Category: Uncategorized
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When does innovation become cheating?
It’s been quite a week for Nike. Last Friday, they reacted to the four year doping ban of Alberto Salazar by swiftly shutting down the Oregon Project that the coach had led since its inception. It’s kind of admirable that they acted so quickly to shut the project down, but what choice did they really…
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Is the ECB nuts to partner with KP?
The England & Wales Cricket Board copped some flack last week over the unveiling of KP Snacks as lead partner for the new competition, with various KP brands (from Tyrrell’s to my personal favourite, Pom-Bear) adorning the front of the new team kits. Almost immediately, a variety of children’s health charities were issuing statements condemning…
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Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
Strategy is one of those words that many of us throw around, often without really knowing what we mean by it. Sometimes we mistake a strategy for an ambition, or a goal: “Our strategy is to grow by 25% every year for the next five years.” Other times, a strategy is no more than a…
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Repurposing sport in a world of entertainment.
From its earliest days – going back to the ancient Greeks, Romans and probably beyond – sport at the highest level has been at least partly about providing entertainment for the masses, via the medium of elite athletes competing to see who is the best at running, jumping, throwing or not getting eaten by a…
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#SaveOurShirt
Lots of talk in the last week about Paddy Power’s Save Our Shirt campaign. Just in case you’ve been relaxing on a beach, this is the one where Paddy Power revealed a new sponsorship of Huddersfield Town FC, complete with an outrageously large logo on the front of the club’s new shirts. For anyone even…
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Nike Just Did It Again
Nike is currently celebrating the 30th year of Just Do It. And rightly so. It’s one of the best and most enduring positioning statements of any brand, in any sector. Coined in 1988 by Wieden + Kennedy (still working with Nike to this day), Just Do it has been a powerful driver of Nike’s brand…
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How is technology shaping the sports fan experience?
Despite all the changes in media and viewing habits that we’ve seen in recent years, sport remains almost uniquely powerful as a vehicle for bringing people together for a shared, live experience. In England we’ve seen staggering TV viewing figures for World Cup games, along with huge numbers of people gathering around big screens and fan parks…
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#FutureFit
Yesterday I went along to #FutureFit – an event hosted at Plexal and part of London Tech Week, designed to bring together innovators, entrepreneurs and policy makers to explore how tech can play a role in getting more people moving. This was a collaboration between Plexal (the tech innovation centre at the Olympic park), London Sport, UK…
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A Quick Guide To World Cup Tech
With the World Cup just a few days away, let’s take a look at some of the tech that’s going to be in action both on and off the field at the world’s biggest sporting event. Stats & Player Insights A deal between FIFA and sports data company, STATS, will see media provided with deep…
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ActiveLab 2018
ukactive recently unveiled the latest cohort of young fit-tech businesses to join the ActiveLab programme. I was involved as a mentor in last year’s ActiveLab programe, so I decided to take a quick look at this year’s contenders. Although ActiveLab is billed as an accelerator programme for the Fit-Tech sector, in truth this year’s cohort…
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Active Lives Insights
Sport England released the latest Active Lives results the other day. This is a huge survey of almost 200,000 adults in England, designed to track levels of physical activity over time, so it’s worth a bit of time digging in to the data. The main headline this time was that there isn’t really a headline.…
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UK adults spend large on having fun
An interesting report from Mintel in the news this morning, revealing that “fun-loving Britons are expected to spend £129 billion on leisure activities this year, a 17% increase on five years ago, with activities such as trampolining and outdoor assault courses seeing a surge in interest from adults”. This contrasts with a 17% decline in…
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Can boutique fitness keep on growing?
A couple of weeks ago I went to SWEAT, an event organised by UK Active for the boutique fitness market. For the uninitiated, boutique is loosely defined as smaller, independent venues offering a highly engaging and specialised fitness experience, usually based around a single form of activity and with flexible pay-as-you-go options instead of the…