We need to take the opportunities that are presented to us to promote women’s sports: Will Giles

Innovations in fan engagement and gender balance in digital content were the topics of discussion during the ‘100% Passion’ session - part of ICC's '100% Cricket' webinar series - led by former Australia cricketer-turned commentator Melanie Jones.



Karren Rogers, APAC Sports Partnerships from Facebook, spoke about the need to build stories around the athletes to engage with the audiences. “We’ve seen some great examples of bringing fans closer to the broadcast, creating digital fan-zones and making screens work more effectively together. There may be an opportunity moving forward to create those fan-zones for international audiences,” she said.



Rogers, who managed the Facebook partnership with Ellyse Perry that launched an exclusive docuseries in January 2020, also talked about working with the allrounder and the response that content received.



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“Working with Ellyse was fantastic. Not only is she an amazing athlete, but being able to go on her journey with her leading into the WBBL and the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup with her was a real opportunity. The engagement we saw with fans globally was phenomenal,” she said.



“The Facebook Watch series was a great way to show how you can be authentic, lift the lid on your world and take people with you. It was just a really good way to lead into the Women’s T20 World Cup, including with fun content moments, like the collaboration with Katy Perry which was a particular highlight.”



Will Giles, content manager at All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), talked about the commitment to gender balance across digital platforms. Giles, who helped AELTC manage the ‘One Day in July’ collaboration with the ICC, said, “We commit to 50-50 gender balance across our output and be the change you want to see if you will, but we are always challenging ourselves to whether we need to do more.”



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“However, we definitely do capitalize throughout the year and give that extra boost to women’s sport. More recently we ran content that asked which female athletes have inspired both female and male players. We need to take the opportunities that are presented to us to promote women’s sports, but also engage by knowing what our audiences want and that is crucial,” he added.



They also discussed the impact of COVID-19 on live sport. Giles talked about how fan engagement tactics are going to change further moving forward with innovations. “In the immediate future people will watch anything. When things come back to some sort of normality, we will all be discussing what worked in this period, what lessons we can take forward and what can work in the future.”



Rogers ended the session with her thoughts on possible innovations to grow the game in new markets. “Growing the fan base is always important, but interestingly we have seen markets like the US tuning into Australian sport more than they have before, due to us bringing sport back post-lock down. I think it will be interesting to see how much innovation continues post-COVID-19,” she concluded.