In Focus: WSC Sports - Kick-Off Ready: The 4-Step Content Strategy For Building Fandom
The new season is upon us, and fan excitement levels are through the roof. Content is being consumed at voracious rates across social media, websites and apps. Whether it’s highlights of pre-season games, news about trades and transfers, behind-the-scenes footage, injury updates and more, fans are simply craving it all in a quest for deeper connections with their favourite players and clubs.
his presents sports clubs with a golden opportunity ahead of the new season, creating content that grows audience size and revenues. But, to fully capitalise on this enthusiasm, clubs must develop the right content strategy. Building on the traditional funnel approach, here are some steps your club can follow to help expose your content to more people, increase engagement, convert new and existing fans into paying customers and build loyal and lasting fandom.
Awareness: Casting a Wide Net
Content reach is everything when it comes to increasing awareness. The challenge is exposing your club’s content to as many eyes as possible. Social media is the obvious go-to, thanks to the numbers who use it and its content virality potential. But not all social media platforms are the same and neither are their users, so you’ll need to create an array of content types to cater to those different audiences. Shorter, snackable content like in-game highlights and memorable moments can capture the attention of fans on the go, while longer-form offerings like player profiles and interviews provide the depth and substance that highly engaged fans crave. This ensures there’s something for everyone, from the casual observer to the diehard fans. But output is only one piece of the puzzle. Crafting the right content in the viewer’s preferred format and aspect ratio is vital. It doesn’t matter the size of your club, one thing is certain, younger audiences are obsessed with short-form, vertical video content (9:16 ratio). Many clubs have already excelled by adopting this format, attracting millions of new followers across various platforms. Make sure you’re able to deliver for the new season. Timing is also crucial. Not only do you need to push out content when fans are actively searching for it, like in the build-up to, during and after a match, but you also need to be able to react quickly on the fly to fully exploit any unscripted storytelling opportunity that arises.
Interest: Deepening Fan Connection
Utilising many different outlets to get your content seen is only the beginning. Clubs must then turn those impressions into engagement in the form of likes, shares and comments. Effective engagement is achieved through innovative, personalised fan experiences that deepen the connection with the club and provide a sense of belonging. German handball club THW Kiel successfully executed a content strategy for the 2023/24 season that brought new fans to its app. THW Kiel vastly increased the number of game highlights it published on social media, growing impressions by over167%. Capitalising on this new interest, they used the momentum on social media to drive fans to its app where they can vote for the “Man of the Match”, “Action of the Month” and more. These efforts might seem obvious, but for Kiel they paid off, transforming fans from mere spectators into active participants, resulting in new app subscribers and key app engagement. The best content strategies seek to pair fans with the content they most want to see. A prime example is the Cleveland Cavaliers, who have enhanced their app to allow users to create a personalised highlights feed featuring over 24 different types of highlights of their favorite players. Since rolling out these features, they’ve observed an 83% increase in app downloads and a20-minute average dwell time. This success demonstrates how personalisation can transform fan interaction.
Action: Turning Engagement into Revenue
Converting fans into paying customers, whether through ticket sales, merchandise, or digital subscriptions, requires clubs to create a seamless journey from interest to purchase. By analysing fan behaviour and preferences from their activity on owned and operated channels, your club can tailor content and offers to individual fans, increasing the likelihood of conversion. For example, if data shows that a segment of fans consistently watches a specific player’s highlight reels, you can create personalized offers featuring exclusive content about that player, such as behind-the-scenes footage, interviews or special merchandise. Having access to this first-party user data is why moving your fans from followers on social media to active users on your owned and operated (O&O) channels is so valuable to clubs.
Rich YouTube libraries can also serve as a powerful tool to guide fans deeper into your ecosystem, increasing watch time and trust while enhancing both sponsor viewership and O&O click-through rates. Pre-game videos are particularly effective for sending high-intent fans to O&O platforms, generating three to four times more conversions than in-game content and boasting impressive click-through rates. Once these fans are on your O&O platforms, they are more likely to purchase or subscribe to exclusive experiences or premium services. Regardless of where the content lives, to optimise sponsorship revenue, it’s essential to integrate ad sponsors seamlessly into all formats, from thumbnails to intros and outros, ensuring brand visibility without disrupting the fan experience.
Loyalty: Building Long-Term Fandom
So you’ve worked hard to build the perfect fan journey. You’re creating great content that your audience loves and engages with and you’re directing them to your O&O where their activity is of the most value to you. But how do you keep them there, grow a digital community, foster long-term fandom and extract the most value along the way? The answer is pretty simple: offer the best experiences. The right technology will help you ensure that the content you create across all levels of the fan journey, from the wide-reaching social media content to the personalised experiences on your app, is of the best quality, in the optimal ratios and formats, and delivered at the right time for maximum impact. Adopting innovative content solutions that enable game-changing experiences is key to achieving deeper, more meaningful connections with fans at any stage of their journey.
WSC Sports’ platform automates the creation, management and distribution of fan-centric content using AI, helping clubs like yours forge unbreakable bonds with fans. Join over 450 sports organisations worldwide already utilising WSC Sports to connect with their fans through AI-tailored content experiences.
Book a demo here: www.wsc-sports.com
