Sports Return: 2023 Forecast
Sporting highlights punctuate and make up the agency calendar for 2023: Roland-Garros, Rugby World Cup, Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
However, to get out of the nails, some of them want to support the sports sector differently, thus aiming to unite brands and consumers around an original field.
Addressing a Plural Audience
Reflect on content and how to convey it? The ball is in the agency’s court. Today, if sport federates, it is not consumed in the same way by everyone. Very present on linear TV, sport nevertheless lives on multiple media. In this specific case, the new generation arbitrates these new modes of consumption.
A 2020 study, carried out by Union Sport & Cycle in partnership with Amaury Media, PSG and the Ministry of Sports, indicates that sport is the 3rd favorite distraction of Gen Z. They are also 66% to follow sport mainly on their mobile phone. For information, L’Equipe.fr is the 1st site consulted and the L’Equipe channel is the 4th channel behind TF1, France 2 and M6. However, at the same time: confinement. The Twitch platform is starting to get talked about. Between January and May 2020, 3.46 million new users join the community.
Two years later, according to a YouGov study from May 2022, 12% of French people claim to be users of the platform. Among them, 51% watch gaming content and 28% attend sports events. If 31% of Twitch users consult channels of already recognized brands such as Canal+Sport, Xiaomi or France Inter, the use of mute gives way to multi-screen and new personalities. Twitch has understood this by officially launching its Sports Accelerator program. The goal ? Help more viewers discover creators who focus on sports-related discussions, including podcasts, talk shows, reaction streams, comments, watch sessions, news and events or sports drafts again.
Promote And Embody The Emergence of Players And Formats
Twitch’s 2022 ratings don’t buck the trend. In France, two lives exceed one million views and thus occupy the top of the rankings. On November 19, the Eleven All-Stars: France-Spain football game in which streamers competed, accumulated 1,155,060 views. By way of comparison, Amazon gathers as many viewers around the Ligue 1 match on Sunday evening. In second place, the GP Explorer, an F4 race organized by Squeezie, brought together 1,018,817 spectators. On Canal+, the Formula 1 season attracted an average of 1.47 million viewers.
“The characters have changed. Today, Gen Z follows athletes but also influencers. They have become the new meeting point with sport. Our role is not to be totally disruptive and to offer formats at the forefront of originality, but we have to find angles to seek an audience, especially young people”, analyzes Gilles Portelle, president at Only Sports & Passions (Webedia group). Bringing influencers into the field of agencies, without setting aside the media vision? “We are going to bet on platforms where we can engage people,” he adds, because “creating audience crossroads is a complicated thing. We must therefore think about multiplatform: Twitch and live, bring them to replay or even reboutiquage ”.
If the Rugby World Cup, the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games are gathering points on the shelf, Webedia’s logic would be to support brands and organizations to engage digital communities on these sport themes. To do this, the agency relies on the development of a media offer around different titles (10Sport, FairPlay, a digital sports media in collaboration with Alexandre Ruiz and FirstTeam on Twitch). “The format change is important in this period, which will see, at the same time, major popular celebrations with the Olympic and Paralympic Games, rugby and Roland-Garros, and a break in the content that will accompany them”, adds Gilles Portelle.
A boon for agencies, who want to score points in 2023. “It’s a super exciting sports calendar”, enthuses Matthieu Caste, director of sports partnerships at Fuse, who is supporting Renault in setting up its team of ambassadors. World for Roland-Garros. Another form of incarnation.
Accompany brands to (almost) virgin territories
If the upcoming sports calendar has highlights, the agencies are taking advantage of the palette they offer and pulling the thread of the territories to explore. Guided by sports that make it possible to preempt strong ecosystems, some players are beginning to reflect on the meaning of their approach. Without setting aside the media impact.
“People are less inclined to log on at 9 p.m. to watch a film, but sport is unifying and everyone logs on at a certain time,” shares Matthieu Caste, who wants to draw the thread from these great moments to bring advertisers closer to new Horizons. “We are lucky to host a Rugby World Cup with favorite France, we work with Renault who is the official supporter. They are also positioned at Roland-Garros. With this in mind, we have created the “Give me five” program which aims to promote all forms of tennis. We have also worked with the FFT and Fait le mur to renovate three tennis courts in France,” says the director of sports partnerships at Fuse.
If meaning is now part of the equation, pulling the thread of racket sport to position yourself in an almost virgin market is also one of the key factors. Since the end of the Covid, some sports have become known to the general public. “Padel breaks all records. Renault through Roland-Garros has positioned itself as a partner of Major Padel, like Greenweez. Cupra France is joining forces with Padel-Point to create the biggest amateur Padel tournament in France”, continues Matthieu Caste, before adding: “Emerging sports are exploding, whether climbing or amateur golf, especially after containment. Exposure and visibility are still low, but they are attracting a new audience. It is these territories that are to be pre-empted. »
2023 is life-size game territory for agencies and advertisers. A flagship year that could position itself as a springboard to trigger new touchpoints with the general public. New sports, new formats and new faces are to be tamed, present without supplanting the classic mediums of linear TV, live digital TV platforms, radio and the specialized press. No one seems to be on the sidelines.
This article is originally published on 100media.themedialeader.fr
