Throughout the past month, I’ve hosted a wide range of guests working across fan engagement, social media, content and international marketing. I thought I’d create a monthly blog series where I summarise each interview with some key insight that YOU can takeaway to excel in your sports career. So, here we go!
Kevin Rye: Co-Founder of Think Fan Engagement
The key focus in Kevin’s interview was around how football clubs can optimise relationships with their audience. Kevin’s experience as a fan engagement consultant shows that football fans often feel isolated in understanding from their clubs.
Kevin’s solution to strengthening the relationship for clubs includes consulting and engaging with their fans regularly. Plus, fan engagement should be treated like stakeholder management. Essentially, fans are a stakeholder of the club as they’re the ones buying merchandise, tickets and club related products to keep them operating.
We are seeing fan engagement improve with platforms like socios.com on the rise. This platform provides fans with the chance to make decisions on behalf of their club. Hopefully, we’ll see this on a wider scale in years to come.
Ben Blake: Co-Founder at InspoHub
The primary focuses of Ben’s interview were around upcoming trends to look out for in the sports industry alongside how branded content is undervalued. Throughout Ben’s work, he’s recognised only 4% of sports clubs utilise branded content. How shocking is this?
For a fan, there’s no real difference between branded or non-branded content. Although, the real leverage lies with a clubs’ commercial partner. The secret lies in channelling your organisation’s values through your content production.
For industry trends, Ben believes bargaining power will shift towards athletes rather than governing bodies and event organisers. COVID is a game-changer for this; considering how everything turned digital throughout 2020, sports audiences and staff have realised what matters most. That is authentic connections with our favourite personalities.
Rohan Shukla: International Marketing Officer at Watford FC
Rohan and I had a comprehensive chat about how the Indian market has been pivotal towards Watford FC’s international growth. Rohan has spotted an opportunity that not many other clubs have; now, Watford is due to launch on localised social media platforms, exploring national partnerships alongside sustainable connections.
Big factors contributing to Watford’s growth have been influencer marketing; they’ve made the influencer audiences their own. They’ve gained robust research around relationships between what mobile apps are more tailored and suited for different age brackets. This has inspired them to launch on new platforms but providing exclusive content to entice local young audiences.
Rina Anthony Rosolofoniaina: Senior Social Media Manager at ONE Championship
Rina’s priorities at ONE involve ensuring their content is shared across as many touchpoints as possible. A key method to support this is memes. Memes are the most shared and interacted pieces of content across the web, and ONE has found a way to use them proactively.
Some ONE memes include funny fight moments and fight content dubbed in viral TikTok sounds. Simple initiatives like this could prove a game-changer when expanding brand awareness.
There we have it. Those are some powerful but concise insights many of you can go away and apply to excel in your sports career. What’s been your key insight this month?
Sharing lessons sports professionals can learn through sports content 