As a British sports fan , I am naturally excited about the much-anticipated London 2012 Olympics. Not only will the games offer sporting talents from around the world, but the event has obviously created millions of business opportunities.
Sport England, a government organisation responsible for producing our current and future home grown sporting talent, have just signed up for a four-year deal with Facebook worth £20 million.
The purpose of the deal is to increase the number of participants in sport by creating interest within the social networking site. Sites such as Facebook are renowned as being effective tools that influence the productiveness of advertising.
The main focus of the campaign is through a sports hub fan page, which will house exclusive applications that can be used by sports bodies to organise grassroots events. The applications will allow Facebook users to challenge other people in their area and share the results with friends online.
Facebook is providing an in-kind investment of £5m a year until March 2013, which will cover the development of the Sport Hub, and will donate to charity the same amount any national governing body of sport or brand spends using Facebook ads to encourage people to play more sport.
Ben Bradshaw, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said, “Facebook has a unique ability to reach millions of people, young and increasingly not so young. Many of them won’t regard sport as part of their daily lives at the moment, but this pioneering and exciting partnership between the social marketing website, Sport England and sport’s governing bodies could change all that.”
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