The Olympic year traditionally gives International Federations (IF) and national governing bodies a unique platform for growing audiences with more eyes trained on their respective sports. Nowadays, fan engagement is concentrated on the digital experience and how one’s social media strategy can leverage new fans while converting existing followers into loyal customers.
In a recent webinar YouTube Growth Hacking in the Olympic Year, I had the pleasure of joining Olga Luferova, Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager at BuzzMyVideos, to discuss how sports organizations can optimize their use of the social video platform during the build-up to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in order to drive audience growth and monetize content before and after the event.
According to Semrush, YouTube is the second most popular website in the world – behind its parent company Google – and caters to 2.5 billion monthly users. It is one of the most powerful platforms available on the market and is an extremely valuable tool for those who optimize their channels. For example, videos distributed via the platform are more likely to go viral (27 percent) compared to TikTok (24 percent) and Facebook (14 percent).
Meanwhile, the social media giant is a go-to viewing experience for younger audiences (the majority of users are aged 25-34) while the platform has also tapped the TV-streaming market, too, which contributes more than one billion hours of viewing time spent on YouTube every day. With the correct guidance, sports properties can maximize fan engagement by leveraging consumer appetite at every stage of the fan funnel – albeit, sports organizations could be doing more to optimize their content distribution via the social video platform.
Although many are driving up their content creation in time for the Olympics, momentum can – and is – easily lost when organizations reduce their social activity after the event, at a time when they should be looking to increase engagement so as to retain and monetize new subscribers. While the sports industry is not the only sector prone to this trend, there are several steps which sports organizations can be taking to maximize their use of social media, particularly via YouTube.
When working with our clients to develop and implement their own digital transformation journeys, we emphasize the importance of integrating a social media strategy into the fan funnel – from creating user awareness and consideration, through to fan conversion, monetization, and retention. Here, we present five recommendations, in collaboration with BuzzMyVideos, for sports organizations to optimize their social media strategies and maximize audience growth in an Olympic year.
- Optimizing archive content can help drive audience reach. The best way to do this is to update thumbnails for old videos, as well as to give them new titles and descriptions relevant to your current audience and narratives pre-Games. “Whenever a thumbnail is updated on old videos, it usually results in a ten percent uplift in views,” explains Olga. “I’m sure some of your most popular content was uploaded years ago and, back then, custom thumbnails didn’t even exist. I recommend that you go to your top videos and analyze whether any of those videos can be optimized by updating the thumbnail with a clear background and text across every image you use.”
- IFs should be tapping different content formats to drive engagement. While rights agreements prohibit IFs from distributing events-related video during the Olympics, there are other types of content that can be leveraged to drive engagement around the spectacle. For example, federations are creating educational content in the build-up to the Games to introduce audiences to their respective disciplines. There are many Olympic athletes, and every athlete has a story behind them, so it’s also a great time to create momentum by telling the athlete story outside the arena, while also repackaging and repurposing their archive footage. After the event, there are many great moments, victories, and celebrations that you can then reutilize to create new content based on what has happened during the event, so it’s also important that you adopt a 365-day content strategy which incorporates different programs and strategies throughout the year and not only during the Olympics.
- An entity’s social media strategy should serve its digital strategy at every stage of the fan funnel. This means that sports organizations should be utilizing their social media channels across every single phase of the fan journey and ensure that their social and digital strategies align. For example, YouTube can be used to drive audiences to your owned products. This is the approach for one of our clients, United World Wrestling (UWW), the governing body for Olympic wrestling, which turned its official YouTube channel from a static video library into a dynamic livestreaming platform, before going on to drive a highly engaged following to its UWW+ over-the-top (OTT) streaming service during UWW’s major events. In return, the audience analytics gained during this process helps to further personalize content to its users’ behaviors and interests, while fan data also informs the types of content UWW is producing for its YouTube channel to attract new subscribers.
- YouTube Shorts are high in demand but underutilized. Olga strongly urges sports organizations to create and distribute more content via YouTube’s short-form video section, which focuses on 60-second, vertical videos. “If there is one takeaway, it’s that – if you are not doing YouTube Shorts yet – you should start doing so right now,” she says. “YouTube Shorts are the main driver for subscriptions and views. Right now, demand is very high but the amount of ‘Shorts’ content is still very low – so it is the right time to join this trend.” Olga also advises IFs to livestream more content around the Olympics, adding: “Even if you are not streaming your championships and tournaments [for rights reasons], you can still stream other types of video content on YouTube, such as behind-the-scenes content or archive matches and events, which tap into user nostalgia.”
- Monetize content via your YouTube channels. There are several ways this can be achieved. Firstly, Olga recommends that sports properties enable the “monetization” feature across their channels in order to receive an ad-revenue share. Meanwhile, organizations can consider introducing “channel memberships” via their YouTube channel, which provide an option to position exclusive content behind a paywall. Olga also advises sports entities to identify social media “creators” with a relevant following who can help boost your audience reach and generate revenue based on a unique collaboration. According to the YouTube Culture & Trends Report 2023, 54 percent of people surveyed say they would prefer to watch creators breaking down a major event rather than the event organizer itself.
WHAT’S N3XT?
Social media integration into the fan funnel is a fundamental step for IFs and other sports organizations to take when aligning their social and digital strategies. As outlined by our Digital Marketing Manager Miguel Doménech in a recent article on the subject, a sophisticated fan funnel relies on both a wide audience reach and the means to capture first-party fan data.
While social media platforms such as YouTube can be leveraged in different ways to maximize audience growth in the build-up to and during the Olympic Games, how the organization converts its subscribers into its owned ecosystem requires a digital and data strategy that incorporates every one of its digital touchpoints and continues long after the event has ended.
As sports compete for consumer attention at a time when fans are demanding digital sports experiences, the combination of a diverse digital product portfolio and an optimized social media presence creates a welcome mix of content designed to engage users across multiple platforms and at every stage of the fan funnel.
Our team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and implement data and digital transformation strategies across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To find out more about how N3XT Sports can serve your organization, fill out the form below, and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of the sports industry and our clients.