Author: Simona Kruhar Gaberšček | Read time: 8 minutes
Joe Weston is Head of Sport UK at the creative agency We Are Social (based in New York). The agency has recently published an extensive report on the future of sports fandom which offers an excellent insight into the sports marketing industry, which, according to Weston, lacks creativity and receptivity to changes. Marketing experts should in his opinion be full of energy and inspiration as there are now so many opportunities to communicate with fans in different ways. They should look beyond the world of sport into a wider cultural environment, for example music, fashion and technology.
SPORTO: We Are Social Sport was born out of a belief that the rules of sports marketing need rewriting. The evolution of social has transformed the nature of sports and fandom forever, the next generations of fans behave very differently. How do you see sports fandom today?
JOE WESTON: Fans have always wanted more, but the previous media environment was not working. In the past, you had an incredibly limited media landscape. Terrestrial broadcast TV, subscription TV, and national and local newspapers. This restricted media environment created a narrow space for sports communications. The coverage of sport therefore focused quite specifically on the sport and rarely strayed out into wider cultural spaces.
Equally, this media environment did not allow space for athletes or players to express themselves beyond their performance on the pitch, track or court. In fact, athletes who showed an active interest in areas outside of their sport were often chastised or derided for not being ‘focused’ on their game. It was always a nonsense, but it has taken a massive disruption of the media landscape to showcase how hollow this coverage was, and how many unmet needs existed in the market.
The new proliferation of digital platforms, creators and user generated content has acted as an accelerant to the changing nature of sports communication, all of which helps to meet the evolving needs of fans to go beyond pure performance. In fact, it has now gone so far that we see the established mainstream media and governing bodies desperately trying to either copy the approach taken by new media or simply buy them up to stay relevant.
In your excellent report “The Future of Sports Fandom”, you stated that many problems the sports marketing industry is facing originate from a lack of creativity in marketing, giving the F1’s docuseries “Drive to Survive” as a shining example of how to respond to the shift in fan behaviour. Can you elaborate on that?
Too often we see sporting bodies responding to declining interest by trying to affect the nature of the sport itself. New formats, changing of rules, rebranding, etc. But this is a risky strategy as you could alienate your core and cause long-term damage. Now that is not to say that governing bodies should not be looking to improve the product, but fundamental changes to the sport itself should be the last resort.
Governing bodies, and sponsors for that matter, should be looking at richer, qualitative data when it comes to audience insights, and look to build campaigns and communication based on deep cultural analysis rather than top line stats like viewing figures.
Governing bodies, and sponsors for that matter, should be looking at richer, qualitative data when it comes to audience insights, and look to build campaigns and communication based on deep cultural analysis rather than top line stats like viewing figures.
Audiences are increasingly nuanced and complicated, and that needs to be acknowledged through advanced research methodologies which get to the fundamental truth about what is happening around any given sport.
We all know that consumers and their consumer habits are quickly changing, and sports fans are no exception. Sport also can’t avoid being part of the attention economy – how can it win the battle for audience attention in the long run?
There are a hundred different answers to a question like this, but I would focus on three things.
One, how do we ensure that we can increase participation in sport overall across the world? How can we increase access to sport to everyone to ensure people have a direct relationship with sport itself? This is absolutely fundamental.
Two, how can we communicate the uniqueness of sport compared to its rivals in the attention economy? Sport can be as dramatic, emotional, joyous or tense as any Hollywood film, if not much more so. How do we ensure that we are doing the best job possible when marketing sport to communicate those attributes?
And three, embrace the ever-changing role of sport within culture. Sport does not live in a solely performance-focused vacuum anymore. Sports means a hundred different things to a hundred different people and this presents amazing opportunities to continually reinvent the way sports communication happens. Rather than being reluctant to change, marketers need to feel energised and inspired by it. Here at We Are Social Sport, it’s what gets our creatives up in the morning!
Sport does not live in a solely performance-focused vacuum anymore. Sports means a hundred different things to a hundred different people and this presents amazing opportunities to continually reinvent the way sports communication happens.
In the previously mentioned report, you discuss five cultural shifts that are shaping the future of sports marketing. How important is in your opinion the influence of the wider culture (fashion, music and technology) on sport and vice versa?
It is essential. It is as simple as that. The cultural context is fundamental to all communications around sport, whether that is athlete marketing, sports marketing, participation, broadcasting, events, whatever.
The cultural context is fundamental to all communications around sport, whether that is athlete marketing, sports marketing, participation, broadcasting, events, whatever.
And equally as important is understanding how what happens on the pitch or court affects the wider culture. Most often this is where sponsors can have the biggest impact and create the best and most effective work.
To reiterate, understanding culture is central to all marketing and it is baked into all of our creative solutions as an agency.
One of the shifts you are noticing is the blurring of the lines between social and gaming. How do you see the development and the impact in this space?
It is fascinating and brilliant to see, and the global lockdowns accelerated it massively. My personal favourite is the Zwift Academy, where riders have a chance to win a pro contract to ride on the international stage, all from the comfort of their room. This kind of seamless experience is exactly the type of evolution we love to see and there are countless others I could list off.
And what is your view on the Metaverse, some of the marketing experts believe it to be the next big thing? Have you already witnessed any successful initiatives from companies using the Metaverse to attract new generations of sport fans?
Whenever I hear the word Metaverse, I am filled with scepticism! There is no agreed definition of what that is or what it means. Frankly, most of time it just refers to gaming. Other times, it relates to a system of fully integrated, borderless decentralised digital experiences based on the emerging Web3 technology – which is a long, long way off.
To be honest, most of the current experimentation uses the term incredibly loosely, and I often feel like it is done for PR headlines first and foremost, which is never the right thing to do.
The question sponsors and governing bodies need to ask themselves when considering experimentation in this emerging space is what does this ‘enhanced’ digital experience provide to fans? What is the actual benefit? Can this be achieved through other means? Does the output justify the cost? Are we solving a clear problem? Are we creating for long-term gain or short-term hype? Only once you have considered the details can you be sure of how to proceed.
In your report, you also state that sports fans are prioritising online communities such as Strava, which foster inclusivity and positivity, because they are tired of platforms that allow conflict and hate. How should brands tackle these sensitive topics so that their actions are not labelled as inauthentic or fake?
First and foremost, brands need to hold platforms accountable for improving their spaces for consumers, and in fact, we are seeing a lot of this happening with Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover.
Beyond that, brands need to be wary of communications which can play into the hands of negativity or that ‘game the algorithm’. We see a lot of campaigns which try to play on the tribal nature of sports, which can be a recipe for disaster.
At a basic level, brands also need clear and detailed community guidelines that are public and readily available, and then they need to hold their community to account against those guidelines.
We live in a creative world, with creators on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and athletes are now also expected to be content creators. What is your view of their role as creators, compared to artists and other influencers?
If it comes naturally, all power to athletes. It is a huge opportunity. But fakeness can be seen from a mile off and athletes need to understand their own limits. A lot can be taught, but enthusiasm and authenticity cannot, so athletes need to feel comfortable and energised about the approaches being taken, and not feel burdened by the weight or expectation that may come from their sponsors or peers.
There is also a responsibility on sponsors to be creating campaigns based on athlete insights and to ensure that they are making requests that athletes feel both comfortable – and crucially – invested in personally as that will result in the very best work.
We Are Social Sport works with clients like adidas, Playstation and EA Sports. Can you sum up some of the key learnings from your campaigns and offer a piece of advice?
We focus on driving authenticity by ensuring that the people we hire are active sports fans and participants. This ensures that our insights are rooted in a deep understanding of the motivations and needs of the audience.
We are culturally curious as a team and we embrace culture in everything we do. We ensure that we are plugged into the culture through deep research as culture evolves with the speed of social.
And finally, we focus on the positives and joy. Sport is meant to be fun, but so often it loses sight of that, so we try and ensure that everything we do brings the joy back!
The article was first published in the SPORTO Magazine No. 17 (December 2022).
