Roma become first football team to launch official Medium channel
Italian football team AS Roma have broken new ground by becoming the first football club to launch an official presence on Medium.
Italian football team AS Roma have broken new ground by becoming the first football club to launch an official presence on Medium.
The Serie A side announced the new account last week and kicked things off with an exclusive long-form interview with manager Luciano Spalletti.
Roma have shown a huge commitment to producing long-form and more substantial content with the new account, which contrasts to the current trend of short-lived GIFs and tweets.
The decision has been described as part of an “on-going and progressive digital media strategy that is being driven right from the very top of the club”.
Paul Rogers, AS Roma’s Head of Digital Media, said:
"Medium is the perfect platform for Roma because it encourages, enables and promotes great storytelling and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do – tell great stories. Football is all about compelling narratives and we have some fantastic characters on and off the pitch with something interesting to say.
"As much as we all love a great gif and a ‘liquidate immediately’ tweet, we still believe that there’s a place for long-form journalism with beautiful photography. It’s something we invested a lot of time and effort in when we relaunched our official website in December and we believe that establishing a new presence on Medium will allow us to open up our stories to a wider audience.
"The club’s president Jim Pallotta is on record as saying that he wants Roma to become ‘the most connected football club in the world’ and working with Medium is a good fit strategically."
They’ve certainly been true to their word. Since the account’s unveiling five days ago five longer pieces of content have been uploaded, including a cultural interview with Daniele De Rossi, a piece by Miralem Pjanic detailing his life so far, and a football-based conversation with club legend Francesco Totti.
"As much as we all love a great gif and a ‘liquidate immediately’ tweet, we still believe that there’s a place for long-form journalism with beautiful photography." Paul Rogers
All of the articles are boosted with either stunning photography – in the case of Totti – or bespoke illustrations – for Pjanic’s life story.
It’s a bold and different approach to a digital strategy, but one that we’re looking forward to following if the quality of content stays at the same level.
