Podcast: The essentials for engaging the next gen of sport fans

Making short form, click bait style content is not the be-all and end-all for attracting younger audiences, according to the latest episode of the Broadcast Sport Podcast. 

You can listen to Sarah Essoof, head of production at 50 Sport, Tom Jackson, group director of content at the DP World Tour and Ryder Cup Europe, Ben Turner, co-founder and partner at Fulwell Entertainment, and Fiona Wood, strategy director at Little Dot Sport discussing how best to engage young sports fans below, and subscribe to the Broadcast Sport Podcast on all major podcast platforms.

It was recorded at the Broadcast Sport Content Summit at dock10 Studios, Media City, on 5 March. 

According to Essoof, “I personally don’t think attention spans have disappeared. I think it’s competition for the first three seconds. Everybody always goes back to Drive to Survive. That was a phenomenon, and I think the attention is still there for longer-form content.

“But people of that generation want shorter content, they want highlights reels, they want the remix of the main event, almost, so I think there’s space for both but grabbing the attention is the tricky part.”

Turner agreed, “Long form and short form can live together in a really complementary way,” and Wood supported, revealing that, “It’s no secret that YouTube are making a TV play, and more and more people are watching YouTube through connected TV. We’ve seen up to three hours’ worth of content on YouTube performing really well.”

In terms of strategy, Jackson believes tone is vital, with the click bait style popular but not always the answer, especially for traditional organisations. He added, “The tone of the footage is really important as well. From a rights holder perspective, we have to think about the message that we want to get across in terms of who we are.

“The challenge that we’ve had is fans like the click bait style, ‘You won’t believe he misses this putt,’ whereas actually as a brand and a member’s organisation, do we want to be promoting that click bait style, should it be more authentic around storytelling? So finding the balance with the durations is important from a tone perspective.”

You can listen to the group discuss plenty of other topics, including how to understand what younger viewers want, their tips on the types of content and platforms to focus on, the potential impact of a social media ban for under-16s, and more in the podcast below. You can alos subscribe for further episodes of the Broadcast Sport Podcast on all major podcast platforms.