The Big Interview – England Hockey
Sally Munday, England Hockey Board chief executive, talks to sportindustry.biz about hockey’s involvement at the upcoming London 2012 Olympic Games, and what effect the competition could have on participation levels in the sport.
Can you tell me about your campaign ‘Hockey Nation’?
Hockey Nation is a programme of different activities with the aim of engaging the existing hockey family, as well as a whole new spectator and participation group in our sport. We recognise that being a big part of a home Olympic Games provides us with a unique opportunity and we are probably one of the few team sports that have a genuine chance of getting onto the podium. For us the opportunity of the increased exposure that we have been getting in the media, as well as what we will be getting during the Games on TV, gives us a pretty unrivalled opportunity. Hockey is on TV for 14 out of the 16 days of the Olympics.
We are also the third biggest sport in terms of tickets at the London Olympic Games with 630,000 seats on offer, and it is estimated that of those, 75% will not be current hockey fans. What we’ve seen in the last 8/9 months is the opportunity to engage a whole new audience for the sport. We have devised a new programme of different activities for different groups – whether that’s people in our existing hockey family or people who aren’t currently involved in the sport. Everything from our nPower Big Dribble – that took a giant hockey ball around to 40 different destinations around the country, visiting towns and cities and giving people the opportunity to pick up a stick and have a go – through to our player visits where our international athletes went out and visited over 250 schools and engaged with over 5,000 young people.
There’s a whole raft of different activities that we are running that all kicked off at the beginning of 2012 and we will continue on throughout the year and the Olympic Games. It is entirely about maximising the opportunity of the Games for a sport like ours.
Do you think London 2012 will impact your participation figures?
Definitely. I think if you were to say ‘if we did nothing as a governing body, would the Olympics do anything to participation figures’ I think we would probably see a small spike of interest – similar to the ‘Wimbledon effect’ you get, some people might pick up a racket during the two weeks of Wimbledon, but then most of them put their rackets away and you never see them again. What we have done is systematically look at the different groups of people that we want to engage with, and then designed very specific products and programmes to target those groups – to encourage them in and then capture the immediate interest that people are going to have. We can then look at how to retain them and keep them as regular participants in the sport.
I am really confident that we will see an impact in our participation figures as a result of the Olympics Games, but not as a result of the Olympic Games in isolation.
GB Hockey has been running campaigns, such as the nPower Big Dribble that you mentioned, for a few months now – are you already beginning to see participation numbers grow, or is the end game the legacy left post-Games?
We have had some positive recent success with the latest Sport England active people survey which has shown a massive growth for us over the past 6-8 months in participation levels and part of that is down to Hockey Nation, but there are other contributing factors. We have done quite a lot of work looking at ways people can play the game – an example of that is a new game we have launched called ‘rush hockey’, specifically aimed at adults that want to play the game but don’t want to make the commitment of having to join a club, and turn up week-in-week-out, home and away.
Rush Hockey is a smaller version of the game, similar to 5-a-side football, it can be played on any surface, in any environment, and it is played with a slightly bigger ball so it is easier for people who haven’t played for a long time to pick the game up. The idea is that it is no different than a gym class – you can just turn up and play. The response we have had has been phenomenal.
I think one of the things we have been guilty of in the past is that we have stayed very traditional – a kind of ‘this is our sport, it is played this way’ kind of mindset. Now we are thinking very differently about how we bring people into the sport. We are now approaching it in a more business mindset – almost looking at hockey fans like a customer, and sometimes customers want different things. Therefore, we needed to reinvent ourselves so that we can provide ways of playing the sport that suits different people. We have worked really hard through our commercial team to raise the profile of the sport, even getting Kate Middleton down to meet our Olympic hockey team. It is the whole package of what we have been doing put together that has helped raise the profile.
Do you think, as far as interest in the sport goes, an Olympic medal would make a difference?
It will potentially make a difference, but the way hockey is structured at the Olympic Games, it is not just a one or two day event as some others are. As I said before, the Olympic Games is 16 days long and hockey takes place on 14 of them. Of those 14 days, Great Britain play every single day for the first ten. The men play one day, then women, then men and so on, so there will be coverage on the BBC and in the mainstream media every day.
Brits like a team sport as well, we always get behind teams and we have a group of athletes who are serious medal contenders, so I think over the course of those ten days, when we are competing for a semi-final place, we will be there or thereabouts in every game we play. Clearly if we make the semi-finals – which we hope to do – then that will provide even more interest.
You have no doubt seen the pink and blue turf at the Olympic Park, one of the reasons for changing to those colours was to show the ball better on television, and the other reason was to try and present the sport differently. If you speak to Joe Public about hockey, most of them will picture a girl in pig-tails, but ask anyone who has seen the sport played at an international level recently and they will tell you that it is a million miles from that image. It is fast, exciting, dynamic, skilful, and what we are confident about with the huge tv coverage is that people will be wowed. We are really confident of our on-pitch product that I think the first ten days will generate a lot of interest, even before we reach the potential semi-final/medal matches.
Finally, you have a Gala dinner coming up to send off the Team GB hockey teams, how important are events like this to give an opportunity for the public to meet and greet hockey team members, and vice versa?
It’s hugely important. We have a great bunch of athletes in our men’s and women’s squad, and they are great at engaging people and talking about their passion for the sport and how important it is for them to be part of a team sport such as hockey. The Gala dinner is a huge opportunity for us; a black tie event in London on Thursday 12th July. 500 people will be part of a very special evening alongside our two Olympic hockey teams, days before they go into the Olympic village. We have a really unique opportunity to get everyone up close and personal with the athletes – with one athlete hosting each table at the dinner. To be able to sit down with an Olympian vying for an Olympic medal a couple of weeks later is very exciting.
We’ve never done a send off dinner like this before and the athletes are really looking forward to it. It’s something we’ll never be able to repeat, certainly not in our lifetime with a home Olympic Games coming round every 50, 60 years at best – but here we are, less than one month away from London 2012 and we are all really looking forward to what will be an incredible occasion.
