The author of the article below wishes to remain anonymous though the Cutter would like it known that we share many of his misgivings. The author also wishes for us to point out that there are additionally judge’s awards for each category with worthy winners who balance out those who are perceived to be chosen with commercial considerations in mind.
The Football Blag Awards, otherwise known as the Football Blog Awards.
I’m sure many of you are familiar with it by now. It’s been all over our Twitter feeds for the past several months with many large football accounts pleading with you for your votes.
It’s an awards ceremony that’s decided 100% by the public, an online popularity contest if you will. The football blogging equivalent of X-Factor. The more followers you have the more chance of winning an award you have. Quantity over quality. That’s not dismissing previous winners, I’m sure many of them do provide quality content and that’s the reason they have amassed so many followers. However you have to ask yourself; just how credible are these awards? If you hear somebody has an FBA should it be seen as an honour or more like an STD?
How much credibility can an awards ceremony have that’s supposedly voted for by the public when the company themselves go around promising spots in the final to accounts they want involved? After all the FBA’s is nothing more than a company that sells advertising space. Think about it, they get each category and award sponsored, their name/brand is then tweeted out by those competing for the award, some of whom have over three hundred thousand followers. It’s basically free advertisement in a way for those companies associated with the awards. If their sponsors have a certain target audience or want to be associated with a certain group then those at The FBA’s will headhunt accounts they feel are suited.
The people behind The FBA’s Twitter account send private messages to large football accounts encouraging them to go for an award.
What award do you think I’d do well in? What makes me qualify for this award? I didn’t realise you were so familiar with my account. I mean, If I was a cynic I’d probably say that you just want my ‘fans’ (superb choice of wording there, showing your true colours) tweeting your hashtag?
They looked at my follower count and tried to worm their way in with me. They’re nothing but Gold Diggers. I ignored them last year, I ignored them this year and I’ll ignore them next year.
Something that was brought to my attention during this year’s awards when friends found out I wasn’t entering again was the fact TheAnfieldChat, an account with one hundred and twenty seven thousand followers was up for ‘Best Football Blog’. You’d imagine they’d be a shoe in for the win, right?
They don’t even presently have a website, let alone a blog. Did this stop them from getting to the final? No. Did The FBA’s intervene? No. (EDs note – We have consequently discovered TheAnfieldChat felt uncomfortable being nominated for Best New Blog despite having recently taken down their site. The person behind the account claims he contacted The FBAs and requested their name was removed. His request was ignored. Anthony from The FBAs meanwhile insists that it was too late to take TheAnfieldChat off the shortlist)
Do these awards have any integrity when a finalist for best football blog doesn’t even have an active website?
Something else that’s been rumbling on for some time now is the fact another Liverpool FC account, AnfieldHQ ,has a questionable history. On the surface this account looks like one of the best club accounts around. It tweets the latest quotes, the latest news and has a vast array of articles on their site. They have over sixty five thousand followers and won the Best New Football Blog of 2014 at The FBA’s and Best Club Blog in 2015. They have regular interviews on their website with journalists such as James Pearce of the Liverpool Echo, Paul Joyce of The Express and Ben Smith, formerly of the BBC.
Their now is fine, it’s their past that’s murky.
In a former life AnfieldHQ was known as LFCNEWSRM, an account not to dissimilar to what it does now. It was a pretty much all things related to Liverpool FC with an added twist; the person running it was supposedly ‘in the know’. They had insider information about goings on within the club and tweeted this information out in order to increase their followers. Plenty of accounts do this but this one in particular took it a little too far when in their next incarnation they tried to pass themselves off as a BBC Journalist.
Ben Smith, a future guest of theirs on the website, put a stop to it all with this tweet and OQuintonBBC was never to be seen again. The account, now rivalling Doctor Who for most regenerations, changed to AnfieldHQ. However instead of having to build an account up from scratch like so many people have and do this account already had over twenty thousand football followers so it was easy for them to enter The FBA’s under their new guise and win an award.
Of course the current AnfieldHQ deny any involvement with the past twitter handles associated with their account. It’s just a coincidence Oliver happens to be the name of the owner of AnfieldHQ and it’s even more of a coincidence that he lives in Solihull, Birmingham, the same area the BBC journalist claimed to work.
The account now is one of the best around for Liverpool fans but it was built on fraudulent followers. The credibility and standing it was with such newspapers as the Liverpool Echo and awards it has since won are due to their original deceit. Should you be rewarded for lying? If The FBA’s genuinely wanted to reward good football blogs then they’d stop this popularity contest, they’d do their due diligence on accounts and maybe restore some credibility to their brand. Until then, with the likes of DeludedBrendan winning Best Social Account, their awards are something to be avoided if you want a reputable blog.
