On Tuesday night at the prestigious Broadcast Sport Awards 2022, Curveball Digital won the award for Best Social Media Campaign for their work with FIH and Watch.Hockey on the 2022 Women’s Hockey World Cup.
The Broadcast Sport Awards, now in its second year, celebrates the best sports content on TV and digital platforms – from sports documentaries and live sports production to social media, advertising, and marketing campaigns. Tuesday night’s ceremony took place at the London Hilton on Park Lane and saw more than 700 members of the industry in attendance.
Curveball Digital’s win was against the odds as their work on the Women’s Hockey World Cup was up against industry Goliaths such as the Winter Olympics (Eurosport), Paralympics (Channel 4), Soccer Aid and the Lionesses Euro win (ESPN).
The Judges on the night described Curveball Digital’s entry as “a well-executed campaign that clearly surpassed all expectations and reached a new audience through engaging and innovative digital content.”
“Growing an audience of a non-mainstream sport is always a difficult task and they achieved this in style!”
Curveball Digital were also nominated for Best Original Content By A Rights Holder for their digital-first docuseries ‘Inside E1’ for E1 Series.
Paddy Sloane – director, Curveball Digital: “This award is huge for us and fantastic for the sport of Hockey. Our campaign shows that the lesser-viewed sports can make a huge impact with global audiences by committing to social media and following a digital-first strategy to content and promotion.
“Sports like hockey don’t usually get the accolades, but they are a rich tapestry of incredible stories, watch-again moments and heroic personalities – and we have loved bringing these to sports fans across the globe.
“The work Nagra Kudelski are doing with FIH in creating the Watch.Hockey app has been brilliant to see, and we thank Anthony Smith-Chaigneau and Jean-Luc Jezouin for allowing us to be part of it.”
Kev Blundell – Director, Curveball Digital: “The aim was to create social-first content that showed hockey and its elite athletes for what they are: dynamic and exciting. These characteristics ran through all of our content, from the hero illustration artwork we used to launch the campaign to the huge variety of video content that we created remotely and on the ground.
“Our team in Spain were shooting premium-quality content and editing it for publication on social within minutes of it happening. Giving fans from all over the world unprecedented access to key moments before, during and after the game.”