– BUT THEY HAVE TO GET IT RIGHT!
Martin Ruffell of Brave Bison for www.sportindustry.biz 15 May 2024
Martin Ruffell, Head of Sport at Brave Bison Media Network, explores the ways in which we consume video is evolving and and how rightsholders should respond to stay ahead of the game.
According to MNTN research, by the end of 2023, less than half of households had traditional paid TV subscriptions. Of those surveyed, 44% of respondents said that they would cancel their subscription if a streaming alternative was available.
The way we consume sports content is not the same as it once was. We’re livestreaming Caribbean Premier League cricket matches on YouTube, scrolling TikTok for F1 driver interviews, leaving an Instagram comment on a golf highlights video and sharing X memes from the football match. In or out of tournament, entertainment is at our fingertips. The landscape has never been more saturated. And it’s never been easier to publish copyrighted content, leaving sports rights holders battling piracy issues.
Sceptics might say this has made growth challenging for sports rights holders. In reality, the rise of social video presents the biggest opportunity to grow fanbases and maximise revenue. They just have to be smart about it.
The ability to capture the hearts and minds of fans rests on how well sports media brands can craft an effective online content strategy. If you need proof, look at Formula 1. Since being acquired by Liberty Media in 2017, the sport’s seen a 45% increase in revenue YoY and catapulted to global fame – and in doing so, found legions of new and young fans – with its Netflix series Drive to Survive.
In the world of sports content, small teams used to be able to take on multiple platforms at once. Thanks to the rise in video on demand and vertical sports content, it doesn’t work that way anymore. To boost not only platform metrics but also the scale of your event or even the sport at large, it’s crucial to invest in your digital teams to ensure each platform is working as hard as possible.
What that doesn’t mean is that you can replace human involvement by letting AI do the work. It’s tempting to cut corners, but right now AI isn’t a viable solution to the increased demands brought on by an in-tournament content schedule.
At Brave Bison, we’ve continually found that scaling digital teams in-tournament can exponentially increase performance across all metrics, including revenue.
Investing in platform specialists is almost always worth it – this way, you can really get to grips with the ins and outs of each platform, including its audience and the content that resonates best.
We’ve seen great success doing this for one of our Grand Slam tennis partners. By scaling up our YouTube and Instagram teams fourfold, we delivered a 98% increase in views, 68% increase in subscribers and a 190% increase in revenue.
Finally, we need to move away from thinking about digital platforms as marketing tools and instead view them as entertainment destinations. Again, it’s a worthy investment: if you put the resources into the channel, you’ll get that investment back the world over, in the form of tickets, merchandise and subscriptions from long-time superfans.
The ways fans access sports content on social isn’t dissimilar to the way we watch on traditional media channels (like livestreaming a match on YouTube or Facebook instead of on TV). Social is optimised to work alongside and support content that would be standard viewing for linear TV, like highlights, reactionary moments, interviews and nostalgic clips from the archive.
That being said, it’s important to differentiate the two. Your social content should give viewers that extra something they can’t get elsewhere – like behind-the-scenes content, player or team profiles, ‘challenge’ content and live-streaming team training sessions.
And unlike broadcast channels, digital platforms open up a one-to-one connection with fans both in-tournament and off-season when linear coverage is minimal. This is crucial for sporting organisations with a short tournament window and a limited opportunity to showcase the best of their sport.
This article originally appeared here on www.sportindustry.biz
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