A sea of yellow and gold stretches as far as the eye can see.
The streets of Rome are lined with adoring football fans as the team bus winds its way towards the the Stadio Olimpico for Roma’s biggest match of the season against bitter rivals Juventus with the prize of the Italian championship hanging in the balance.
Inside the stadium the famous Curva Sud is alive with passion. As kick-off draws the cacophony of noise grows ever louder
“I’ve been to many, many sporting events across the world,” says Sean Foley, vice president of sport and media at the Raptor Group — which is headed up by Roma’s American owner James Pallotta.
“There’s nothing I’ve experienced that’s like Roma.”
Except you’re not sat in the stands. You’re in your living room. You’re not under night sky in the “Eternal City,” you’re glaring into an iPad in Tokyo. Or Buenos Aires. Or New York City.
In partnership with Google, Roma is attempting to transport the match-day experience across the globe, using the latest technology and the power of social media to attract new fans from every corner of the world.
“In terms of exporting this beautiful brand, the passion of the fans and all that, it’s not just a world where there’s traditional media anymore,” adds Foley,
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“Replacing the Hillsborough flames with a couple of plastic cups, they don’t know what that means. That’s part of the failing of the new social media thing, where not everybody knows what things stand for.”
Tomkins also doubts whether increasing a club’s social media popularity necessarily translate into creating true football fans.
“I just don’t know how much of the true club can come across on social media,” he says. “Everything on social media has to be bland and inoffensive.”
Tomkins readily accepts that, as a traditional fan brought up in a bygone age, he’s not necessarily the target audience for the latest technological innovations.
But he doubts whether or not “shoeselfies” and drones can inspire true passion in the heart of an overseas follower.
“It’s a whole new style of fan that’s coming through because of the technology, because of the access. I don’t know whether social media is part of gaining true fans or just gaining ‘likes’ on Facebook. My sense is that it’s all pretty dull.”
Google and Roma will be hoping that the football fans of tomorrow disagree. After all, 3.5 billion people is a lot of eyeballs.
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