On this Sports Geek Q&A episode Sean Callanan answers the following questions:

  • Should there be more emphasis from sports on email marketing at the expense of social media given the decline in organic reach and risk associated with not owning those platforms? @ShaneHarmon via Twitter DM
  • What is your advice for graduates entering the workforce? Michael at Swinburne Student Life Awards
  • What is your most rewatchable sports movie? Rachel via Email

Listen to Sports Geek Q&A for the answers

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Read Sports Geek Q&A answers below

First question comes in from a former Sports Geek podcast guests and I'm sure he will come back for another episode. Shane Harmon, CEO of Westpac Stadium. But if you're listening to this in 2020, it will be known as Sky Stadium.

Congratulations on the naming rights there, Shane.

His question is, should there be more emphasis from sports on email marketing at the expense of social media? Given the decline in organic reach and risk associated with not owning those platforms?

To me, this is a big yes. Yes. Yes. I think we need the Daniel Bryan gif. If you're a WWE fan of the yes chant, if you're building something on someone else's land, there's always rent to pay.

Which is, you know, what we are doing on these social media platforms and not saying we want or have to abandon the platforms.

But we do want to make sure that we can start talking to the fans on platforms that we own. And that's where getting fan data from social and into your own CRM.

That's multiple pieces of data, whether it's email and or mobile, because it's becoming more and more that the platform of choice.

What can we get when we send an SMS?

So developing that email strategy, but also that data capture strategy is super vital.

So is having multiple methods to do it I think is vital as well because the 25 words or less competition is only going to work for so far.

So it is a mix of how do we make sure that our ticketing data gets captured and how we start communicating with them.

I think then the next piece becomes the different the different avenues you start talking to people. I think one of the one of the common mistakes is you get someone on a list and then boom, you try to sell them a membership or a or a ticketing package when they just potentially gone to one game.

So getting that, getting the personalization which is available now in different streams and if you're you know, if you're a big team and you're using different. CRM technology, you'd have that option.

But if you're a small team, a grassroots team, you can do these kind of things in in email systems like we used Drip or Mailchimp has now got a lot of really good personalization automation options.

Yeah. An email strategy is vital because if you do talk to a lot of the people that do sell a lot of tickets in in the in leagues, people are still buying tickets via email.

If they get the right offer, they will buy it via that.

So I think it is a mix of that. I mean, I'm not getting into how to sell tickets, but I think it is smart, to be honest.

Start getting more of that data out of the system because you don't know you don't know when that's when the tap will be turned off. And like Shane said, the organic reach will will fall to zero.

And you have to start again. So anything you have in your own CRM database gives you an advantage.

My second question comes from Michael. I met Michael at the Swinburne Student Life Awards where I was MC, I went back to Swinburne, where I went to university and was M.S. for the Student Life Awards.

And he asked for general advice for graduates entering the workforce.

So for me, the main point that I made and it was really great to see the student community that was getting awards around volunteering and working in clubs and working sports around the university.

I shared a little bit of my story that that your career is no straight line.

It's that's part of the reason why I ask in a regular Sports Geek podcast interviews is how did they how do people get their start?

Then you start figuring out how they got to where they got to.

In my case it definitely was not a straight line.

And I don't think careers are going to be straight lines anymore.

Careers were straight lines in the 60s and 70s, but now people are changing jobs more often, changing roles more often, changing industries more often.

So in my case, it started off as a computer programmer running then, then went to running application development and test teams and start-ups in the space to sports marketing and digital marketing, which is a big change.

And now, you know, now in the world of a esports.

Don't don't think a career is a straight line, and in the other part is I really owe a lot to do improv, which is, Yes-Anding.

Looking at different opportunities, whether they be inside your industry or inside your field or outside. And Yes-Anding them.

Taking those opportunities and giving back more. Giving, you know, the theoretical 110 per cent.

But you actually don't know what will come from that.

You might be working in one place and it might actually be the volunteer role. You're doing a local cricket club or a local basketball club or your local college or charity that actually gives you the next either the experience or the next opportunity or the next networking opportunity that gets you to the next role.

So you must keep keep your head on a swivel, I guess, and keep an eye out for those opportunities, because I think the blinkered view of this is what I'm going to do for the next 15 years. It's not going to apply.

I don't think it's applied over the last 15 years, and I definitely don't think it's going to apply going forward.

My next question comes from Rachel via via email.

I like this one a bit off centre, but it doesn't have to be everything about sports and technology, but it is one that I do love.

What is your most read watchable sports movie?

I think Rachel must be one of the people that listens to the rewatchable podcasts from the Ringer do a really good podcast where they recap and dive back into different movies, not just sports ones.

For me, I've got a question. Can I have a question? Back to the question is Fletch a sports movie?

Fletch is my favourite movie of all time. Chevy Chase, 1983 or 84.

I think I'd like to qualifies as a sports movie.

It does have Chick Hearn, legendary Lakers announcer in it. And and visions of Magic Johnson and the like as as a big Laker fan and references to Kareem Abdul Jabbar and the like.

So that's what I would say. If I can classify Fletch as a sports movie, I would say Fletch because he's is one of my favourite movies all time.

If I can't classify Fletch as a sports movie and please let me know, send me a tweet. Can we classify Fletch as a sports movie? But if we can't.

I would have to say Hoosiers as young basketball are growing up. I think me, myself and my brother watched Hoosiers more than enough times and I think we were reciting lines of the movie at many games and I think it was actually funny.

We went to the Sydney Olympics. My brother and I went to watch the US game and then the and then the Australian game and were sitting there watching the US game.

And actually a couple of boys from Indiana were come out to Sydney to watch the game. And when they didn't believe that these Aussie guys had watched a movie like Hoosiers.

And then my brothers got a bit better memory than I literally just started reciting the movie line by line. So it was good fun.

Then we hung out for the next couple of hours in between the games appears with those guys from Indiana and then went and watched one of the most memorable games with Australia playing Russia and nearly nearly beating Russia in Olympic competition.

So with with with the likes of Andrew Gaze and Mark Breaky and Luc Longley and the like playing played for the Boomers in Sydney 2000. So yeah.

So it's a Hoosiers as if I have to pick a specific sports movie. But yeah, I'd like to. I'd like to think Fletch is a sports movie.

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