Basketball Ireland gives digital presentation to National Federations at UEFA headquarters in Switzerland

Basketball Ireland’s Head of Communications, Media and Digital, Nathaniel Cope, was at UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland last Wednesday to give a presentation on the digital innovations and social media strategy the organisation has delivered over the last number of years.

UEFA held a two-day digital workshop for National Associations with 14 countries involved. Basketball Ireland was used as a case study on day two, to demonstrate what steps it took to grow its digital profile. 

Nathaniel Cope said: “It was pleasure to showcase what Basketball Ireland has done to help grow the sport’s digital footprint. Last year we launched our OTT platform basketballireland.tv, which streamed over 650 games live in its first year. Our digital scoresheet with NBN23 has been a huge success since its rollout last season, with almost 14,000 active users in Ireland now following live games and getting the latest stats on the Swish All Hoops app. We’ve also brought in our consumer database, in partnership with Goodform, while our social media output goes from strength-to-strength, thanks to the hard work by Robbie Fahy and Luke Faughnan.”

Monika Mkhitaryan, UEFA Senior NA’s Communications Manager, added: “We believe that knowledge and experiences exchange across European sports can make a real difference and are thankful to Basketball Ireland for their participation. Our national associations greatly appreciated the opportunity and took home some valuable learnings and inspiration.”

In May Basketball Ireland were announced winners of the Irish Sports Industry Awards for Best Use of Communications Platforms, for the launch of basketballireland.tv and the digital scoresheet, in partnership with Joymo and NBN23 respectively.

Basketball Ireland’s social media channels continue to perform, in the last year Basketball Ireland’s Instagram saw a 100% growth in engagement, along with a 54% increase in reach on the platform, while followers are up 26%. Facebook has seen a 19.8% increase in reach, with engagement up 60%. TikTok followers have risen 35%, while Twitter has had over 5m impressions so far this year.