Wimbledon Expands Digital Presence
As the Championships begins once again at Wimbledon, fresh off its victory as Brand of the Year, sponsored by Pinsent Masons, at the BT Sport Industry Awards, organisers of the tennis tournament have claimed this year’s edition will be the most social ever.
For the first time, user-generated content – including tweets, pictures and votes – will appear on the big screens on Henman Hill with onsite fans encouraged to respond to match-based questions, and compare their responses with the audience watching at home.
Andy Murray’s return to centre court as singles champion on Monday was marked with the launch of the social campaign, #WelcomeBackAndy.
As part of the campaign, any fan who tweets @Wimbledon with the hashtag #WelcomeBackAndy will receive one of five digital photos of Murray winning Wimbledon last year, autographed and inscribed with a message from him, and personalised with their Twitter handle.
Meanwhile the ‘Twitter Mirror’, which was also present at this year’s BT Sport Industry Awards, is on hand in the Wimbledon queue to take selfies of fans and post them to Twitter – attendees can pose for a photo and take part in a daily #selfie competition to win goodies from the official shop.
Elsewhere, Wimbledon is working with video player Grabyo to provide live replays on Twitter, including highlights from Centre Court, players walking on, celebrations and crowd reactions.
A Social Command Centre, powered by IBM SoftLayer, will crunch data and deliver insights into current and evolving social media conversations taking place on and off the court.
In 2013, there were 6.6 million Wimbledon-related tweets during the two weeks of the tournament, and Murray’s Wimbledon victory was the UK’s third most tweeted-about-moment of the year.
