The process of growing and retaining audiences is an important one for sports organizations to master, especially given that there are so many options nowadays to connect with the fan directly. The “fan funnel”, as it is commonly known, is the metric with which organization’s measure the fan journey from the moment they engage with the brand’s digital touchpoints and the steps they usually take in becoming a registered member within the entity’s digital supporters’ ecosystem.
Building a “channel matrix” helps the organization define the digital platforms and social channels which drive engagement for the brand. In order to turn casual, one-off fans into loyal supporters “willing to pay to stay”, sports entities are encouraged to define the fan and what’s driving engagement. Content distribution via social media is a popular option for expanding one’s audience and provides some fundamental user data made available through third-party platform analytics.
While this is a common route for sports to take when establishing a digital fan base, in order to develop a customer database which enables a sports organization to communicate with the fan and tailor its content marketing and product development to the user’s unique interests, this is harder to achieve for those that do not operate their own dedicated digital platforms to capture fan data or a customer relationship management (CRM) capability to store and act upon fan intelligence.
N3XT Sports proprietary research shows that sports organizations and rights holders with multiple data touchpoints have a broader social media following, indicating a correlation between the maturity of an entity’s digital inventory and their ability to drive audience retention. As the data shows (see graphs below), the majority of Olympic International Federations (IF) with the largest social media following score higher for digital and data maturity based on our analysis, which measures for the diversity of their digital portfolio and the maturity of their first-party data collection. Download the Olympic Digital Transformation Report 2023 for more analysis.
As part of this article, we examine some of the IFs with the highest social media following and how, by implementing a fully integrated data-collection capability, sports organizations can grow their fan base through digital transformation. According to research carried out for our upcoming International Federation Fan Data Guide 2024, which will be published later this month, FIFA and World Rugby score highest for their digital and data capabilities compared to other Olympic IFs, and demonstrate – for the time – a higher overall digital maturity respectively.
This is true of other IFs and not only those which govern the sports on display at next summer’s Paris 2024 Olympic Games. For example, the International Cricket Council (ICC) is one of the industry’s more digitally diverse IFs and owns the largest, combined social media following of all global governing bodies across the five most popular platforms for fans: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.
While the national cricket boards represented at the India 2023 men’s one-day international (ODI) Cricket World Cup demonstrate a disparity in their ability to collect fan data, following its inclusion to the Olympic program for the Los Angeles 2028 (LA28) Olympic Games, cricket has an opportunity to capitalize on its unparalleled social media following and drive audience growth and retention via its owned and operated platforms.
In addition, we’ll also explore how sports properties can optimize operational efficiency and simplify dataflow by consolidating fan data via a single source of truth and the benefits of connecting customer-facing touchpoints using a single sign-on (SSO) across their entire digital ecosystem.
DIGITAL MATURITY HIGHER FOR GOVERNING BODIES WITH BROAD SOCIAL FOLLOWING
According to our findings, not only do Olympic IFs with multiple data touchpoints show a higher social media following, they are also more likely to collect first-party fan data via certain digital touchpoints compared to IFs with fewer social media followers. For example, every Olympic IF with a social media following greater than 10 million collects fan data via a dedicated ecommerce platform and are more likely to collect fan data via an owned and operated over-the-top (OTT) subscription streaming service. These make up 36.3 percent (ecommerce) and 27.2 percent (OTT) of the governing bodies on the Olympic roster which own either an online store or dedicated streaming product.
By comparison, appetite for data collection correlates with the IF’s social media following. The data shows that Olympic IFs with a broader social media following average a higher score for their data-collection capability. For example, Olympic IFs with more than 10 million followers average a 55 percent score for data collection compared to an average 15.7 percent score for those which have a social media following below 500,000.
Data maturity is indicated by the number of digital touchpoints an IF uses to collect data, including an owned website, mobile app, ecommerce, ticketing, OTT streaming platform, and/or a fantasy/gaming product. However, data maturity is heightened for organizations which demonstrate an ability to consolidate fan data using an SSO, for example, across their entire digital inventory, no matter its size.
For example, one of our clients, United World Wrestling (UWW), the governing body for Olympic wrestling, launched the UWW+ subscription streaming service ahead of the 2023 UWW World Championships (WCH23), which saw an increase on fan engagement over WCH22, including 25 million social media engagements (+443 percent), 155 million total video views (+203 percent), and attracted 404,000 new followers (+63 percent).
The upgrades were assisted by the team at N3XT Sports, which helped integrate the UWW+ platform within the UWW website and mobile app, using an SSO, in order to funnel users into one location and provide a 360° experience for the fan. According to our research, UWW is among the top 10 Olympic IFs for social media followers and has propelled itself into the top three for data maturity since the roll out of UWW+. Download our UWW+ case study to learn more.
WHAT’S N3XT?
Social media is a helpful tool for sports organizations to expand their audience reach and convert new fans. Given that the industry is in the business of serving the fan and driving engagement, the development of owned and operated digital products is also serving the sports entity’s ability to capture first-party fan data, which is, in turn, informing the types of content it should be sharing via its digital platforms, in which markets, and how to curate a hyper-personalized fan experience.
Data ownership helps the marketing and communications team better understand user behavior and to customize their content strategy, not only for their owned channels, but also the user experience across its social media and other partner and stakeholder channels. This sentiment is shared by UWW President Nenad Lalovic.
“By diversifying the fan experience at this year’s World Championships, UWW has once again proven the power of digital transformation for driving engagement and expanding wrestling’s global audience,” he says. “The latest numbers demonstrated the importance of digitalization and to lay the foundations for expanding the sport’s digital audience.”
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.