If Football's Future is The Socios App, Let's Download It And See
Speaking from one fans' point of view, after using the Socios app, I can not see how involving fans will be helped, or made easier, or made more fun, or more engaging, or produce a better decision, by first requiring me to put money into an app to buy cryptocurrency to buy a fan token to vote.
A fundamental problem with Socios.com, the cryptocurrency-powered supporter engagement quiz trading app thing, is that Socios and the clubs that have signed up, our Leeds United among them, keep talking about its purposes in two different ways, often using the same words.
Take this example. Asked about the link-up on The Square Ball Podcast, Leeds CEO Angus Kinnear was very clear: "It is categorically not about monetising fan influence."
But that very morning I, as a Socios customer, had received a marketing email from them titled 'The Superfan Checklist', the top item of which is 'Influence the team you love.' Even the sub-heading, before I even opened the email, was asking me, 'Are you ready to influence your team?'
Partly this is about language, but it's an important cause of the stress around this app. The Socios announcement on Leeds United's website didn't help, with its headline reading, 'Leeds To Boost Fan Engagement By Launching Fan Token On Socios'. Engagement and influence, to people like Leeds United Supporters' Trust and Angus Kinnear, means involving fans in key decisions about the football club, like ticketing. Engagement and influence, to Socios, means getting fans to vote to decide what songs the players listen to before a game. There's a third meaning, to do with the horrible internet language of 'engaging with content', something that particularly affects football fans who have been lulled into regarding their own tweets as 'content', rather than tweets, to be 'engaged with', rather than looked at. Right now you're not engaging with content I created, you're reading a blog post I have written, and it's important for what slivers of esteem we hold for one another that we remember that. The spillover of language from Google Analytics to ordinary conversation has done nobody any good: fans don't need to reduce themselves to the language of advertising metrics. Socios will do it for us. 'Just one $LUFC Fan Token is enough to allow holders to access every engagement opportunity on Socios.com', they say. Football fans just love accessing engagement opportunities! It's sad because it's true.
But there's only so long Socios can carry on having one meaning for 'influence' and 'engagement' while its partner clubs are using the same words to mean something else entirely. Kinnear continued on the podcast, saying, "Socios has nothing to do with supporter influence," but, well, that's not what they're telling me, the user. Angus always seems like a good dude and so I think he should be having words with these bitcoin bozos, because he's copping the blame out here while Socios are blissfully sending out their emails contradicting him.
Anyway, about being a user. With so much heat around this app I decided the only way forward was to download the thing and find out for myself about what the heck. So after signing up and clicking a verification link, here I am in the future. Here we'll find more contradictions, but first I'll explain how it works.