The Storytelling Trifecta: Visibility
⏰ 3 minute read
The realm of women's sports is experiencing a significant change, and across the next few weeks, we will focus on three key pillars within 'The Storytelling Trifecta' for enhancing women's sport. The first pillar which we will talk about below is visibility.
VISIBILITY
Growth for brands is essential, whether in audience numbers, athlete participation, or commercial success, and visibility drives this growth.
Previously, federations or rightsholders had a simple choice: maximise revenue by selling all their IP and rights to a paid channel, putting all content behind a paywall, or increase exposure by going free to air and taking a revenue hit. The decision now isn't quite so simple. Many federations can now extract value from live rights whilst retaining their secondary rights. This allows them to focus on their own storytelling, amplifying their messaging via their own channels, influencers, or sponsors. Secondary rights like news access, archive footage, digital content, and highlights help reach new audiences without relying solely on an exclusive broadcast partner. Broadcasters, particularly in women's sports, increasingly favour less exclusivity and recognise that reaching and engaging a broader audience benefits everyone.
An example is DAZN, who have made their UEFA Women's Champions League rights available for free via their YouTube channel. Amazon Prime has shared many of its premium assets with free-to-air channels, because everybody knows that more eyeballs benefit all stakeholders across the industry.
For brands partnering with a sport or athlete, having a clear activation strategy and content plan is crucial for effective storytelling. Access to talent highlights the growing recognition of athlete power. The IOC's 50-50 gender participation rule for Paris 2024 and federations like the Professional Triathletes Organisation, offering equal gender pay and advanced maternity pay schemes are examples of creating environments where women can thrive. These initiatives are not purely altruistic. The more successful women there are in sport, the more relatable it becomes to female audiences, boosting the number of ambassadors. This enhances organisational credibility across many corporate social responsibility (CSR) pillars, particularly equality, benefiting all partners.
Athletes often have higher profiles or larger social followings than the brands or sports they represent. This is crucial for attracting the next generation of fans, ensuring a continuous audience pipeline. Brands can leverage their athlete ambassadors to reach valuable Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences. F1 excels at this, their athletes create and share content after races which is cross-published on both their own and F1’s channels, driving fans back to F1. Similarly, VISA and Coca-Cola are taking hundreds of athlete ambassadors to Paris 2024. While more brands are pushing athletes to tell their stories, this approach is still underutilised. The era of centralised production teams creating and publishing content is fading, now, authentic storytelling by athletes themselves is taking the wheel.
Growth for brands is essential...and visibility drives growth.
Organisations are increasingly leveraging creator communities in today's social media landscape. Instead of relying solely on in-house production teams, they identify independent creators who already tell stories aligned with their sport or values. By inviting these creators to join their community and providing access to talent and rights, organisations enable them to create even better content. This helps creators grow their followings and drive more ad revenue while reinforcing brand authenticity and credibility.
Creators can also drive traffic back to the brand's channels through calls to action or hashtags, and there can be agreements to share ad revenue generated from branded content. The NBA has excelled in this approach, scaling its reach and revenue significantly by decentralising content production, a highly effective strategy that should be more widely adopted.
Watch the full recording of our Everything in Sports session - The Storytelling Trifecta: Harnessing Visibility, Connection, and Opportunity to Amplify Women's Sports.
HOW CAN STORY10 HELP?
At Story10, we’re always striving to put female athletes and their achievements in the limelight they deserve. By working with our partners involved in women's sports, we create authentic news stories that complement event action and highlight female athletes and their accomplishments.
Get in touch to find out more about our work and our services.