Geoff Wilson on creating innovative fan-centric model for sports organisations

Thanks to Geoff Wilson for doing an awesome job in answering all the questions.

Full Transcript available in the Sports Geek Nation Member's Area.

Here's the highlight question from the Sports Geek Nation AMA with Geoff Wilson.

Geoff Wilson is a sports strategist and sports marketing expert who owns the Geoff Wilson Consultancy.

Previously Head of Marketing and Communications (Irish FA), Geoff was responsible for public relations, commercial programmes, brand development and communication to fans. He works with the likes of FIFA, UEFA, AFC, FIBA, the Ulster Grand Prix and other global sports organisations in a wide range of areas from strategic planning, marketing and communications, digital, fans engagement, public affairs and knowledge sharing/exchange programmes.

In addition, Geoff is a part-time lecturer in marketing at Queen’s University Belfast and is Chair of Netball Northern Ireland and a board member at Tourism Northern Ireland.

Connect with Geoff Wilson on Twitter, LinkedIn and Slack @Geoff Wilson

Visit Geoff Wilson Consultancy website for more info.

Geoff Wilson:

Hi Rick. Great to hear from you. And thanks for your lovely comments re UGP. much appreciated. Good question ref the other sports organisations I work alongside, yes, some can be quite traditional but some are also progressing in the areas of digital, fan engagement, commercial.

For example, UEFA GROW has been working with their Member associations in terms of strategy, branding, CRM, digital. check out

Both UEFA and FIFA have created innovation hubs recently. Check out

and

A number of federations are doing some great work in terms of innovation such as the Norway Football Federation

For me, it's key for sports organisations to learn from each other and to drive forward on areas such as innovation. Learning from sports orgs such as NBA, La Liga is important.

Once the sports industry sees the progress, in time others will follow. That's where sports conferences, platforms like Sports Geek all help to exchange the knowledge and learning to keep us at the cutting edge.

When it comes to convincing the boards, for me you have to…

1. outline the advantages (cost savings, income generation etc)
2. demonstrate how others are making it a success
3. putting in place clear measurements so you can evaluate the success then
4. sharing that success with others in our industry

Rick:Hi @Geoff Wilson thanks for the detailed reply. Interesting to see the development of those hubs within UEFA and the implementation of some of those innovative ideas.

Indeed it is imperative that we learn from each other: invariably all sports leagues have similar problems that collectively we can overcome and find better solutions to. The exchange of ideas at conferences is important, it's just tough to get a lot of them – just look at the story of the NSF and why Ron Seaver developed the event: leagues in the US never shared knowledge within the different leagues.

You are also right that the big boards will never be the 1st movers on innovation but can be convinced when they see other leagues succeeding in it.

Geoff Wilson: Rick meant to say, I recently co-created a fan engagement model (along with @davidgfowler) on where we show the need to engage fans in 4 simple quadrants. Keen to get your thoughts on the model?

Rick: Thanks for sharing @Geoff Wilson loved the model and the whole article especially some of the ideas to really drive fan engagement.

It's interesting to see that sport leagues are moving towards the ‘every day' now & more so ‘all year' & not confined by a season. Of course the NBA pushes this with their off-season concepts: summer league, fee-agency deadlines, the draft, pre-season and off-season international tours. Locally here in :flag-au: the AFL extends their season, with the draft, women's AFL, a new hybrid AFL game tournament called AFLX and even cross-international games with Irish sport: Gaelic football.

There is opportunity abound and the smartest leagues/sports globally, now seek to really extend their fan engagement year round & especially in the ‘off-season'

• What have been some of the lessons you've learned from that event?
• What have been projects you've been working on recently with them?
• What are some of the things you learned from football and basketball leagues that you think also work effectively for UGP

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