Four months in the British Basketball League

The background 

I’ve been following the British Basketball League from a very young age and even remember Paul James (current coach for the Plymouth City Patriots) coaching me as a kid. We’ve all got older and a bit wiser since then. I’m happy and privileged that I can share my 20+ years of professional experience working with the likes of the NFL, FIBA, and others with the British Basketball League to help it become one of the best basketball leagues in the world. It’s a big ambition, but I’m convinced with the backing we have from our investors 777, and the talent we have and are bringing into the business, it is absolutely achievable. 

The first four months of the role have been incredibly invigorating and I wanted to share with you what we have been doing and some early results in the hope that: 

1. this provides some insight into how we approach marketing that others can learn from  
2. gives people an opportunity to provide feedback and help the British Basketball League innovate and collaborate further. 

Know our Name Campaign 

This campaign was delivered from brief to being signed off and making it to the market within six weeks – something that I have not achieved in my career to date and, as I’m sure you can expect with such a short time frame and many stakeholders, we encountered some considerable challenges, but with the help of Sophie-Ann Bennett and the rest of the team at AndTheNew we delivered a campaign that has engaged the fans and driven a huge amount of awareness for the start of our season.  

To date the campaign promo video alone has driven 1800% more views than the British Basketball League’s previously most-viewed video, all the teams have adopted the campaign (which was excellent to see), and our owned and operated numbers for impressions and views are in the 10’s of millions. This excludes anything the clubs and players have done to help drive awareness for the campaign. There’s more coming from this campaign in the new year that will really engage the basketball communities and this will carry on to the end of the season. Also a big thank you to Oliver Mark Emery and Mike Tuck 's support through this one.

Media Team 

We built a strong media team just four weeks out from the season’s start to be able to improve the coverage of our clubs and games from the very first game, providing several guidelines to both our own team and the club’s own media teams that have not only increased output but also increased the quality of the media that is being produced across the board from written to photography and videography content. I want to thank the media teams for all of their help in understanding what we are trying to achieve, where we are going, and for being part of the process. Trust the process. 

The Clubs Media and Marketing  

It was vital for me to get out to the clubs early and meet them face-to-face. I wanted to make sure I understood each club’s perspective and personality before we made any recommendations. For me, The Know Our Name campaign was the catalyst that has really brought the media and marketing teams together. All the clubs have adopted this campaign and were a big factor in the campaign's success. It also showed us what can be achieved when we pull together and collaborate. We are constantly messaging each other in WhatsApp groups, pushing each other to achieve more, we have regular video calls and will be meeting face-to-face throughout the year. The clubs compete like mad on the court, but off the court, we are collaborating like crazy, so it’s great to see. There is more to come on how collectively we will create a centre of excellence. 

Content  

This has taken us longer to get up and running. It was important to ensure we improved game coverage first, but now we are working more closely with the clubs to bring out the players’ personalities, so you’ll see a significant uptick over the coming months in that sense. 

The BBL Show, produced by Drew Lasker has had a significant upgrade and is delivering a huge increase in viewership from last season with the show improving week-on-week - just check out our YouTube Channel and see those numbers for yourself! I’m happy to say that we will be bringing in extra resources to support our content efforts and we are hiring for new a Chief Content Officer who will be working closely with me and others, to take things up another level and allow marketing to focus on other areas such as brand, digital, social, campaigns, fan experience ... the list goes on, and I’ll update you on the progress of all these areas in the coming months. 

An indication of success 

“So that’s great to hear”, you say but what does it all mean … 

The hard numbers show to date we've achieved around 128% growth in Average Views per game based on last season versus this season to date. If you look at our best week’s average views per game this season versus last season, that figure jumps to 232% growth. This is setting the platform to drive more and more value for our partners, but it’s as much about the hard numbers as it is about making sure everyone is on board for the ride. 100% adoption of a campaign and the willingness to see it become a success has been outstanding! 

… not bad for four months’ work. We’ve made some significant steps already, but we’ve not even scratched the surface. The ambition is a million times bigger than that, and I’m looking forward to driving the league forward with a great team around us to achieve it. 

To everyone that’s helped so far, front office, back office, players, agencies, freelancers, and media partners ... thank you! Please keep working together with us, collaborating, innovating, and … most importantly ... keeping it fun!  

There’s a lot more to come from the league and a very exciting announcement dropping soon … keep your eyes peeled. 👀

If you have any questions or would like to connect on any opportunities around the British Basketball League, please do get in touch. 

Note: It's been a minute since I posted on Linkedin, my aim is to get back to some regularity ... more to come