Publisher’s Toolbox will be travelling to London for Leaders Week, a four-day conference that celebrates technological evolution and innovation within the sports industry.
Leaders Week represents the perfect opportunity to launch Pt SportSuite, our new digital platform offering aimed at sports organisations and something we’ve been pouring our hearts and souls into these past few months.
Coming from a background in sports publishing, it’s been fascinating to observe the industry from a different angle. Advanced enough in age to still remember the days when the Sunday newspaper represented the best in sports coverage for a young, sports-mad consumer, it’s clear that the 24 hour/seven days a week digital news cycle has irrevocably changed the way sports fans interact – with each other, with their club/team, and as a wider community.
In fact, the notion of what a sports community is, has changed irrevocably. No longer confined to a stadium, a bar, your home, or the office, these days sporting conversations are taking place on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, where fans can engage with fellow supporters, share their opinions, and – more likely – vent their frustrations to their heart’s content.
The notion of what a sports community is, has changed irrevocably
The question for the modern sports organisations is how much value is there really to the sports club, or any organisation really, in committing resources to curate an external community such as it exists on Facebook for example, with little or no control over user experience, monetisation or brand identity? And if there is little value, how do you bring these digital diaspora together into a centralised home in a way that provides value for the entire sporting community – club, player, fan and more?
For us, the key is in creating content ecosystems that can sustain these digital communities, as proved by the world’s top professional sports organisations, who have been operating like modern media houses for some time. But in these challenging times in the professional sports game, not every organisation can afford to sustain large internal media departments.
Our ambition is to provide the tools that allow sports organisations of all sizes to get into the game and challenge the perceived status quo. It’s been an interesting journey so far as we step into this new sporting arena and I can’t wait to see where it takes us.
