The 'Twitter Farms' Making Money From Your Favorite Parody Accounts

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

At the 2015 Football Blogging Awards this November, Twitter parody @DeludedBrendan was named UK football fans' favourite social media account.

Though only created in April 2015, the satirical persona of former Liverpool manager Rodgers – a tactical genius who'd always back his own talents, and those of his players, above anyone else – has become a Twitter favourite, amassing more than 320,000 followers. It's a number some major celebrities would be proud of.

Little is known about the person who runs it, though he was there at the awards – a public event with cameras everywhere and, as you'd expect, full of social media specialists airing their views on the Twittersphere in real-time.

This put the 'real' Brendan in a bit of a sticky situation – was there a way he could go on stage and receive the gong without the world knowing his identity?

The plan, as the young Mancunian behind the account explained on stage, was to accept the award in a Rodgers mask. But after footballer-turned-pundit Stan Collymore tweeted a picture of the pair of them to his 750,000-odd following earlier in the night, there wasn't a great deal of point; though Stan later deleted the picture, his face was out there.

Many may question why it'd matter if the world knows who the 'real' @DeludedBrendan is. He's not, after all, doing anything illegitimate – parody accounts are perfectly acceptable provided they abide by Twitter rules – and it's not like having his identity revealed would be followed by an onslaught of personal abuse. The football community, after all, enjoys what he does – he wouldn't have won the award otherwise.

"Parody accounts are filling a void for the crossover of two of many peoples' passions: comedy and sport," says Stuart McDonald, co-founder of Ball Street, a London-based social media agency that positions itself as a "collective" of football YouTube channels, Twitter accounts and blogs.

"Where is the Spitting Image or impression show for football? Who is delivering that satire or comedy? For a while it was TV show Fantasy Football League with Baddiel and Skinner [from 1994 to 1995] and Soccer AM when it was good – but where do we get that from now?

"That's where parody accounts have come in. The great ones turn a moment in time or a quote into entertainment by exaggerating the comic observations and creating the character we wish the football personality was."

That these parody Twitter accounts are this source of humour for the new media world of 2015 is perhaps why it does matter that the people behind them stays a secret. Whereas the satirical personalities in Spitting Image were voiced by Rory Bremner, Steve Coogan and Harry Enfield, @DeludedBrendan and its parody counterparts are 'voiced' by Average Joes.

Speaking to the people behind some of @DeludedBrendan's sports parody peers, anonymity is important for a few different reasons.

"It's a parody account, not a fake account. I'm not foolish enough to think I am Arsène Wenger, so it's always important to have that degree of space between me and him," says the man who runs @wengerknowsbest, which has over 129,000 followers and plays on the well-known idiosyncrasies of the Arsenal manager. "Only a handful of people know it's me. Mostly close friends and family."

"There's plenty of people I know in real life who don't know I do it, including one of my cousins," says the brains behind @UnrealGavHenson, the account that satirises one of UK sport's most complex characters, Welsh rugby's Gavin Henson. "I try to keep it pretty quiet. I'm not ashamed of doing it or anything – and I like talking about it when prompted – but I get the feeling people would think it's a bit strange, which I guess it is."

After a few phone calls, Twitter conversations and email exchanges, I tracked down @DeludedBrendan's Mancunian mastermind, and asked him for an interview – under the veil of anonymity – to explain why he set up the account, and what relationship he has with the man himself.

He wasn't keen to talk, but didn't explain why. Fine, I thought – his face is already out there, so why trust a journalist who could easily out him to the masses with one simple click?

But after a bit more digging I found out more than I'd anticipated about @DeludedBrendan and the world of sports parodies. Though set up originally as a bit of a laugh, @DeludedBrendan, like many other accounts with a significant following, is now part of a large network of accounts run by one of the many social media agencies – in this case, Ball Street's Social Squad.

This means that the 'real' @DeludedBrendan is part of something much bigger: the 'professionalisation' of the parody world. Is that the reason he didn't want to talk? Would @DeludedBrendan's followers think – for want of a better phrase – that he had 'sold out'?

Creating a 'stable' of Twitter accounts that have large followings in the valuable 16-34 male demographic enables these agencies to approach advertisers who spend large amounts running banner adverts on news websites. They also offer them the ability to run, across their networks, comparatively low-cost viral marketing campaigns that have a significant and measureable impact. The content for the campaigns can be created using Twitter accounts that are fan favourites already, providing that sense of legitimacy for the brand.

These agencies also have people working full-time to identify what content needs to be posted and at what time to grow the followings of accounts across the network, similar to how newspaper websites have a publishing strategy for stories to drive traffic.

"For football fans, the first port of call used to be the back page – and occasionally the front page – of a newspaper," adds McDonald. "Then it became the homepage of a website. Now it's a social page, and in real-time. Social is the media platform where, in particular millennials, now consume their football news and chat, and parody accounts are part of that shift."

These social media agencies are also able to use their networks – which can reach over a million followers with only a couple of accounts – to create parodies from scratch. Think of it as a bit of a Twitter farm; whereas many popular parody accounts have grown their followings organically over years of well thought-out tweets and cult followings, a couple of retweets from established accounts can boost a new parody's following into the tens of thousands in a matter of days.

The power of these networks can be illustrated by the story of 'Rex Secco', the footballer created by Manchester-based Social Chain, another agency that owns and manages a number accounts across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Social Chain made up that Secco had signed for Arsenal to promote their own network of sports parodies – run by Nick Speakman, the founder of @BBCSporf, which is now part of the Social Chain 'stable' – ahead of the Soccerex football business event in September.

"We have a team here who can throw ideas around and look to grow accounts. As soon as Jürgen Klopp was hired by Liverpool, for example, we started a parody account straight away. It's being reactive to what's happening in the sports world and knowing what makes a good account," says Ashley Jones, Social Chain's Marketing Director.

"We put our heads together to work out what we could do to show the power and influence we have on social media. The guys came up with Rex Secco, an anagram of Soccerex; it was a few days after the transfer window closed, and Arsenal fans were the most unhappy as Wenger hadn't signed an outfield player.

"We made up that Arsenal had signed Secco for £34 million, with content across our network 'proving it' – including Opta statistics, and Vines of him scoring. It was the trending topic that night, and a couple of online sites ran news about it. Then as people realised it was a hoax the narrative changed, with people moving the conversation on to mock Arsenal fans who had been taken in by it."

One by-product of the interest in sports parodies is the financial benefits for their creators. Though the exact terms of an account 'joining' a social media agency are confidential and can vary, often the person running the account is offered a full-time job. They are, after all, experts in the area – and being paid for what they were doing as a hobby is an attractive proposition.

Some sports parodies that operate on their own work with betting companies to push traffic to their websites through sponsored-posts. For those that have a significant following – more than 100,000 – this can earn the person running the account thousands of pounds a year, for only a few tweets a week.

"Quite a few betting companies have come to me looking to do affiliate deals, or deals where I would get a percentage of the losses made by my followers who are pushed to their websites. However, I'm not comfortable, in a Wengerish-guise, encouraging people to take up betting," says @wengerknowsbest's creator, who adds that he's been offered money to sell the account, though he never would.

Lines of merchandise – t-shirts and mugs – are another area parody accounts make money, and @DeludedBrendan launched a t-shirt range in September. Books, too – with @wengerknowsbest's second, Little Bit MORE Silverware, having just been released.

"There was a short-lived merchandising operation a few years back when someone offered a cut of all sales," says the man who runs @UnrealGavHenson. "We bought a couple of t-shirts and mugs so have a few ourselves, and also gave a t-shirt away as a prize for one of our followers.

"We've often talked about a book, and it would be great fun. Would people buy it? Who knows, but I'd like to think we have a strong, loyal following who would buy it and make it worth our while, maybe if we released it just before Christmas," he adds.

"Some parody accounts do their own t-shirts, and that's something I've been following closely," adds the 'real' @wengerknowsbest. "But would people want to buy @wengerknowsbest t-shirts? I'm not so sure. Maybe they would.

"With the books, though I sell them, they aren't about making money – they're a natural evolution of the account and are about me having an outlet to write @wengerknowsbest in a longer form."

Before they graced our TV screens, most of the UK's best comedians had to put in years of graft, touring the country for badly-paid and sparsely-attended gigs before their cult followings became mainstream. Now, using the power of Twitter, a good idea and the knack for a witty turn of phrase is all it takes for a wannabe comedian to make a bit of cash mimicking our favourite sports personalities. And all without having to leave their own bedroom.

@mattycutler