Rebirthing A Historic Australian Sport Into The Modern World
Home of the sacred Stawell Gift, the Victorian Athletic League (VAL), established in 1895, is Australia’s longest running and most competitive professional running competition.
With prize money upwards of $500,000 each season, the VAL has been a drawcard for Australia’s best runners since the War years.
But in recent years, the VAL has been struggling to attract and retain runners, heavily impacting its ability to remain commercially attractive to sponsors.
Client:
Victorian Athletic League
Year:
2023-2024
Location:
Victoria Wide, Newcastle (NSW)
The Challenge
During season 2022-2023, we were the Official Live-Broadcast Partner for the Maryborough Gift, one of the big 3 meets on the VAL calendar.
Through this work, we were witness to an intensifying problem within the VAL.
The VAL is a time honoured competition, featuring Olympians, past, present and future. And yet, the sport had a limited social media appeal, an ever decreasing small community, and were struggling to attract new runners.
Through discussions with the VAL Executive Officer, Taylah Perry, and President Matthew McDonough, we were able to identify the following challenges being faced by the VAL:
- A decrease in athlete registrations
- A reduction in the number of new athlete registrations, indicating a lack of pro running attraction within amateur running
- A desire to improve the digital image of the sport, but with a lack of resources, time and people
- A reduction in commercial value and appeal, making sponsorship acquisitions harder
The Solution
We proposed a 3-step solution to be implemented with a long-term approach in mind.
This ensured not only were the challenges overcome in the short-term, but the competition could sustainably continue to attract runners for decades to come.
The 3-step solution included:
- The implementation of a brand-film orientated social media strategy, using psychographics to connect on deeper levels with current and prospective athletes. Crafting easily shareable content that delves into the characters of the sport’s competitors, using the current followers of high profile athletes to garner attention to the sport.
- The creation of high-quality, TV-Standard live-broadcasts, to raise the perceived standard of the sport’s coverage far beyond what the sport had previously experienced.
- Craft a common digital image across all pro-running states and organisations, with a National competition on the horizon and planning of each state’s bodies.
The Result
Stage 1 was started during season 2023-2024.
During this season, the VAL hosted 21 race meetings. Every meeting featured social media coverage by our team.
We created the social media page ‘Fixon Sport’, a hub for all things pro-running in Australia.
The benefit of creating a seperate page away from the VAL social media channels was with Stage 3 in mind. A seperate channel enables the beginning of the development of a common digital image across all pro-running states.
All content published on the Fixon Sport page throughout the season was collaborated with the VAL Instagram page.
At the conclusion of season 2023-2024, the VAL experienced a reach of 5.907 million people on Instagram alone, as a result of the social media coverage of each of their race meetings.
The content focused around the 5 key pillars of brand films. Although brand films are an example of long form content, and the focus was on short form content, the 5 key pillars provided the strategy guidelines for the social media content.
Education
To harness greater connection to the characters of the competitors, during each week of racing, select runners were mic’d up before and during their heat race. This gave viewers inside and outside of the sport to learn about the true personalities of the sport’s competitors, through a perspective previously unseen.
Raising Awareness Of Core Values
The VAL’s slogan is “Where There Is A Race For Everyone”, a slogan derived from the handicapped racing system, where the faster runners start closer towards the start line (scratch mark), and slower runners receive a ‘head start’ (handicap).
This is one of the VAL’s core values, and we ensured this was subtly and subconsciously displayed through the content, via the highlight of runners of all abilities.
Social Proof (From Runners)
Pre-season podcast interviews were conducted with key runners, uncovering their back stories, love for the sport, and the sport’s impact on their lives.
Social Proof (From The VAL)
Race highlights and recaps, providing amateur runners with insights into what the sport is all about, and allowing pro-runners to further deepen their relationship with the sport.
Promotion
To attract more runners to each race meeting, a series of skits were created, led by board member Dominic Condello, alongside a number of runners and key figures in the pro-running community.
For the race meetings who opted in, each were able to experience an increase in meeting entries, compared to their previous season statistics.
The highlight being the Essendon Gift, receiving an extra 104 entries compared to season 2022-2023.
Moving Forward
During season 2023-2024, the South Australian Athletic League (SAAL), reached out to us to cover 2 of their major meetings, the Bay Sheffield and Camden Classic.
This is a great step in the right direction towards the implementation of Stage 3 over the coming years.
All SAAL race meet coverage was published on Fixon Sport, in collaboration with the SAAL Instagram account.
After the success of the Stage 1 implementation throughout season 2023-2024, we look forward to continuing to collaborate with the VAL, SAAL and other professional running bodies in Australia, for the implementation of Stages 2 and 3, and a continuous improvement of the results obtained during the inaugural Stage 1 implementation.