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growth opportunities; the recent findings from
Sport England’s Active People Survey 8 showed a
significant increase in weightlifting participants
over the last 12 months, with over 100,000 people
engaged in the sport every week, which meant
that we’ve exceeded our 16+ Strategic Outcome
target previously set by Sport England, and with our
continued focus on driving this growth we would
only hope to see this develop even further.
What have you done to appeal to a wider
spectator audience?
This is ultimately underpinned by the achievements
of our athletes and therefore the support and
development that we provide them as their national
governing body – if we’re winning medals and
performing at a level whereby the interest in the
sport is growing, then a by-product of this will be
more spectators at our events. This is of course
supported by our marketing and communications
strategy, as it’s essential that we’re pushing out the
right messages and engaging with members and fans
on a regular basis. We have updated our brand, re-
vamped our website and are determined to spread
the weightlifting gospel as far afield as we can. We
aim to be the first port of call for anyone interested
in weights at whatever level of ability, age or gender.
We are very much focused on professionalising the
sport – be it through our commercial, development
or competition strategies and as part of this, we
announced a new partnership with the Ricoh Arena
last year which would see the Midlands venue host
the British Senior Weightlifting and Para-powerlifting
Championships for the next three years. This will
be a real celebration of the sport with both forms
combining and offering excellent entertainment to a
wider and more interested audience.
As the biggest venue ever to hold a domestic
weightlifting competition, our aim was to attract
more spectators and provide our athletes with
an elite-level competitive environment that they
experience internationally; it was also the first time
we had ever ticketed an event and we had hundreds
of visitors across the two days of the competition so
for us this was a big step forwards and one that we
will be building on for 2015.
What impact is social media and new
technologies having on the weightlifting fan
base? Where do you feel that this will go in
future?
Social media opens up so many opportunities for
sports to engage with athletes, fans and spectators
and it is a platform that has become central to our
marketing of the sport. We currently have a social
media reach of around 80,000 people but we are
keen to grow this number as we move forward.
We’ve also recently launched our new website,
www.britishweightlifting.org, which facilitates
more interactive content, information sharing and
engagement with visitors and we’re receiving very
positive feedback from this.
We have also launched a new phone app and as
technology evolves we will continue to see new
innovations that will impact sport’s marketing
strategies, so it’s important that we’re aware of
what’s going on and what opportunities there are for
us to maximise and continue to raise awareness of
weightlifting.
Your general thoughts on the future for
weightlifting
.
As a number of the changes that we have made
over the last 18 months begin to bear fruit and the
sporting achievements of our lifters continues to
improve, the future of our sport remains extremely
bright.
At the heart of the organisation, we will continue
to provide a vision and leadership that provides
robust governance and financial stability, which are
the bedrocks of success for any organisation and a
stable platform that gives genuine support to our
lifters to help them maximise their true potential.
Looking forward, I can say our elite lifters are now
in a better space – we have come off the back of
our most successful Commonwealth Games since
2002 – 5 medals including Zoe Smith’s gold, silver for
Natalie Blake and bronzes for Ben Watson, Michaela
Breeze and Ali Jawad and not forgetting 9 personal
bests which was most impressive and augurs well
for the future. We can look forward to future major
Championships and next year’s Rio Olympics with
greater confidence and a belief that we will be far
more competitive on the International platform.
A medal or two would certainly be nice!
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TOUCHLINE
ISSUE 20 | MARCH 2015