How Kenyan teams are creatively using emojis to communicate

They can convey messages single-handedly because they express ideas and thoughts faster than text in a way that is fun and engaging. Engagement is the currency of social media interactions and nothing accelerates its circulation faster than emoji.

Dollar Mandila, a Gen Z sports journalist with an active social media presence, affirms the supremacy of emojis in carrying messages on their own and attracting responses in droves.

“If I need to tease a player signing a new contract, I simply post an emoji of a clock and a pen and my audience quickly gets that there is a big transfer about to happen,” Dollar explains. “I use emojis of a siren and a bomb to signal breaking news or a massive exclusive story,” he adds.

Ruckiel Odikor, alias Rix, describes emojis as “the visual seasoning of a post.”

“Sports are full of emotion, energy, and drama. Emojis translate that vibe instantly to the audience,” Rix, a sports content creator, says.

The fire emoji is her favourite.

“It is simple, universal, and works across all sports. It represents energy, hype, and excellence, which are the spirit of sports. It creates an instant connection with fans,” she says.

Read:Could Humphrey Mieno be the most signed club player in Kenya?

Yet, where emojis are involved, the business of keeping the internet ticking with updates and exploding with big news requires some tact.

“I use emojis carefully. I prefer using them on Facebook and TikTok than on X. It is all about understanding your audience. I once responded to a video of players chasing a referee with laughing emojis because I found the incident funny. However, X users took offence and criticised my reaction. They expected me to condemn the act,” Dollar narrates.

Rix also uses emojis in moderation.

“Too many emojis looks unprofessional,” she says. “I use emojis when the tone is celebratory and casual or when engaging with fans. I use them less when sharing official announcements or press releases.”

Stan Ambeyi – who manages the social media accounts of 12-time Kenyan top flight champions, AFC Leopards – has also been chiseled by time and experiences to use emojis in a way that quickly puts AFC Leopards in everyone’s mind without causing offence.

He frequently uses emojis of black, blue, red, and white circles – colours which represent AFC Leopards. 

He also uses emoji of a leopard’s head – the club symbol and inspiration of its nickname, Ingwe – when communicating updates about the club.

Ambeyi also uses emoji of a bicep to get the adrenaline of fans pumping, or to celebrate an achievement by the club.

“I use an emoji of a plane when the team takes a flight for an away match and that of a bus when travel for an away match is by road,” Ambeyi says, describing how informs AFC Leopards fans about the team’s travel plans.

Expressing emotions relating to football results

“An emoji of a football is used to announce a goal and those of a calendar (date), a clock (kick-off time), and stadium (venue) are used in announcements of the club’s next fixtures,” Ambeyi adds before explaining the flexibility of some emojis like that of the football. “A football emoji also means “football match” depending on the context it is used,” he says.

Emojis also come in handy for Ambeyi when expressing emotions relating to football results and engaging in banter.

He uses a sad face emoji to announce AFC Leopards defeat. Emojis of green and white circles followed by a battalion of laughing emojis are used to communicate savouring a loss suffered by Gor Mahia, AFC Leopards’ fierce rivals.

“At times, I just post laughing emojis after Gor Mahia or a rival loses and everyone quickly catches on that we are mocking them,” Ambeyi says.

Still, there have been some hiccups.

“I once used a crying emoji to announce an AFC Leopards loss and our followers on Facebook did not take it well. They objected to its use because a Luhya man is not supposed to cry,” Ambeyi recalls.

AFC Leopards draws most of its support from members of the Luhya community.

Beyond those challenges, Ambeyi, Dollar, and Rix also consistently grapple with challenges of finding an appropriate emoji to communicate some ideas.

Ambeyi wishes that the emoji keyboard had a symbol for warm-ups. On his part, Dollar hopes to see an emoji for offside.

“I have been using an emoji of a man lifting weights to indicate warm-ups but I do not think it conveys that idea clearly. Players do not lift weights during warm-ups,” Ambeyi complains.

Rix would wish to see emojis of a whistle and a scoreboard introduced.

Read: The art and science of football goalkeeping: A Kenyan perspective

“The whistle is a powerful symbol in sports and its absence from the emoji keyboard forces us to use emojis that do not capture it clearly. A scoreboard emoji would be fantastic because it would help to visually represent competitions and results,” she says.

Still, there is hope for Ambeyi, Dollar, and Rix. They can design emojis for “offside”, “scoreboard”, “warm-ups”, and “whistle” and send their proposals to the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California, United States.

The Unicode Consortium has a sub-committee which reviews and approves symbols that internet users wish to see added to the emoji keyboard. The sub-committee draws its membership from the world’s biggest technology companies such as Apple, Emojipedia, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Netflix.

Yet, Victor Milimu, a Kenyan football stakeholder, expresses concern about the frequent use of emojis in sharing sports news and updates online.

“Frequent use of emojis is killing the archiving of information. They make information hard to access in future because emojis do not register as “key words” when doing research. We should accompany emojis with text. The written word helps to preserve information better than emojis, which are taking us back to the era of Egyptian hieroglyphics,” Milimu, a millennial, laments.

“People need to understand that the use of emojis and graphics should complement the written word, not replace it,” he adds.