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Social Studies: NLL CMO Ashley Dabb On Twitter Deal, UHWK Cameras

NLL CMO Ashley Dabb joined the league (@NLL) in June of last year after almost a decade with the Philadelphia Union. She began her career with the MLS franchise, starting as an administrative coordinator and working her way to VP/Marketing & Communications. She followed former Union CEO & Operating Partner Nick Sakiewicz, who was named NLL Commissioner in January ’16. Dabb said, “The league can sustain itself on product alone. But the biggest problem is distribution. Nick outlined the projects I could tackle while I am here, and that is what made the decision for me to leave the Union. It’s very digital focused, building our OTT platform, some things I had experience in and wanted to get further into.” One of the biggest initiatives is the deal announced last month that has Twitter live streaming a match of the week as well as the NLL playoffs.

SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follow: I follow all the leagues. I want to see what they are doing, their PSAs. I also follow athletes who are off-the-cuff, like Ronda Rousey.
Favorite app: I listen to music in my office every day. I’m sure some of my co-workers would prefer that I don’t, but it’s always going.
Average time per day on social media: Anywhere from two to three hours.

Social media’s importance to NLL: It’s hugely important, I can’t overstate that enough. We’re a niche sport, so social media is our connection to our fans. We’re at a tipping point as a league in that we now have access to those fans. The growth we’re trying to propel wouldn’t have been possible 10, 15 years ago. It opened up a lot of doors for us. We’re doing what the NHL did 60 years ago but in a much more compressed time frame. We tell our teams to look at UFC. They were able to build a business around social media.

Origins of Twitter deal: Harkening back to our digital-first strategy, we’re sort of on all the time, it made sense especially after we saw the NFL and Twitter deal come together. The stars aligned for us in that it made sense for both of us.

Realistic expectations for deal: For us, it’s about brand awareness. We have our own OTT in NLL TV. We surpassed our goals on that with close to 20,000 subscribers all-in, but Twitter really opened up the rest of the universe for us. Our realistic goal is brand awareness, first and foremost, of course always driving revenue. But they go hand-in-hand -- the more relevance you have, the more revenue you can drive.

Next steps in being a digital-first league: It’s just continuing to build on that. Internally, we made a big push at the team level for digital stakeholders. There were some teams prior to us coming aboard that didn’t have dedicated digital resources. Maybe I came in with a bold opinion, but I said digital staff is equally as important as ticket sellers.

Planning digital benchmarks: At least a year out. But there are also small milestones every month. We’re checking the metrics of every team every month; if there is a team that is lagging, why are they lagging? If they had growth, then we share that. We have a bi-monthly digital call with all nine teams, and we use it as a forum for the teams to interact. If a team had a stellar month, they are then sharing that best practice. Not everything is transferable to every market, but at least they can glean some insight.

Types of posts that get most attention: We’ve put a focus on original content. We want to be a content publishing house for fans – to get news on all things lacrosse. The most popular is our partnership with UHWK. They are able to provide cameras that mount onto the helmets of our players. They provide our fans a first-person point of view during the game.

UHWK helping NLL standout: It’s a big point of differentiation for us between other leagues, and it’s great that the players have embraced it. Some are great social personalities, so having that hook up with their POV and having them promote it is explosive for us.


If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at jperez@sportsbusinessdaily.com.

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