Is new age digital reporting killing the written Scottish football media?

 

The landscape of Scottish football is changing both on and off the pitch. Scottish football media is being produced and consumed in a variety of new, more modern ways instead of just the traditional print media that was once so dominant in the industry.

Statistics from both Reach and Statista indicate that printed newspaper readership is on the decline. The decline has been attributed to many things such as the decline of public commuting, the instant availability of news at our fingertips due to smartphones as well as simply the rising prices of the papers themselves.

Statistics on Scottish papers show that The Daily Record averaged 60,000 daily sales in January of 2023, which was down from 102,000 in January of 2020, right before the Covid-19 pandemic. The Daily Mail's sale in Scotland was at 51,400 as 2023 began which was under half of what it had been a decade prior.

In Scotland, the leading newspaper is statistically, The Scottish Sun, who announced they still maintained over 1.25 million print sales in 2020. However, even this seemingly impressive number is less than half of the over 3 million sold in 2010 and the 3.5 million sold in 2000.

These figures show a sharp decline over the previous two decades. This suggest that on the whole print media is on the decline across the nation with many Scots deciding to get their news from online sources such as websites or social media.

However, many interested in their sport and more specifically their football have begun to consume their news and content via some more experimental media sources such as podcasts and videos on the platform YouTube.

The podcast phenomena has been a relatively recent event with the first podcast only being released in 2003 when Open Source – a politics and culture discussion show hosted by the journalist Christopher Lydon premiered. Over 20 million people in the United Kingdom are reported to listen to podcasts on many subjects and a small percentage of these will listen to podcasts on Scottish football with there being a decently sized but niche market there for it.

Some success stories of podcasts covering Scottish football are Open Goal, a weekly podcast hosted by former Celtic players Simon Ferry and Paul Slane which often features many guests from Scottish Football.

The Heart and Hand podcast are another success story hosted weekly by former Rangers Supporters Trust chairman David Edgar, it focuses on Rangers news stories and has become so popular that contributors to the podcast now sit in the press area at Rangers home of Ibrox and are invited to sit in on the pre- and post-match managerial interviews.

Podcast host Scott McPike has been running the SM Media podcast since 2020 believes the biggest benefit of having his own podcast is that he can do what he likes, when he likes and can cover topics of his own choosing and interest rather than having them assigned by others.

McPike feels that there is an opportunity and an opening for self-made podcasts to enter the fold in Scottish football coverage, he pointed out issues with the mainstream medias coverage of our game, he feels the main one of these is the hyper fixation on drama and controversy, suggesting: “If there is any sort of refereeing nonsense in a game, they'll be straight on that and it's so they can get a two-minute TikTok clip that they can share and they know that a lot of fans in Scottish football are just wrapped up in the hysteria, that it'll get clicks” rather than focusing on the tactics and the football itself on the park.

Scott expanded on this point by mentioning the coverage of Inverness Caledonian Thistle manager Duncan Ferguson, who when appointed manager of the Highland club was repeatedly referred to in the mainstream media as an ‘ex-Rangers hero’ despite it being 30 years since he left the Ibrox club for whom he made under 20 domestic appearances.

Scott further expanded on the coverage of Ferguson, revealing that a source of his from The Scottish Sun told him that they are directed to mention Rangers and Celtic directly to up engagement and clicks on these headlines when possible.

Scott also feels that the mainstream media can “create their own storm” with refereeing decisions and controversies, blowing up smaller incidents within matches to stretch out weeks’ worth of headlines rather than providing simpler, more honest coverage of the matches.

Scott, who in his youth did study for a degree in journalism to get in the door of the mainstream coverage of Scottish football, felt that the door was blocked for him by those already established and ingrained in the industry. He went as far as to call those still working solely within written media as a “dying breed”.

However, Scott did offer some hope for those coming into the business, mentioning the amount of alternate opportunities to the papers now available, offering the advice that “If you're engaging, people will watch it, so there's opportunities now that weren't there even 10, 15 years ago, before we had the likes of YouTube and Twitter and I think there's various opportunities now with the advent of technology”

Since gaining a decent following with his podcast Scott has managed to gain access to matches in the Scottish game with media accreditation, saying clubs are good at giving access but he has received some condescension from established journalists in the media section of matches when they discover his background feeling there is “territorialism with some” in the mainstream media.

Scott does concede that there can be some issues with amateur, or even semi-professional fan media gaining access to press conferences at major clubs saying that occasionally there are those in this section of the industry that can ask questions that he feels sound “absolutely insane” which harms all those trying to enter the industry in this manner. He cited some of Celtic’s fan media questioning at former manager Ange Postecoglu’s first press conference as an example.

Scott feels that while there is the opportunity for the mainstream press to keep up with these new sources of media and adapt to the times, they will stick to their guns and keep doing the same things they’ve been doing and feels that “there are some newspapers that will just never catch on.

“If you ask me in five years, will the Daily Record and The Sun be as engaging as they are now? No, because they're already 10 years behind where they were. They're going down the way, whereas a lot of other avenues are going up.

“I think it has to be an overall thing. It can't just be if seven newspapers decide tomorrow, we're going to move to a digital platform and things and engage like a podcast, do a weekly podcast, and do YouTube videos and things like that. That's not going to change anything.

“I think that's your number one. If you highlight Scottish football better, you're going to get more people checking it out. It's an interesting one, but I think there's a hundred different things need done before that.”

YouTube was launched in 2005, by three former PayPal employees and the video-sharing site has grown to become the second most visited website on the planet, trailing only Google.

According to Backlinko, YouTube has over 2.5 billion monthly users who watch more than a billion hours of content daily. The freedom to create and produce your own content has been an attractive project for many worldwide to take on over the last two decades, by creators involved in all genres, including Scottish football with many content creators gaining notoriety over the past few years.

One such YouTuber we spoke with was Gordon Bonnes, better known by his online nickname ‘Goggsy’ spoke about his introduction to the platform in 2013, now over a decade ago, as a pivotal moment in his life. Goggsy was one of the first to start the video style of ‘vlogging’ as he both attended his team, Motherwell’s matches and on his groundhopping trips around the world which over the following years has become a hugely successful style of video on the platform.

Despite his relative success, with over 11,000 subscribers currently, Goggsy explained he has had some difficulties in terms of gaining media access like members of the mainstream media have.

However he doesn’t feel this is down to the platform he produces content on and rather that it is due to his club allegiance, saying “for me, because I have such a loyalty to Motherwell, that probably holds me back in a way because Motherwell doesn't have as much of an audience as, say, just covering everything” but when he has gained access he does say the reaction has been quite positive.

Speaking of his audience’s demographic Goggsy said “I think my main audience is between 18 and 24, which I like because I feel like my audience has grown up with me”.

Goggsy continued and explained why he chose YouTube as his preferred platform of content making, giving his reasoning as “It's all about access. I mean, everyone now has a phone or a tablet or an iPad and they don't have to pay extra for YouTube or for any, well, any subscription service that they have, they've already paid for.

“Whereas a newspaper, it involves getting dressed in the morning, it involves going out of the house, it involves going to the shop and having to pick from about 15 or 20 different options”.

Like Scott, Goggsy feels that the main benefit of working on his own independent content compared to working with traditional media is the freedom to create, highlighting that in the mainstream media you have blackouts with content being held back. Making his own videos he can produce and release them whenever he is ready which he feels is a huge boost for viewing figures as his content can be out before lots of other, more established sources.

He expanded on this saying that with newspapers specifically that their stories are at times “already yesterday's news, whereas you'll always get the latest updates on your phone, you get notifications on and it's all instant and that is, that is the difference.”

In terms of the future of Scottish football media Goggsy feels that “with the attitude of Scottish football, I think the traditional media will always reign over new, new content because we're all stuck in our same ways”.

He feels this would never change until the head of a major mainstream publication is a younger, more dynamic person but he feels due to the current processes and hierarchy that this would simply be an impossibility.

Ruaridh Allen, who works within Scottish football as customer success manager of online ticketing company Fanbase, spoke on the subject and what the traditional media must do to keep up with the times, speaking about YouTuber Sam North also known by his channel name of ‘Footy Adventures’ by saying he feels Sam “advertises the Scottish game better than anyone, including the actual league, any traditional media source.

“They should look at how he does it and trying to replicate it, actually tell the stories from around Scottish football and not just pick the biggest game on paper. I also do think there's a lot of fans that are sick of just hearing about the old firm and these same old things that the old guard in the Scottish media talk about constantly.”

So, for now mainstream media remains king, and this looks to still be the status quo for the near future, but options for younger fans are expanding and with so many exciting, dynamic and creative people making content on our game the future remains bright, on all fronts.