Cricket Boards of Namibia, Vanuatu, Kuwait, Jersey and United States of America have been announced as the regional winners in the ICC Digital Fan Engagement of the Year category, promoting cricket activities in emerging nations and engaging fans through digital content delivery and other initiatives in the ICC regions of Asia, Africa, Americas, Europe and East Asia-Pacific.
Digital delivery of news, updates and content is a requirement for all the Associate member country boards to engage the local communities to get to know about the sport and about their own national programmes to enroll and take up cricket as a amateur/professional sport or career.
The awards were announced on International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. All the regional winners will be nominees for the ICC Global awards, which will be declared on 20th April on ICC social media profiles and website. Here are the winners and their initiatives as documented in the official ICC press release.
- Vanuatu Cricket, with a following of only 12,000 on their Facebook Page utilized their digital platforms to reach over 16 million people through live streaming of the Vanuatu T10 Blast and The Women’s T20 Grand Final. The results of this initiative meant more people were able to engage with Associate cricket, capitalizing on the opportunity presented by COVID-19’s impact on the availability of live sport.
- The fun and engaging #TrainAtHome digital campaign focused on the best of the United States national team players and support staff bringing simple, effective cricket skills-based drills to the homes of fans to encourage them to keep active whilst staying safe during lockdown, resulting in 1.2 million Twitter impressions.
- The Fairway Super Series aimed at providing competition for promising junior cricketers ahead of national squad selection, replicated a modern T20 franchise event with Jersey Cricket Board delivering an online draft and match highlights to help the promotion of the event. Highlights of the four-team event reached a wide audience and raised the visibility of the teams’ charitable partners.
- Cricket Namibia delivered a two-month campaign in celebration of being crowned an ICC Development Award winner in 2019, consisting of social media posts and radio messages. It reached over 300,000 people, grew fan engagement for the men’s national team and Cricket Namibia‘s brand.
- Kuwait engaged one of the Middle East’s top digital media companies via a sponsorship programme where Kuwait Cricket’s social media channels are professionally managed with a comprehensive engagement programme of daily posts and updates to help create heroes within the cricket community.
