Fan engagement and professional sport has been hit hard by COVID-19. Teams around the globe have been forced to lay off staff, players have taken pay cuts, broadcast deals have been re-negotiated, and matches have been played in front of empty stadiums.
However, like the most resilient athlete coming back from injury or defeat, professional sport too will bounce back and use this time to improve. Innovative clubs have seen the pandemic as a way to re-invent their business models, and consider what the new world looks like when it comes to engaging fans and driving new commercial opportunities.
Some clubs have taken small steps to explore how the rise in the educational technology (EdTech) sector can play a role in the new world, by exploring the intersection of sport, technology and education to engage fans and generate revenue in the process.
How ready is your club to leverage these new world opportunities?
Our 10 ways to Commercialise Fan Engagement could be the starting point in reinventing how your organisation breaks through the COVID fog.
1. Know Your Purpose
Running a few Zoom sessions during the pandemic isn’t a SportsTech strategy – it’s a reaction.
Even launching your first online course doesn’t necessarily indicate you have a true purpose.
Purpose is long-term, considered, aligned to the organisation strategy and resourced. Understanding your purpose will deliver long term benefits, lasting well past the initial Zoom sugar hit wears off.
2. Make Data Driven Decisions
Investing in your own tech product ensures you own the data and can use this to make decisions to enhance your offerings.
This data is also a valuable commercial asset as you attract corporate sponsors to the platform or individual products.
Time on platform, enrolment numbers, demographics and learner behaviour
are all important data points that can be translated into attractive corporate partner packages.
3. Play The Long Game – Fan Avidity
Engaging with new fans, young and old, through technology is a great way to bring the clubs’ unique value proposition into classrooms and loungerooms around the globe.
Targeting specific demographics with well thought out, value driven experiences for end users will uplift your club’s profile and encourage a new fan base to consume other products the club has to offer.
4. Customised The Experience
Netflix, Spotify and Amazon are experts at using data to customise our experience when consuming their products.
Through accurately identifying your audience and creating content specific to them, pro sport can achieve the same customised experience for their fans.
From skill development for teenagers, to corporate leadership for adults, every club has the knowledge from within to develop a customised sports tech experience for their fans.
5. Create Emotional Connections
Great content engages the hearts, minds and passion of the audience.
Athletes have incredible stories to tell, which often connect and inspire a wide audience who can relate it to their day to day lives.
Same for coaches, CEO’s and the wider staff within the club. These emotional connections will keep your audience coming back to hear more.
Are you ready to unlock all 10 Ways to Commercialise Fan Engagement?
To jump start your foray into commercialising online learning, we invite you to access this FREE recourse by clicking this DOWNLOAD LINK
If you would like to chat with us, please contact [email protected] or send a note via our Contact Us page.
About Playbk Sports
The best way for sport to commercialise online learning.
Playbk Sports makes delivering online learning simple and effective with dynamic technology, immersive custom and white-label courses, and – of course – unbeatable fan engagement.
Playbk works with your team by harnessing your logo, players, coaches and administrators and uses the power of those ‘brands’ to create learning opportunities that clubs can commercialise.
As SportsTech trailblazers, Playbk fuses online learning and fan engagement – at scale.
Playbk’s full-stack digital approach provides strategy, portal design and development, marketing and technology solutions that seamlessly work within and uplift existing business functions.
Playbk continues to focus on innovative solutions for organisations across elite sport, education and not-for-profits to connect with fans in authentic and meaningful ways.
At Playbk, we create experiences that people remember
