Starting with a thinking exercise: How many times have you completely hugged a stranger in a public place, like you hugged the stranger sitting next to you after a goal in the 90th minute? Have you ever entered mourning like after a defeat in a derby? How many times have you held a comprehensive professional discussion with your boss, your taxi driver, and your dentist?
Sports evokes emotions, interest, and feelings that no public event or brand comes close to: the personal aspect, drama, and fan engagement require different and unique characteristics that are not necessarily needed, for example, when marketing or mediating activities of an electric car importer or an insurance company.
Before explaining what makes us unique, let’s try to present some of those characteristics that create such a big difference in marketing in the sports industry compared to more regular industries.
Most sports organizations, unlike any other normal business, experience extreme highs and painful lows almost every season, depending on their athletic achievements. No industry in the world faces such frequent and drastic fluctuations, and the need to mediate these highs and lows to fans requires knowledge and familiarity. We’ve learned how to celebrate victories and leverage the momentum they bring, on the one hand, but on the other hand, we understand the importance of our presence for the fans. We never allow our clients to hide in unpleasant moments, like losses or controversies. We always make sure to face the fans and look at the situation in the eyes, even if it’s less pleasant. Even if sometimes it’s less pleasant in the short term, in the long run, it conveys control over the situation, leadership of the organization, and credibility to the fans.
Even in the content aspect, there are significant differences between a sports organization and a “normative” business.
While throughout the season, we enjoy a supply of sports and news content, updates, results, and achievements, as we approach the end of the season and enter the dry and dull hiatus months, often without new content creation (no competitions, athletes on vacation, etc.).
This situation creates difficulties in managing social networks and maintaining them, both for the fans who, especially during this period, long for the action of the season and hope to connect with the team. Therefore, it’s essential to plan in advance with various types of content that will allow us, especially during the challenging hiatus period, to stand out and provide relevant content for fans eagerly awaiting new materials.
Characterizing the target audience we are talking about, or more accurately, the lack of characterization for a population, requires expertise in choosing the right systematic approach that will allow us to touch optimally on our fans in all parts of society.
While a luxury car brand will know how to appeal to a very specific target audience, and a makeup brand will know how to appeal to a different target audience, in sports, we don’t really have a specific target audience.
A lecturer in sentence structure at Tel Aviv University, a teacher at the high school in Umm al-Fahm, a student in the third grade in Be’er Sheva, and his grandfather living in Elkana—all of them make up our target audience. Therefore, it is necessary to know how to calibrate the tone and maintain high-quality content, speaking at eye level. As part of this balance, we need to create both high-quality and “high” content that speaks to a wider audience and is not cheap or simple. Anyone who thinks for a moment that the audience of sports fans is foolish or not intelligent is invited to seek another profession. Success and maximizing the digital capabilities of the sports organization are related to the delicate balance between speaking at eye level and creating richer and more complex content, all while paying attention to the full range of emotions and nuances.
While a luxury car brand will know how to appeal to a very specific target audience, and a makeup brand will know how to appeal to a different target audience, in sports, we don't really have a specific target audience."
Part of the advantage enjoyed by sports organizations, compared to other industries, is the total and long-term loyalty to the brand, a loyalty that doesn’t exist in any other sector of the industry. In football, brand loyalty is absolute, passing from generation to generation, and defining a significant part of the family identity (“We’re a Hapoel family”).
Have you ever heard of a laundry softener brand to which loyalty has passed down from grandfather to grandson? Do you know of a family argument during a Friday dinner where each side passionately defends their insurance company or mobile service provider? Probably not – such loyalty exists primarily in sports (or in politics, where loyalty is less humorous).
This loyalty brings tremendous advantages but also a heavy responsibility: understanding the fans’ internal humor, the history of the sports organization, the insults, and the pains, what they find amusing, and what is off-limits. We have examples as well.
A few months ago, one of the leading sports organizations explored the possibility of refreshing its logo. The club turned to a well-known and high-quality branding agency that excelled in branding but was less familiar with the context of the sports world. At the end of the branding process, a logo was created that extracted meaningful elements from the historical symbol, leading to a vehement protest from the fans and the almost immediate cancellation of the rebranding.
A similar story occurred with none other than a prestigious football club, the pride of a city. This football club faced a rebellion from its fans due to a redesign, and we also have a story about another giant club in Israel that signed a sponsorship deal with a respected brand—though the color it used was nothing short of a “desecration of the name” for the team’s fans. The club’s marketing manager will never forget how, with a team of workers in a pouring rainstorm, they dismantled the sponsorship sign from the field before the start of the game and what the fate of that sponsorship deal was.
A common mistake in sports organizations, often in federations, is the stiffness reflected in wording, content, and production. Loosen up, friends, loosen up! It’s sports, it’s entertainment, it’s not life and death (even if Bill Shankly thinks otherwise…). You can extract what’s stuck there, laugh, even at ourselves, it’s okay, provide enjoyment, show that we are all human. In some cases, as you can read here, the most significant benefit will arise precisely from acknowledging our shortcomings.
We could go on, but we believe in a personal example and short posts of up to 1,000 words, so we’ll have to cut it here – despite our infinite digging capabilities in this subject, as well as the examples and anecdotes.
So, the answer to the question posed at the beginning is not “no.” We are not digital prodigies in the universe, but yes – Social in Sport requires expertise, and we are not ashamed to say that we are the best in digital in the sports field, and the best in sports in the digital field, and that’s precisely why Sporta was founded.
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