Swansea media gets on Wembley Way
By Andy Pearson
Understandably, play-off fever has gripped Swansea.
With the city’s football club just 90 minutes from the Premiership, the local media is on the ball.
Radio station Swansea Sound is running daily updates and even presenters on its sister station – music-oriented The Wave – have become super-chatty about the Swans.
Exceptional
They have all been helped by an exceptional run of match commentaries by their man at the Liberty Stadium, Anthony O’Connell, a former reporter with the Llanelli Star and Neath Guardian.
In print, meanwhile, the South Wales Evening Post is running competitions, advertising, promotions and expansive editorial features on the play-off campaign.
Football is on the front page every day and special supplements are planned.
Wembley
On May 27 – threedays before the Wembley game against Reading – the Post plans a 16-page tabloid pull-out, On the Road to Wembley.
The day after the final – win or lose, the Post plans a 32-page stand-alone tabloid supplement full of Wembley words and pictures. Its working title is Jack Army at Wembley.
One Post exec told me: “Everyone’s talking about the football and demand from our newsagents for extra papers has increased over the past few weeks.
Coverage
“That’s attributed to the editorial coverage we’re devoting to the Swans at the moment.”
The club itself is capitalising too. The top post on its Facebook page today features a Road to Wembley mug plus a link to all sorts of other goodies.
Tags: Cardiff, Championship, play-off, PR, Premiership, Reading, South Wales Evening Post, Swansea, Swansea City, Swansea Sound, The Wave, Wales
