SUPERSPORT FRONT ROW FOOTBALL

Our brief was to showcase the breadth of football SuperSport has on offer and position the brand as the pre-eminent authority on Football in Africa through social media channels to over 40 countries. In order to deliver on this brief, we had to engage fans throughout the course of the 10 month long football season in innovative, accessible, and meaningful ways that would encourage viewership and a positive opinion on the SuperSport brand.

Near Live Content: A critical element of our football season campaign was our ability to offer commentary, opinion and highlights to our audience as and when the action was taking place on screen.

By sharing short clips of big moments and audacious skills as they happened, fans were encouraged to tune in to the broadcast to avoid “fan FOMO” – fans don’t want to miss what happens next or miss being a part of the experience both online and offline.

Driving Appointment Viewing: Sport is the last bastion of linear programming. As a direct result, a key business objective for SuperSport is driving increased viewership for live matches and the brand’s social media platforms play a crucial part in ensuring this consumer behaviour is encouraged due to the platforms ability to send reminders directly to our opted-in football audience online via frequent build up content pieces published through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Automated Messaging: As an evolution of what has been done previously for SuperSport’s Blue Robot experiences in past seasons, this season we took a more innovative approach to content messaging outside of generic fixture reminders. By incorporating stronger calls-to-action for fan engagement through our automated messaging, we were able to extend our earned reach on the platform and grow our opted-in football audience to 90,000 weekly subscribed users.

Such was the success of SuperSport’s automated messaging during the front row football campaign, it was awarded international recognition from Twitter as the best campaign run via Blue Bobot in the platform’s history.

Employed Media: SuperSport has been home to the continent’s most trusted, loved and influential sporting personalities for decades, and while showcased on air, their expertise and profile have historically been under-utilised  online. One particular innovation throughout the season was the use of SuperSport’s football pundits to differentiate our football offering in Africa by giving fans the greatest insights, entertaining personalities and varying opinions to keep them up to date with their team.

Editorial Excellence: It is our fundamental belief that a more educated sports fan is a better sports fan. They are more likely to tune in, more likely to offer opinion and more likely to become a loyal supporter – which ultimately will have a direct influence on the bottom line for the brand. As a result, one of SuperSport’s key social media objectives is to create better sports fans. We achieve this by building powerful game narratives through the use of statistics, historical moments, and key rivalries – the sum total of this results in what we dub “editorial excellence”.

+900K shares across channels
+283K user generated mentions of SuperSport and front row football properties (equates to approximately 950 user generated mentions per day, or 40 every hour – every single day for 10 months)
5M website clicks to supersport.com (+44% year on year campaign increase)
+23M campaign engagements (+172% year on year campaign increase)
6M views on social media content (+65% year on year campaign increase)
84% overall positive sentiment for the brand online (+3% year on year increase)