First thoughts from Mass Participation Asia 2017

I’ve been fortunate to spend the last two days in Bangkok at the 2nd edition of the Mass Participation Asia Conference. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Inspiration from Beyond Mass Participation’ and delegates have been treated to presentations from an eclectic mix of presenters from organisations including the Australian Open, One Championship, Facebook, Boston Marathon, British Gas, Music Run as well as other event promoters and government organisations.

A conference dedicated to our sector of the sports industry is long overdue and huge credit to Chris Robb and his team for pulling together not only some great speakers but also an industry sector that is increasingly competitive and fragmented. The rights holders with traditional events and business models have much to learn from the creators of the new wave of branded consumer experiences but the reverse is also true. There are many fundamentals of the experience that have evolved over many years and when organisers get the basics wrong the impact on their brand can be significant.  

The conference has re-enforced to me that the industry faces many challenges – saturation of events, a lack of a ‘kite mark’ denoting the quality of an operator, the eye-watering cost of insurance, health and safety requirements and local authority permissions being some.

However, I believe it is a fantastic time to be part of this rapidly growing industry that is driving so much positive change in the world. But as the inspirational final Speaker, John Maclean (johnmaclean.com.au) challenged us “How far can we go’ as an industry?

We have heard consistent themes from the guest speakers, particularly those from other industries:

·     KNOW your audience – ‘not just the demographics’ but really know them and their lifestyle

·     Be RELEVANT to your audience – what is their motivation for participating, how are you adding value to them and why should they engage with you and your product

·     Understand and be true to your BRAND and strategy

·     EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY (and invest in it), its just another medium to connect to the audience but on their terms using their stories

·     Create meaningful, authentic and mutually beneficial relationships with PARTNERS

For many this requires a change of mind-set and investment of time and resources. The first four are all necessary to achieve the final point – mutually beneficial relationships with partners. Because the last key theme of the meeting has been a very loud and clear message that the industry relies more than ever on INVESTMENT BY BRANDS.

At Limelight we are focusing our energies on how we bring more brands into the participation sport sector or as we call it the Active World. We are investing significantly into understanding the motivations of participants better through data and insight and also into applied technology – how can we help people share the amazing content that experiences in the Active World create. And we are doing this from the position of having delivered hundreds of active events and campaigns over the last 20 years.

It is a very exciting time to be part of our industry and with the rapid evolutions in technology and communication we are probably not able to define ‘how far we can go’ or as Limelight’s great client put it another way ‘There is no finishing line’….