{"id":8766,"date":"2017-10-21T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2017-10-21T01:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.am\/internet-football\/"},"modified":"2017-10-21T01:00:21","modified_gmt":"2017-10-21T01:00:21","slug":"internet-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/critique\/2017\/10\/21\/8766\/","title":{"rendered":"Internet Football"},"content":{"rendered":"

Football clubs\u2019 obligations are stipulated by Article 13 of the Football Federation of Armenia\u2019s 2017\u20132018 RA Professional Football Clubs\u2019 Tournaments Regulations<\/a>, according to which clubs are obliged \u201cimmediately after each match to ensure their teams\u2019 head coaches (or acting head coaches) participate at an organized press conference or briefing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is perhaps the only fixed clause between Armenia\u2019s football clubs and media outlets and journalists. <\/p>\n

By the way, this is the minimum that exists in international practice. In stronger championships and tournaments, coaches and footballers are obliged to participate also in a pre-match press conference, answer journalists\u2019 questions at the \u201cmixed zone\u201d after the match, and so on.<\/p>\n

The clubs\u2013media outlets connection is mutually beneficial: the clubs secure their public relations, and media outlets are able to provide necessary information to their readers. This is international football\u2019s unquestionable element, which, unfortunately, has its nuances in Armenia.<\/p>\n

Armenia is a unique country; our football championship and its coverage are also unique. We\u2019re the only country with only six clubs in its Premier League (FC Alashkert, FC Gandzasar-Kapan, FC Shirak, FC Pyunik, FC Banants, FC Ararat), and these six clubs\u2019 replacements with an additional four teams (Lori, Artsakh, Erebuni, Avan Academy) in the First League.<\/p>\n

In general, there are 10 football clubs currently in Armenia. All the clubs in the Premier League, as well as Lori and Artsakh, have quite active Facebook pages. The Premier League teams, with the exception of FC Gandzasar-Kapan, also have websites (FC Pyunik\u2019s website, however, has been down since September).<\/p>\n

Armenian football clubs\u2019 press secretaries are mostly media representatives, working journalists, or even editors, which in other countries would lead to conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n

But here too Armenia is distinguished by its uniqueness: the press secretary\/journalists generally present and record the facts \u2014 without discussions or expressing their own views, or praise or criticism of the other teams\u2019 play; consequently, there can\u2019t be a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

Armenia\u2019s championship is presented to the public mainly through the eyes of the press secretary\/journalists, naturally from a perspective that\u2019s beneficial for the clubs, and media outlets accept this fact quietly.<\/p>\n

On this harmonious \u201cmedia outlets\u2013football clubs\u201d backdrop, in any case it\u2019s interesting to see our teams\u2019 play, even their daily routines, through the eyes of the club\u2019s employees.<\/p>\n

In particular, from the most active website, FC Banants\u2019, we are informed that besides preparing for the matches, the footballers have a routine full of various public events: they go sightseeing in Yerevan, celebrate almost all the state and religious holidays together, go to the movies, play water polo, and so on.<\/p>\n

From Pyunik\u2019s site it appears that the football club doesn\u2019t have a management: in any case, the \u201cmanagement\u201d section of the website is empty.<\/p>\n

At the same time, it must be noted that it is because of the clubs\u2019 press secretaries\u2019 efforts that Armenia\u2019s championship today has become accessible to some extent \u2014 mostly for people with access to the internet.<\/p>\n

The Football Federation of Armenia (FFA) together with V Sport and VivaroNews has begun to broadcast the Premier League teams\u2019 matches on its YouTube channel.<\/p>\n

FC Banants, Artsakh, FC Gandzasar-Kapan, and FC Pyunik on their YouTube channels likewise stream their matches live. With FC Shirak\u2019s request, Shirak regional television broadcasts its matches.<\/p>\n

In addition, the commentators of these matches online are mainly the clubs\u2019 employees; filmed are also the coaches\u2019 comments and sometimes also the footballers\u2019 post-match comments are uploaded.<\/p>\n

Journalists are sporadically present at the coaches\u2019 post-match press conferences.<\/p>\n

The press conference reaches media outlets mainly through video shot by the clubs\u2019 press secretaries and, it seems, the article in the FFA\u2019s regulations on post-match press conferences being mandatory is already lost.<\/p>\n

Moreover, in Armenian football, particularly in FC Pyunik, talk of accepting \u201cRussian as a mother tongue\u201d is already given a lot of space: during the team coach\u2019s post-match press conferences, the questions and answers are exclusively in Russian \u2014 without Armenian translation.<\/p>\n

I noted that with the exception of FC Shirak\u2019s matches, the Armenian championship\u2019s matches can be seen exclusively online; moreover, purely in terms of statistics, we get quite an interesting picture.<\/p>\n

In particular, the online broadcasts of the Armenian Premier League\u2019s latest three matches produced the following statistics:<\/p>\n

FC Ararat \u2013 FC Shirak<\/strong> (according to official figures, there were 300 spectators in the stadium)
\nShirak TV\u2019s broadcast: 2,900 views<\/p>\n

FC Pyunik \u2013 FC Alashkert<\/strong> (300 spectators)
\nFFA\u2019s broadcast: 3,301 views
\nFC Pyunik\u2019s broadcast: 1,779 views<\/p>\n

FC Gandzasar-Kapan \u2013 FC Banants <\/strong>(400 spectators)
\nFFA\u2019s broadcast: 1,295 views
\nFC Gandzasar-Kapan\u2019s broadcast: 2,077 views<\/p>\n

Years ago, when I asked one of my colleagues when he\u2019s going to the stadium (Armenia\u2019s national team was playing), he answered quite confidently that there\u2019s no need to go to the stadium: they\u2019re going to show the match, and he will watch it comfortably at home and write the results of the match faster than everyone else. <\/p>\n

I was quite surprised that football could be reported this way. But now it seems such reporting has become ubiquitous.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are 1\u20132 media outlets that present their own point of view, but, in general, Armenian football and its championship reaches spectators through the internet and mainly through the club\u2019s \u201ceyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Armen Nikoghosyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Football clubs\u2019 obligations are stipulated by Article 13 of the Football Federation of Armenia\u2019s 2017\u20132018 RA Professional Football Clubs\u2019 Tournaments Regulations, according to which clubs are obliged \u201cimmediately after each match to ensure their teams\u2019 head coaches (or acting head coaches) participate at an organized press conference or briefing.\u201d This is perhaps the only fixed Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-critique","author_posts-armen-nikoghosyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}