Billy Loizou: Sports marketing and fan engagement – What’s new?
As summer sports season goes into ‘full swing’, Amperity APAC area vice president Billy Loizou takes a look at the innovative ways sporting bodies are attracting and engaging fans.
Aussies know there’s nothing like the feeling of your chosen team, club or player taking a win. What happens off the field, court or pitch is often quite remarkable too. Australian sporting organisations are embracing change and adapting their marketing strategies to connect with and draw in new fans and members.
During a recent Sports Marketing Summit in Sydney, three Australian sporting organisations delivered standout stories on how their marketing teams and partners had dug deep to drive more fan engagement.
F1 Australian Grand Prix Engages Drives Connection
F1 in Australia has seen a huge growth in popularity along with record breaking sales. A combination of media timing, rethinking audience, social media strategies and reducing friction in ticketing has contributed, according to Joel McKenzie, Division Manager, Digital for the F1 Australian Grand Prix.
Speaking at the conference, McKenzie said part of the surge of F1’s popularity in Australia could be attributed to the Netflix show Drive to Survive; it came out during Covid-19 while Melbourne was in lockdown and was a major hit, resonating with viewers due in large part to a focus on people rather than just race cars.
However, McKenzie also highlights some savvy marketing actions of F1 Australian Grand Prix’s parent company Liberty Media in drawing in new audiences.
“Something that sparked this growth was that [Liberty Media] invested in gaming, which is a big thing, because they identified the audience,” McKenzie said. “They had a very ‘pale male and stale’ audience and identified that they need to go younger and more diverse.”
The other successful engagement area was on social media, McKenzie added, noting that prior to 2017, the organisation was quite restrictive with what F1 teams and drivers could and couldn’t do on social media.
“They removed all those restrictions, and essentially wanted to make the drivers more accessible,” he said.
“What Drive to Survive did was take the focus off the cars and make the drivers the stars … That’s what the social media element of this has done, even to the point where drivers are instructed not to wear the helmet when they’re walking around. We want to connect with their faces.”
Another big change the team made was to improve ticketing, reducing friction for existing fans and those they sought to draw in.
The F1 event is assembled (and disassembled) at Albert Park in Melbourne every year. Grandstands and hospitality venues change, creating challenges for facilitating upwards of 130,000 visitors each race weekend. This means ticketing and seat assignment in particular can be confusing for users, because of how the layout changes year-on-year.
“On of the problems we were noticing is when we would get this surge in ticketing, we had the front-end of the site built, where people could do their research, pick their grandstand, then click through and get to the Ticketmaster site and [then see that the space] was sold out,” McKenzie said.
The lack of visibility on availability was causing a lot of frustration for users, leading to high bounce rates, McKenzie said, so the team worked with James Noble and the team at digital marketing agency WongDoody to build an API that could reflect the inventory and other information from their front-end into Ticketmaster. Reducing friction in this way really helped the experience, McKenzie said.
Golf Australia Goes Full Swing on a Fresh Feel
Another Australian sporting participation engagement success story has come out of the world of golf. Head of Strategy at Future Brand, Victoria Berry and General Manager of Public Affairs & Marketing at the PGA of Australia and Golf Australia, Josh Marton discussed how they focused on making golf more inclusive and accessible – taking on the attitude of just “go play” to emphasise fun and inclusivity.
The campaign looked at the sport’s branding, and studied the current perceptions regarding its accessibility, players and format. They sought to engage with younger players, more women, and players that valued socialisation, excitement and challenge. These are demographics that, up until now, weren’t typically the target audience of golfing bodies’ corporate messaging.
Berry said the new branding campaign was designed to be exciting, energetic, cool and colourful. They eschewed the traditional corporate branding that Golf Australia and the PGA brand was known for.
The new messaging was inviting and inclusive, demonstrated by Berry reading an excerpt of, and later showing, the full ad spot
“From the range to the tee to the green, from the diehards and the old guard, the fairway frequenters and club members, for those down for playing the full 18 or those up, for the fans living in the moment by the green or on screen, golf can be everywhere and for everyone,” the ad declared.
Importantly, the campaign wasn’t trying to tear down the sophisticated professional aspect of the game, but open it up to audiences that really were not typically targeted by the usual messaging.
It’s a bold and powerful new angle on an institution attached to its traditional and somewhat conservative image of exclusivity, class and strict attire that is dominated by older males.
Getting there wasn’t straightforward. Marton said the campaign required 12 months of board meetings and engaging with the organisation to drive change, highlighting a key consideration for marketers: bring your decision makers along for the journey.
“Any brand change is quite confronting for the people that are representing it and the people that utilise it. So tip number one is bring people along the journey,” he said.
“More often than not, your organisation does not want to change. It’s a really, really hard thing to make happen, but if you can pinpoint your hurdles, you can challenge your barriers, and find where those points of tension are.
Gaining this alignment was one of three core principles Marton and Berry said powered their campaign, with the other two being: change perceptions of the sport by challenging them, and drive inclusivity and participation.
“The most critical game changer is the way that people identify with your sport, with your brand in the space. I think if you can get people to change the way they think about you, you can really start to build that brand connection and that brand love,” Berry said.
Parramatta Eels Kicks Goals With Community Engagement
The third example of how marketing efforts can re-energise fan or participant engagement in sport came from the Parramatta Eels, a rugby league club based in the Sydney suburb of the same name.
The Eels wanted to broaden their appeal beyond their immediate range and target the approximate two million residents of Western Sydney.
The club was founded in 1947 but has not won a trophy since 1986, posing a challenge in growing the fan base. But existing Eels fans are fiercely passionate, and the campaign sought to grow and energise that base by latching on to the sentiment of optimism, hope and trust.
Presenting the campaign, the Eels General Manager for Brand, Social Impact and Fan Development, Kate Chapman, said part of the task required evolving the brand from its 1980s identity to better resonate with modern Western Sydney.
As such the ‘Rising West’ concept was developed, focusing on ambition, growth and cultural diversity. The concept included four key pillars: place, culture, technology and trade, and innovation. This campaign sought to highlight the cultural diversity of Western Sydney and enhance the game day experience, its content and community engagement.
Chapman said these pillars were determined through consultation with the Eels’ fan base, the Western Sydney community, the players and staff in surveys. Those were mental health, respect, and active kids.
The research led to the Eels launching several initiatives. The first was a mental health network, focusing on social cohesion and respect, celebrating all cultures and promoting positive behaviour.
The club also launched an active kids program, Paramatta Eels Play, which sought to remove barriers to play and encourage more kids to participate in sports.
Another initiative was a boots swap program, which invited junior sports participants to donate their used boots and upgrade to a larger size, helping to reduce the cost of participating in sport and contributing to a sustainable future.
“The boot swap has now given back over $15,000 worth of boots back into the community,” Chapman said. “Some of the stories that we’ve heard from people who have come and collected these boots are extremely powerful.“
The Eels also shook up their game day, Chapman said, and the results are working.
“We went from just delivering a game of football to delivering an entertainment experience that people, the community, wanted to participate in,” “What we find is now we actually have up to 30% new audience, every single time that we play, walking through the gates.”
Driving More Engagement with Digital
As demonstrated by these examples, there is a lot marketers can do to engage sporting fans in Australia, from creative outreach and messaging, to community programs, rebranding and innovative uses of technology and digital channels.
The campaigns resonated with the audience because they demonstrated distinct strategies employed by organisations facing diverse context and challenges. Yet they all had a strong emphasis on people, highlighting that great marketers understand marketing’s role as an emotive connection between consumers and brands, with technology aiding along the way.
One of the most rapidly changing technology areas in the Australian sport marketing landscape is around data, AI and digital channels as they relate to fans, members and participants. Digital engagement in Australian sports is increasingly valuable in fostering deeper and more meaningful relationships.
Technologies available today can allow clubs, sporting bodies and teams to create personalised experiences that resonate with them, using AI-driven customer data platforms (CDPs) to automate these interactions effectively.
Personalised fan journeys enable segmenting the audience based on behaviour, interests, and spending patterns, ensuring tailored promotions and communications that are relevant for each individual fan.
The use of data has also transformed how teams approach advertising. With better customer insights, teams can fine-tune their ad strategies to target the right audience at the right time, focusing on channels and messages that resonate most with their target audiences.
Technology can also streamline internal operations, making teams more agile and responsive. By using data tools, teams can centralise their data and eliminate silos, allowing departments to work more cohesively. This results in faster decision-making and the ability to deliver more relevant, real-time fan experiences.
Looking Ahead
As teams across the sports landscape adopt technology-driven platforms, the possibilities for fan engagement are endless. The ability to capture, analyse, and act on data allows teams, clubs and sporting bodies to create more personalised, efficient, and engaging experiences for their fans, all while optimising operations and driving revenue growth.
For today’s sporting organisations, the future of fan engagement isn’t just about filling seats—it’s about creating lasting relationships with fans beyond game day. By harnessing the power of data, teams are not only meeting these expectations but are setting new standards for fan loyalty, engagement, and satisfaction.