ALL ABOUT ESM

European Sports Media was founded on June 9th, 1989, in Barcelona with the intention of being an international body for serious journalism. Since then a lot has changed in our world. Print is still important, and always will be, but online activity is increasingly important.

Nevertheless, the founding principles of ESM remain. Most ESM members are active online as well as in print. In the area of new media, international co-operation is just as important.

ESM is now recognised throughout the European football family. We are the owners of the official top-scorer ranking, the ESM Golden Shoe. Editors compile the rankings on a weekly basis and distribute them every Monday during the season.

Traditionally, the winner of the ESM Golden Shoe receives his trophy in mid-September at his own stadium. Around that event, he is available for interview by the ESM members.

Recently, UEFA and ESM decided to create a new award for the outstanding player during the European season. The official title is UEFA Best Player in Europe Award. ESM takes care of the voting and administration and UEFA will invites the three nominees to a ceremony in Monaco around the time of the Champions League draw and Super Cup match. The trophee will be handed-over by Michel Platini.

ESM is also guest of honour at FIFA’s World Player of the Year Gala because the award and ceremony began as an idea from ESM.

In addition, we organise the ESM Eleven. Each month, the ESM magazines select a team of the 11 best players from the European leagues. All members have a duty to publish the monthly selection.

We regularly organise joint interviews with interesting personalities from the international football scene. We ask the members to organise meetings by rotation, each with an interesting guest and football theme. There is growing interest from outside Europe in the activities of ESM. That’s why we have created the possibility of “affiliated membership”. Titan Sport from China became the first such member and they were followed by Netease, also from China, and SportalKorea, from South Korea. Most recently, Placar from Brazil became the latest addition. ESM is happy with its first partner in South America, particularly as Brazil will be in the spotlight over the coming years, as hosts of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

Recently ESM and SoccerEx decided to a cooperation. SoccerEx is the world’s leading organiser of exhibitions and congresses for the international football industry. It is a place to meet and a platform for conferences, reputed speakers, interviews and presentations. SoccerEx is making news and brings together leading people. This and the coming years SoccerEx shows up in Rio de Janeiro and Manchester. Besides they publish daily on-line newsletters.

Furthermore ESM participates as a member of the jury in the yearly nomination of the European Football Supporters Award (EFSA). This is an initiative of the city of Brussel, after the disaster in the Heysel Stadium (1985). Also the European Parliament and UEFA participate in this organisation. Candidates to win this Award should play an important role by combating displays of racism and xenophobia.

Because of the growing demand for ESM, we have decided to open up ESM to more members and also for more than one member per country. A new member must be accepted by at least a two-thirds majority of ESM members. ESM even opened the possibility to ask individual sportjournalist with specific international reputation to join our organisation.

Rainer Holzschuh (Germany) is the current president of ESM, with Vitor Serpa (Portugal) as vice-president. Cees van Cuilenborg (Netherlands) acts as secretary-general.