Cycling experiences ground-breaking results with the Tour De France returning, Stevenage FC could arguably have the marketing campaign of the year and fan engagement better watch this space with an extraordinary partnership across motorsport.
Tour De France smashes viewership records on its return
According to L’Equipe, over 40m viewers tuned into France Televisions (FTV) coverage of the three-week-long cycling tour. Despite the long wait for cycling fans, FTV’s total viewership expanded by 21%, but even more impressively, Eurosport experienced an extraordinary 74% uprise in viewership, seeing the pay-TV broadcaster accumulate 3.4m viewers.
Regardless of the challenges the tour has faced with its postponement, it has achieved some ground-breaking results since its’ return which has potentially acquired new audiences. Eurosport also found an audience peak of 362,000 viewers for stage one of the tour. After the opening stage, 3.19m viewers stayed to watch the Grand Depart on FTV2 while 2.66m waited to watch the post-race Velo club.
DAZN sells it’s football-focused platform Goal to exhilarate their focus towards becoming ‘The Netflix of Sports’
Global sports streaming service DAZN has penned an agreement to sell their digitally football-focused platform, Goal, to a specialist digital media investment firm, Integrated Media Company (IMC). The purpose of this new venture is to create new digital opportunities to entice the soccer fan experience and to create an uprise in the popularity of soccer across growing markets.
Goal being placed under IMC’s strings allows DAZN to focus their energy on strengthening the power their digital platform has across all sports. DAZN has concentrated heavily on revolutionising the traditional boxing model from PPV to paid subscriptions; it now has the opportunity to think similarly to encourage new audiences from the footballing landscape to transition from significant broadcasters to their OTT platform.
Exciting times lie ahead for the future of Qatar’s sporting ambitions
The 2021 men and women’s Table Tennis Championships are expected to be hosted in Qatar next September, confirmed by the Qatar Table Tennis Association. Qatar beat both China and India for the bidding of this illustrious event, which provides Qatar with an enhancement in their sports events portfolio to build on from hosting this occasion in Doha back in 2000.
QA is utilising the sports landscape to create a continuous dialogue to diversify its economy and revolutionise its global profile under it’s National 2030 plan. The 2022 FIFA World Cup will be instrumental towards this objective alongside their ambitions to host the 2032 Olympics.
Burger King’s ‘Stevenage Challenge’ could be the most imaginative marketing campaign this year
Global fast-food franchise Burger King has broken sports marketing headlines this week for their innovative’ Stevenage FC’ challenge. Burger King began sponsoring the fourth-tier club at the start of the 19/20 season. The ‘Stevenage challenge’ entails in utilising FIFA 20 Players to use Stevenage FC in the game and share video clips online of them scoring goals to receive exclusive rewards from Burger King in return.
The purpose behind this incentive was to increase Stevenage’s online presence through the game, which does the same for Burger King as the club’s front-of-shirt sponsor. The campaign acquired revolutionary results, including over 25k goals shared online, Stevenage FC being the most used team in the game and for the first time, their shirts had sold out.
This success has demonstrated how creative you a sponsor can get despite not having a deal with a major club. If anything, the reason this was so impactful was that Stevenage is a lower league club, meaning that interacting with such a team will gradually garner substantial volumes of attention within the gaming community. It could spark a new strategy of thinking for sponsors to leverage their online brand identity proactively.
Audi Sport to dominate motorsports fan engagement through OTT platform launch
Audi’s high-performance subsidiary, Audi Sport has launched an OTT Channel called Motorsport.tv through a partnership with Motorsport Network. This collaboration allows fans to experience behind-the-scenes insights to events such as the Nürburgring 24 Hours race, Formula E, DTM and customer racing events.
Motorsport Network has a lucrative reach of 56-million consumers within their monthly audience, providing Audi Sport with a remarkable opportunity to expand its reach across new geographics rapidly. To sustain this new audience, Audi Sport will gain exclusive access to Motorsport Networks global production platform, Motorsport Studios to establish targeted digital content.
That’s a wrap! Could Qatar become the new global leaders for delivering sports events? What impact will be produced in the sports sponsorship landscape post to Stevenage FC & Burger Kings collaboration? Lastly, will DAZN’s incentive to sell Goal prove efficient to become ‘The Netflix of Sports’.
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