Our Irish Sport on Social Media Conference took place on Friday morning in the shadow of the trouble that had gripped Dublin City Centre on the previous evening.

Thankfully we were outside of the central zone as part of a relationship with the Ballymun Health and Fitness Festival and there was a great audience turned up to hear some special contributions from our lineup of speakers.

First to the stage was Louise Cassidy to talk us through the breakthrough of the Republic of Ireland Women’s National Team and how their story was told across social media.

A lot of thought and effort went into the pre-tournament milestones, and with brands like Sky and Cadbury on board there was a standard of production values that had to be met.

The Squad announcement video was held up as being an example of this and as you can see below it was pretty special.

So far the video content has been viewed 4.5 million times, a stunning number for Irish content.

 

 

Credit was paid to the agencies behind the work including Fifty-Three Six as well as the in-house team of Orlagh Ní Chorcorain who has now gone on to Volve and Emma Clinton and Cara Gaynor who were with the team every step of the way and delivered the behind the scenes content and storytelling the won the players a special place in the hearts and minds of the nation.

Next up was Stephen O’Leary of Olytico who took us on a journey through the numbers that Irish Sporting bodies have achieved this past year and the kind of content that is setting a standard on the global stage.

The average number of monthly engagements has risen 50% in the past 12 months to a new high of just over 4.5 million (the number of the day, it seems).

47% of total posts are being shared on X but it is Instagram that dominates in terms of engagement with 74% coming through that channel.

The US Masters, Australian Open, F1 and the NFL scored top marks for content that was far from the highlights of the sport and more in tune with seeing the ordinary elements of staging a major championship but through a different lens.

Ryan Bailey, Communications Manager with the IRFU was our third speaker. Ryan was a journalist with the 42 when he was named as one of the Sport for Business 30 under 30 a few years back and the storytelling gift he brought to his embedding within the Irish squad in the past couple of years was evident in the richness of the content which he was able to deliver from behind the curtain in camp in France.

Trust is an important element of making the players comfortable to give more of themselves.

We spoke too about the balance to be struck between serving the traditional media but also holding back content for Irish Rugby’s own channels and the massive unfiltered audience they deliver.

Our final keynote was Michael Corcoran, formerly of Ryanair and now about to set up his own agency.

An abundance of imagination was seen as being more important than big budgets when it came to analysing the success he achieved at Ryanair and he had interesting thoughts on how sports sponsorship could shake up the way in which it has traditionally delivered ‘assets’ to sponsors.

This was our fourth big event in less than eight weeks but every one was a winner for those in attendance and we are looking forward already to getting back among the audience of Sport for Business members in the New Year.