I think attention is the biggest change facing sports is attention.
The marketing world is obsessed with metrics and measurements and eyeballs, yet these are just numbers if we’re not capturing people’s attention. I roll my eyes when I hear sports executives talk about their competitors being other sports organisations. Our competitor is content, all content and the battle is for attention and the limited resource is people’s time.
Apologies if I’ve ended all philosophical but the most successful sports organisations are those that best garner attention.
They both play sport, they both do cheerleading and they play netball. My youngest daughter plays a lot of tennis as well, so they're both quite sporty. They're both quite interested in design at an early stage, so where that takes them or where their careers take them remains to be seen.
One of my daughters asked me the other day, "What is it exactly you do?" I felt a bit like Chandler from Friends as it was never clear what he does. I try and describe to them sometimes what a typical day will be for me to give them some context about what my role is and that I just don’t sit and watch football games.
SHANE HARMON INTERVIEW
New Zealand is actually probably on a bucket list for so many people. It is such a beautiful country. Describe your favorite thing about New Zealand?
I love the outdoor lifestyle here. I love the fact that I can walk 10 minutes from my house and I'm in the bush and the forest walking up a pristine mountain, and in half an hour I'm standing on the top looking across to the South Island, and just seeing what a beautiful country we live in.
I love the lifestyle here. It is more laid-back I'd say than some of the bigger cities that I've been to. You do sometimes feel geographically quite remote, but being from Ireland and with my family still there, I’m only 24 hours away from anywhere in the world. , it does seem a long way away, but you're only ever a day away.
Speaking of family, you're raising two daughters, do they have any interest in following in their dad's footsteps?
Well, Shane, you have been a dear friend and thank you so much for not only your support of the SEAT community but I deeply appreciate our friendship.
You're welcome Christine, as always.
I have one last question for you. You started in marketing and your career has grown from marketing and database into digital and strategy, to now being a CEO, and you've seen a lot of changes in your career through technology, data, analytics and the fan experience……What would you say do you think is one of the biggest challenges that this industry is facing right now?
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