America's Cup Head of Digital Graeme Harrison (@AmericasCup) has been with the sailing event for a year after seven years in the same position for CSM Sports & Entertainment in London. Covering the event, which begins Friday in Bermuda, requires Harrison and his staff to be everywhere -- on land, sea and air. Utilizing a team of photographers, videographers, journalists and TV feeds, Harrison said they are "very careful that what we do compliments" the TV broadcast and "not replace it." He said, "We aim to reduce the time between events taking place on water or in the wing shed and get it up on our channels as quickly as we can. We use Facebook Live a lot. It’s a case of curating what’s going on, listening to what our fans are saying."
Platforms seeing the most engagement: We are most active on are Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We use those three in very different ways. In terms of the one that most consistently drives engagement, that is undoubtedly Facebook. We have a very close working relationship with Facebook. Instagram is our growth platform, and Twitter has great attraction when we have our World Series events.
Why so close with Facebook? We have a sports ambassador at Facebook, and we have regular catch-ups and calls, and they look through our channels and at what we’re doing to help us get the best from that platform. We have regular check-ins with them, usually before our big races, and they give us tips that are incredibly useful in shaping our plan and growing our audience and reach.
Balancing focus on sailors and boats: It’s a mix of both. Personality in sport is hugely important. There are a lot of human-interest stories with the sailors, and it’s important for any sports fan to connect with those personalities. They’ve got to understand the guys on the boat, their mentality, what makes them tick. Our role is to help tell those stories. The boats are important, too. The designs are important. We have a huge number of fans on social from the technology side.
Technology of boats: These boats are pushing new boundaries and finding new limits. F1 is a good comparison to make in terms of reaching new fans and appealing to new fans. If you are looking to go faster on the land or in the water, technology is at the heart of it. There are fans who are incredibly interested in that side of the sport and we aim to focus on that in a lot of our videos as well -- to take fans into the sport and show it to them from the inside out.
Challenges of event not being on a regular schedule: We’ve had seven or eight World Series events in the past 12 months, and we’re looking at increasing the number of events in an effort to fill in that drumbeat of news. Sport needs to be frequent to keep the fan engaged. What we have to do on our social and digital channels is keep telling the stories. Just because the sailors and boats aren’t out on the water, it’s still a 24-7 operation, and there’s an awful lot going on.
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