.

We have addressed this issue in some of our previous posts in this blog. We have argued that one relevant element in measuring the impact of mega events and sport sucess is linked to enhancing country brand and reputation. We have discussed about place branding when we have monitored the impact of negative events like violent rioting in Barcelona during a Spanish general strike, (See here the Barcelona rioting media impact analysis) and the negative impact for brand image of Poland and and Warsaw of clashed between hoolingans during this Euro 2012. (See here the Clashes in Warsaw case)

But, of course, sport mega events may produce substantial positive effects for brand image of the hosting country if the organizing events go smoothly, and positive image effects for the country winning the championship.

We run a comprehensive mdia impact analysis of the positive benefits for South Africa for perfectly organizing the FIFA World Cup 2010. We also monitored in that study the extraordinary positive impact for the image of Spain as country champion of the competition.

You can access to the report (in Spanish) about the country brand impact of FIFA World Cup for Spain here: MRI Universidad de Navarra, Country Reputation section.

We applied in that case a news content analysis.

Now, we apply, as announced, image content analysis of news.

We have explained the insights of our image content metrics in previous posts in this series about Euro 2012. The intuition supporting the attractiveness of the news image content analysis is easy: a lot of information about an event or issue covered in the news is contained in the body of the article. It is sometimes difficult to seize the profile chosen by the author of the article, as many combined facts are included in the text. The title of the article will tell a lot about the perception selected by the journalist. The other element that provides a lot of information about the position taken by the journalist is the photo chosen to illustrate the article. Is many cases, the image chosen captures the ‘soul’ of the news. Even in cases were the image does not reflect the spirit of the article, if plays a huge influence in readers’ perception. This is why we consider that image content analysis of newspapers as developped by MRI Universidad de Navarra provide a powerful metrics tool for reputation or branding analysis.

The case we are covering in this post is really especially appealing, as we have a combination of news almost perfectly opposed as image profiler, in the same time period. In the economy side, Spain has become a leading international reference in the news in May and June for its critical economic and financial problems. Spain is suffering a year 2012 with an impressive economic recession, after four years of economic crisis. Unemployment rate is setting international records. Finally, the adjustment applied to its banking system has provocked the emergence of structural problems, driving to the nationalization of Bankia and the call to a financial rescue action to Europe. It is probably impossible to create a darker image in the economy front.

We have in parallel a number of recent sport sucesses by Spanish sport players and teams. Rafa Nadal in tennis (Roland Garros champion in May), Fernando Alonso in Formula One (current leader), MotoGP, and now the Spanish football team.

The Spanish football team is the new football champion in Europe after beating Italy in the final with an astonishing 4-0 result, the largest win in an Euro final. Big and spectacular game, and also outstanding sport performance: Spain in the first country in Europe winning three major championships in a row: UEFA Euro 2008 and 2012 and FIFA World Cup 2010.

Our aim in this post is to measure and to show you the media impact of the combination of good news and bad news about Spain, and the specific impact of the sport success in Euro 2012.

We have chosen to analyze the results coming from media in Germany. This is probably the most interesting country to monitor, as Germany is playing a major role in the current economic and financial crisis in Europe, as leading country deciding how to find solutions and providing funding for them. German media will be thus  specially aware concerning the ongoing financial crisis in Spain. Germany is also strongly interested in UEFA Euro 2012, as football is the leading sport in this country in popularity and German team was seen as one of top favorites to win the competition (it was eventually eliminated by Italy in the semi finals stage).

As explained, we have applied as metrics the image content analysis of the photos used in newspapers in Germany in news explicitly mentioning Spain (‘Spanien’).

The time period covered is between June 1 and July 9 2012. This include a pre Euro 2012 period (June 1 to June 8) and a post Euro period (July 2 to July 9).

We have monitored the news published in newspapers by units of three consecutive days. Applying image content analysis, we have organized the results into different categories, that will be explained when we comment the empirical results

Let’s present and analyze the results.

We present the global detailed results in the first figure. Photos showing positive imaging for brand Spain are coloured in green, photos showing negative perceptions are coloured in red, neutral images are in white.

The share of positive related images about Spain move beetween 48% and 70% of all news before Euro 2012 starts (it started in June 8, but it started for Spain in June 10, when it played its first match). So, just before the commencing of Euro 2012, negative news about bad economic conditions in Spain and the negociations for rescuing the Spanish banking system took som 40% of all news about Spain in German press.

What happened during the three weeks of Euro 2012 championship? As we could expect, news and images about the Spanish football team success took an ever increasing place. Images about football represented a minimum of 45% of all news about Spain and an extraordinary peak of 85% of all news when Spain got the title.

This means that sport almost completely overcome the negative news about the economic and financial problems of Spain during the Euro 2012.

The positive impact of Euro 2012 of Spanish country brand is confirmed only when Spain wins the title: the huge quantity of news created around the Euro is transformed into huge positive quality of news when Spain becomes the event champion.

The figure below summarizes the positive impact of Euro by representing the share of news that it represents in German media: this is a huge 60% of all news about Spain during three weeks.

In the following figure we show the detail of the source of news with a positive impact of brand Spain. It provides the evidence of the dramatic impact of sport successes like Euro 2012, as new brand capital.

In the final figure we show the global picture of all news about Spain in German newspapers, both positive and negative. News about Euro 2012 represent 45% of all news about Spain during this period.

Euro 2012 is by far the first provider of positive news for Spain during June 2012. Second source of positive news (16.3%) are touristic related images (touristic destinations, beaches, hotels). Other categories of positive news play a minor role in coparison: images about culture and cultural events (3.3%), images about food and gastronomy (2.5%).

The most relevant fact is that during the critical period when Spanish economy was under attack and pushed the Government to call and finally obtain a rescue fund from Europe forits national banking system, the size of the very negative news about these problems (21.1%) were less than half the size of images about the successful Euro 2012.

Yes, sport success plays a major role in country branding, and it can be measured.

Annex: Examples of German Newspapers Cover

We propose as a complement of this post a selection of few cover pages of some German newspapers. Both titles, content and images are relevant.

We propose first some examples of cover pages in German newspapers at the beginning of Euro 2012, around June 10. Spain appears as top news in Germany because of the Spanish banking rescue program by Europe.

Here the cover by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the most influential newspaper in Germany (‘The next one, please: Spain. Up to one hundred billion euro for ailing banks’)

The following cover reflects both the importance of the economic problems is Spain as viewed in Germany, and the media power of football. This is a cover page that captures quite well the story in our post about the impact of sport events and success in country branding.

And now three examples of leading German newspapers the day after Spain won the Euro 2012. Of course, ec0nomic and financial problems in Spain did not disappear by July 2 2012.

 

 

The Stars of Spain Vs Italy Euro 2012 Final. 4-0: Silva, Alba, Torres, Mata, Iniesta. Image Content Analysis Before and After the Game

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Another post in our series of media impact analysis of football Euro 2012.

Spain and Italy play the final game to determine the new champion of the UEFA Euro tournament.

We proceed to a new analysis using image content analysis of the game.

We start with the analysis of the media coverage given the day before the final in newspapers in the directly affected countries: Spain and Italy.

We analyze which is the storyline profile chosen by media in each country.

We show first results concerning media coverage in Spanish newspapers.

According to our results, media provide 53.6% of all images about the final referring exclusively to team Spain. There are 25.5% of the images showing only Italian team images. The remaining 21% photos show players or coaches from both Spain and Italy.

If we compare with views in media in Italy, as shown in the figure below, we find that they give 58.1% of all images to Italy team, for 26.6% to team Spain. There are just 15.3% fo all images showing together both teams.

Media in Spain show 26% of all images to individual stars, against 14% to team images. This ratio is also found in media coverage in Italian newspapers: 32% for individual stars, for 16% for collective images.

Media in Spain, when covering Italian team, prefer to show images of individual stars: 15% of all images are for individuals, versus 4% for the team. This pattern is not seen in Italian media: news for individual stars (11%) are similar to images about the team (8%). This would probably reflect that Spain is feared in Italy media as a powerful team, while media in Spain fear more the impact of individual actions of Italian stars.

Coaches both in Spain and Italy receive a very similar pre game media coverage.

As for individual stars, we find the surprising results that the main star of the final for newspapers in Spain is Casillas (9% of all news). Another surprising result is that the second star is not Iniesta (just 3% of all images) but Xavi (8,2%).

The Italian stars receiving more media coverage in Spanish media are: Pirlo and Buffon (5.2%) and Balotelli (4.5%)

Media in Italy choose Mario Balotelli as main star of the final, with 15.6% of all images. Second star is Cassano (6%) and then Buffon (5.6%).

Main stars from Spain as viewed by Italian media are Casillas (3.2% of all images), followed by Iniesta and Xavi (2.4%).

*****************

Spain became champion after winning the final, 4-0. Goals by David Silva, Jordi Alba, Fernando Torres and Mata.

Post game media impact analysis will come soon.

Spain Vs Portugal Euro 2012 Semifinal. Image Content Analysis

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Spain and Portugal played the first semifinal of the football UEFA Euro 2012.

No goals scored during the regular 90 minutes times. No goals after the 30 minutes of prolongations. The finalist of the championship was decided in the 5 penalties series. Spain finally got the ticket for the final game versus Italy, scoring four penalties. Portugal scored just two of first four penalties. Cristiano Ronaldo did not take the chance to shoot the last penalty.

We propose another media impact analysis of the match in our series of blog posts about the Euro 2012. We use as in all previous posts about the Euro 2012 games the image content analysis of photos used by newspapers to cover the post game information of Portugal Vs Spain. We have selected news published in Britain.

We will propose a new feature in this post.

A null game with no goals and with a penalties series creates an attractive framework of analysis. This kind of results do not produce a clear star of the game (except if goalkeepers have an outstanding performance in the penalties series). There are a plurality of protagonists. This creates an uneasy task for journalists’ choices: which is the image that reflects the best the essence of the game?

A 0-0 game in a decissive knockout round like the semifinals makes that the most important information if the global output (which team qualified) more than individual stars. So, a natural way for journalists to solve the problem of the lack of single stars is to show team images around the crucial moments of the game: during the penalties series or in the right aftermath of the game, celebrating qualification for the final or showing disappointment and suffering for the the elimination.

So, instead of showing you who were designed by the media as leading stars of the game, we show which have been the choices by journalists concerning the decision photos during or after the match.

Results in  the figure below tell us that media in Britain showed images about players from Spain in 41% of all cases. Images with players from Portugal got a 32% share, while images showing players from both teams represented 27% of all photos.

Concerning the specific question raised in this post, we find that post game images showing Spanish players celebrating celebration represented 29% of all news (versus 12% during the game). As for images about Portugal, 25% showed images of frustration, versus just 7% of during the game images. All together, post game images represent 54% of all images used  about the game Spain Vs Portugal.

As for individual stars of the game, we find that main media reference was Cristiano Ronaldo, mostly with images showing his disappointment just after elimination. In the Spanish side, Cesc Fàbregas was the leading reference. He scored the last penalty in Spain. Goalkeeper Iker Casillas and defender Sergio Ramos (Panenka style penalty) were among top three players of the match in the Spanish side.

Example of ‘Spain post match’ image

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

Posted on by • Posted in Euro 2012, Euro 2012 - Czech Republic, Euro 2012 - England, Euro 2012 - France, Euro 2012 - Germany, Euro 2012 - Greece, Euro 2012 - Italy, Euro 2012 - Portugal, Euro 2012 - Spain, Football, Rep Issue - Image Content Analysis, Rep Issue - News Content Analysis, Rep Issue -Media Impact Analysis • Tagged , , , , • 2 Comments

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 Spain Vs Ireland 4-0 Euro 2012. Torres, Torres, Cesc Fabregas – Media Impact Analysis

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We analyze in this post the media impact of football match Spain Vs Ireland, in our series of media coverage analysis of Euro 2012 games.

We apply image content analysis of photos in newspapers the day after the match. We have chosen as ‘neutral’ market news published in French. News in German produce a very similar result.

Spain, current UEFA Euro champion completely dominated the game, and defeated Ireland 4-0, last 14 June 2012. Spain needs a draw in Game 3 day against Croatia to classify for knock out phase. Ireland, with two games losts has been already eliminated from the competition.

The score was:

1-0, Fernando Torres, Spain, 4′

2-0 David Silva, 49′

3-0 Fernando Torres, 70′

4-0 Cesc Fàbregas, 89′

Fernando Torres was named the Man of the match by UEFA.

It is not difficult to guess that Fernando Torres was the star of the game, and the star in terms of post game media coverage. No sophisticated analysis is needed in this case to reach such a conclusion.

But image content analysis will be useful in order to determine how vast has been his domination in the media reports about the match. We have had previous cases in Euro 2012 with players scoring two goals in a match:

  • Bendtner, in Denmark Vs Portugal (match lost)
  • Alan Dzagoev, in Russia Vs Czech Republic (match won)

Dzagoev got 19.7% of all post game media attention. Bendtner got a small 7.3% (5th star of the match), which shows  that the media impact of individual sport perfomance depends strongly of team sport perfomance.

According to our results, we find that Fernando Torres gets 45% of post game media attention.

This is currently the record in all the measurments we made about the other matches of Euro 2012. This result tells us that the impact of Euro 2012 will be extremely benefitial for the media and brand value of Fernando Torres, if he mantains similar performance in upcoming matches.

Second star of the match is Cesc Fàbregas, the author of the last goal of the match. He scored also in the opening game againts Italy. Of course, media attention is much reduced in comparison to Torres. Cesc gets 10.1% media impact.

This star of the match is David Silva, with 8.2% media impact. He scored the second goal of the match.

Below, the list of top 10 stars of the match. Among players from Ireland, we find basically defenders and the goalkeeper.

Aggregating total numbers, we have, as expected, a complete domination of team Spain vs Ireland in post game media coverage in newspapers in French. Spain obtains a share of 77%, and Ireland just 23%

This is also a new record in presenr Euro 2012. Previous biggest media gap between teams was Russia Vs Czech Republic (4-1), where Russia received 71% of all post game media attention.

Stars of Spain Vs Italy 1-1 Euro 2012 Game 1. Iniesta, Di Natale, Cesc, Torres, Ballotelli

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**NOTE: See also our analysis of the final Euro 2012 Spain vs Italy. Stars, before the game: (see it here).

This is a new post about media impact analysis of football Euro 2012, this time concerning the match in Group C Spain vs Italy. The match was played in 10 June 2012, and final result was 1-1.

Italy opened the score, with a goal by Antonio Di Natale in minute 61. Just three minutes later, Spain managed to come back with a goal by Cesc Fàbregas. Midfielder from Spanish team Andres Iniesta was declared the Man of the match.

We open the analysis of this post by showing a new feature. This time we present also before the game media attention analysis.

We have monitored which were the images picked by media from different linguistic areas to illustrate the news about the game that was about to be played (we monitored only news published the day of the game, before it was played). We have chosen five linguistic areas: in English, Spanish, Italian, French and German.

We expect of course a very different media coverage pattern in Spanish compared to Italian media, as both are directly concerned by the event. But in comparison to these two probably extreme cases, it is interesting to investigate how the media from ‘neutral’ countries depict the preliminars of the game.

We have selected in this case three categories. Photos showing only one team members, either Spain or Italy team, plus photos showing images of players or symbols from both teams.

We have results concerning news in Spanish in column two. This refers mainly to media in Spain, but it also includes interested media in Latin America. We have that 58% of all images refer to Spanish players, and some 32% to Italian players. As for Italian media (column 3), we find that the local focus is stronger, as 76% of all images report only Italian related stories, and a small 9.7% show Spanish only themes.

What about the other ‘neutral’ linguistic areas? We find that they all turn with majority towards Spanish players. Spanish solo pics range from 40% in English news to 56.8% in French media. German and English media provide more space to two side images, with almost 30% of all images. This leaves only 22% to 31% to only Italian players images.

This international media bias towards Spanish football players reflect the ex ante favoritism for Spain, and their media brand power due to the fact that Spain is the current title holder not only at European level, but also at World level.

We present now the results concerning media coverage given to both teams the day after the game. We have chosen as a reference for analysis the news coming from newspapers in English.

We show first results concerning the global media attention provided to all players from both teams. According to our data set, players from Italy have received a slighly bigger share of media attention, with 51% of all image news, and 49% for players from Spain. This equal media treatment corresponds with the final result, a draw. But consider, looking to our first figure, that media coverage before the game was in favour of Spanish players. Spain has lost momentun in media in English after first match.

Next figure shows top 10 stars of the game Spain vs Italy, a ranking made by number of appearences in photos of news about the game.

Top star: Antonio di Natale, 23.2% of all images in the news.

Star Di Natale 2012 Euro Vs Spain

2nd Star: Cesc Fàbregas, 19%

3rd star: Mario Balotelli, 19%

Italian scorer Antonio Di Natale is the leading star of the game. He receives 23.2% share of all images about the game. This game is a story of three protagonists, according to media impact after the game. Italian hero Di Natale, and then the Spanish scorer Cesc Fàbregas, not far away, with 19%. Fàbregas shares in fact second place with Italian forward Mario Balotelli. In this case, Balotelli does not receive substantial media attention because a good sport performance. This is rather the opposite as Mario Balotelli missed an incredible goal opportunity against Casillas because a lack of intensity. Few minutes after he was substituted by Di Natale.

It has been surprising for us to see that Andrés Iniesta is not one of the star of the match in terms of post game media coverage. He comes just in seventh position, with 8.2%, while he was named the best player of the match. We find a majority of Spanish football stars among top 10 players. All of them are World Champions.

Annex: Youtube Video about the match

You can check below a Youtube Video showing the goals. Comments in English. Duration: 2:12.

This video may be blocked by UEFA if the Youtube user that upload the video (not me) has not proper broadcasting rights. This means that the link to the video may be blocked in the future.

Annex 2: Match Tactics, by Zonal Marking

You can check the tactics analysis provided by zonalmarking.com, Spain Vs Italy analysis. Authers judge the match as a ‘A fascinating tactical battle between two systems rarely seen at international level’.

Quotes from the article:

Formation battle

You don’t get many formation battles like this. Spain played with three forwards, none of which played high up against the Italian defence, and instead tried to find gaps between the lines. Italy were actually happy to allow Andres Iniesta, Fabregas and Silva space in that zone – they were dealt with by the defence, while the three-man Italian midfield focused their attention on the three Spanish midfielders.

(…)

Substitutions 

Antonio Di Natale seemed like an obvious option. This is a striker who is used to playing upfront in a 3-5-2ish system (it’s more like 3-5-1-1) with Udinese, a striker who loves working the channels and making clever runs in behind the defence. He replaced Balotelli, and the switch worked almost immediately as Di Natale put Italy 1-0 up, after some brilliant midfield invention from Pirlo, maybe the only true creativity we saw from the six central midfielders.

Spain responded immediately with a goal that showed Spain did know how to play the false nine system, with Silva moving towards play, Fabregas running in behind, and that combination unlocking the Italian backline.

Then del Bosque finally introduced some width, with Jesus Navas out wide. But he chose to remove Silva – and so, frustratingly, this meant Fabregas became the (more permanent) false nine, moving towards the ball again. Navas is a player who stretches laterally rather than vertically, and Spain seemed to lose their forward thrust immediately.

Then del Bosque brought on a natural striker, Fernando Torres, for Fabregas. Torres’ natural game – whatever one thinks of his current form – is to run in behind, and he did so almost immediately, going one-on-one with Gigi Buffon and forcing the goalkeeper into a clever tackle. Next, he made a clever run towards the right of the pitch in behind the defence, but chose the wrong passing option. Then, a couple of minutes later, he played a one-two with Xavi, was through against Buffon, but chipped over the bar. His finishing was poor, but his natural centre-forward running gave another dimension to Spain’s attack. They’d waited nearly 75 minutes to test Italy’s offside trap – it turned out, it wasn’t very good – and Spain had some very fine chances to win the game.

(…)

Conclusion 

The game finished as a draw, but Prandelli’s tactics worked better than del Bosque’s. Italy coped well at the back, won the battles down the flanks, and both strikers looked dangerous in the channels. Spain lacked verticality and penetration, and their full-backs were unable to stretch the play. They still need variety in their attack, and del Bosque seems to be using six players to do the job of roughly four – although the goal demonstrated the value of playing with a false nine.

Italy performed extremely well across the pitch, and Prandelli will surely stick with this 3-5-2 for Italy’s next match, against Croatia in Poznan on Thursday.