In this interview with Matic Švab, Executive director of Finance and Marketing and Deputy Secretary-General at Olympic Committee of Slovenia, we deep dive into the digital transformation journey of the NOC — from why they started this journey, to where the NOC is headed.
1. How important is digital as an enabler of your NOC’s overall strategy?
The Olympic Committee of Slovenia is a small National Olympic Committee but we have around 60 athletes competing at the Summer or Winter Olympic Games. Our role is extensive, in supporting the Olympic team and acting as a service provider to all national federations.
For example, on the sports performance side, we provide valuable data services to all of our national sports federations. We are creating a comprehensive database of around 50,000 registered athletes including data about their health, training, tracking their performance etc. All this data is shared with the national federations and is in turn shared with the clubs.
On the other hand, our role is to support the budget of the NOC. This means we are continuously exploring new revenue streams, lately focusing on digital and new innovative ways of serving our fanbase. The main area we have invested in is in learning about our fanbase, their behaviors, the type of content they engage with, and aligning this with what our partners are looking to achieve through the sponsorship of the NOC.
2. Why is the fanbase a core element of your digital marketing?
We started to venture into digital at the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games, as new digital engagement tools emerged around that time. Since then, we have dived deeper into digital because this is what our commercial partners are seeking from us. They evolved from demanding only brand awareness to having a direct relationship and engagement with our fanbase. The best way to deliver this value to our partners was through investing in our digital & data capabilities. Data is increasingly important in this new landscape.
The International Olympic Committee is also pushing us forward, but the most important feedback we get is from our sponsors as they are the main contributors to our budget. We get 20% of our overall revenue from the government and the rest is on us to find in the market.
For Pyeongchang 2018, 15 out of our 20 sponsors were doing digital activations. Today, during the pandemic, this number will eventually increase especially that people, youth in particular, are spending most of their time online.
3. How are national federations in Slovenia considering digital opportunities?
Most of the time, digital is seen as a cost center. The landscape is changing very rapidly, and now it gives opportunities to be a revenue driver. Some national federations such as football and skiing are leading their own digitization efforts thanks to greater resources available to them. Here, we play a partnership role with them, collaborating together to help them achieve their business goals.
With other national federations, there is a nascent digital approach. Here, our role is to lead their digitization efforts and provide central digital & data services. With some National Federations such as the basketball and cycling federations, we are working together on different initiatives, where the athletes are the main focus, to grow our fan base. Our aim is to keep working with more and more National Federations and to help them digitalize.
One thing, as I mentioned above, is the service we offer to all of our National Federations in order to help their athletes improve their performance through a data-driven decision-making process. Some years ago, our National Federations tapped into us (the NOC) to identify tools and technology to help their athletes track their performance. Today, and we still have a long way to go, some of our federations can already monitor athletes and analyze their performance thanks to data.
¨We are continuously exploring new revenue streams, lately focusing on digital and new innovative ways of serving our fanbase. The main area we have invested in is in learning about our fanbase, their behaviors, the type of content they engage with, and aligning this with what our partners are looking to achieve through the sponsorship of the NOC.¨
4. What other activities do you think may help you to grow and engage your fanbase in the flame-to-flame period between each Olympic Games?
We recognize that as a NOC we need to stay relevant year-round. By doing so, we can even increase the excitement and anticipation around the Olympic Games. Sport is a universal language, and digital is the channel through which we can continue to engage and reach new audiences.
We started implementing projects for kids such as the Mini Olympics, the Olympic festival, that are being held multiple times throughout the year. The latter grew exponentially, attracting 10,000 kids in 40 different sports which is a great opportunity for them to try unpopular sports in Slovenia that often they don’t have access to such as baseball for example.
We recently created a mascot which became very popular among the young population and we linked it with many activities of our sponsors. We are envisioning getting the kids off their screens and motivate them to play outside all day long.
We also decided to shed light on a healthy lifestyle including exercise and nutrition which is an important part of the society in Slovenia. An initiative that we launched during the pandemic was, together with some of our athletes, we created a series of online workouts and exercises where the fans had a chance to train, exercise, interact and engage with our athletes. The feedback of this initiative was very positive as we helped people overcome the pandemic situation and also to offer the possibility to our fan base to get closer to the athletes.
This strategy is important for sponsors to expand their reach, target youngsters, and focus their activation on an active lifestyle and not only limit themselves to the Olympic Games.