ECB #rise To Ashes Challenge

The England & Wales Cricket Board has announced the results from its recent fan engagement campaign, adding 125,000 more fans to its various communication channels and membership database, primarily through its #RISE for England activity for this summer’s Investec Ashes and Women’s Ashes Series. 

The ECB used imagery and video content throughout each day of both series across its channels to keep fans up-to-date and allow them to interact online.

Twitter estimates 3.4m tweets were posted about the series, 1.6m of which featured the #Ashes hashtag – the agreed trend of ECB, Cricket Australia, and broadcasters.

Fans also adopted the ECB’s hashtag for England supporters – #RISE – which was used 168,000 times during the series.

ECB’s website received more than 16 million page views and its YouTube channel received 4 million views – the majority viewing the free highlights after every session.

ECB’s Daily Ashes emails from TwelfthMan – the Official Fan Community of England Cricket – were opened 900,000 times with highlights and exclusive interviews available after each day’s play.

A total of 310 local cricket clubs held more than 1,500 Club Open Days over the five Ashes weekends, where thousands of guests watched the live action on Sky Sports while keeping an eye on their local team out in the middle. 

Participating clubs collectively secured an estimated 3,500 new members (playing, social or volunteers), and took more than £140,000 in additional takings from the events. ECB supported clubs by contributing to their Sky subscriptions, as well as providing t-shirts, banners and an online toolkit to help clubs publicise their events.

Steve Elworthy, ECB managing director of marketing and global events, added: ‘The ECB’s variety of digital services to fans this summer was hugely popular – the statistics speak for themselves. The #RISE campaign was our most integrated and successful campaign to date.’

‘The purpose of the campaign was two-fold: to galvanise support behind the England teams (giving fans a direct channel of communication to the teams with a united message), and to use it as a platform to engage with new fans – fans we can now encourage to get more involved with our sport – be it playing, attending, or following more cricket.’