Rakuten Viber unveils 2021 initiatives for FC Barcelona partnership

C.B. Desk: Rakuten Viber, one of the world’s leading apps for free and easy communication, has unveiled a series of new initiatives going into the 2020/2021 season for its longtime partnership with FC Barcelona. In addition to the launching of the official global FC Barcelona Community in Russian, the company has published a special Q&A in the communities with six players in March – Marc-André ter Stegen, Frenkie de Jong, Miralem Pjanić, Sergiño Dest, Clément Lenglet, and Antoine Griezmann.

Viber’s FC Barcelona cooperation kicked off in the 2017/2018 season, and, since then, Viber has served as the club’s official channel of communication. As the football season heats up and moves toward a new decade, Rakuten Viber kicks off a new chapter of its partnership with the club, building a fan-first experience for its users through various touchpoints on its messaging app. To establish a meaningful connection between players and fans on the app, Viber will offer initiatives including meet and greet the players, a day with a legend, vote and win, giveaways, and fan stars.

Meet and greet players is an exclusive Q&A session with current FC Barcelona players, in which they answer 5-10 pre-selected questions from fans. Fans have the unique option to send their questions via member-to-member (m2m) messaging in all of the FC Barcelona Viber Communities, and the team chooses the best ones.

A day with a legend – A unique opportunity for the fans to spend a day with an FC Barcelona legend player in the Community, where he makes a Community takeover in March and the fans can take part in a standard day of his life.

Vote and win grant Viber users a monthly opportunity to win autographed 2020-21 jerseys by predicting the match’s winner, nixing the complicated rules and points systems from the previous seasons, and making it simple and easy for the fans to participate.

Numerous giveaways will be conducted for the fans to celebrate the FC Barcelona community’s launch in Russian and the growth of the other Viber communities of the club. Through the giveaways, fans will get the opportunity to win prizes. Moreover, fans will have the chance to be the stars of the community every month by sharing their personal story and journey in connection with the club.

The app now offers a global community of the club for the first time in Russian, in addition to its global communities in English, Spanish, and Arabic, for fans to chat about games and players’ stats. Viber’s users will also send each other brand new FC Barcelona stickers from the app’s new sticker pack for this season, featuring the players’ faces. Unlike last year’s cartoon-based stickers, the recent season features a photo of the player’s face. It is an exceptional sticker pack, as it features all the players from the new season, too.

“We’re delighted to double down on our fan-first FC Barcelona partnership going into 2021,” says Anna Znamenskaya, Chief Growth Officer, Rakuten Viber. “This cooperation has been a success since it began in 2017, and we’re thrilled to bring fans closer to their team’s players through Viber, just as we connect between all of our users.”

Related to the FC Barcelona Russian Community launch, first team player Antoine Griezmann highlighted:“I’m so happy that we will be a little closer to our Russian fans now”, while Sergiño Dest expressed his satisfaction because “from now on, Barça will speak Russian to its fans”