England has been playing cricket since 16th century and yet it hasn’t become quite as popular as soccer as it should have been. It is definitely one of the three most favourite sports in the country, thanks to several cricket clubs here that are keeping up the tradition.
What’s contrasting is that the English cricket clubs have not been able to tap sports fan engagement as successfully as the way English Premier League clubs have done. Given the cricket’s history and its affiliation with England, the cricket clubs here can easily cash in on the game’s popularity.

Here’s how the English cricket clubs can learn from EPL clubs in fan engagement.

Serving relevant content via online platforms

EPL clubs like Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool have learnt almost a decade ago that they need to engage fans online constantly if they wished to survive. But what they serve to their fans is not random, it’s carefully crafted content that’s most relevant to the fans of the respective club. The cricket clubs have much to share with their fans in terms of facts, history, trends and transfers. Cricket clubs can create videos revolving around the practice session of their clubs, have dedicated Youtube channels and Facebook pages to get their fans informed all the time. Barclays Premier League has set up social media guidelines for all the clubs. These guidelines are meant for the clubs to make the best of social media interaction for multiplying fans. Similarly, cricket clubs can use social media to their advantage with live updates, scores, news and fun content.

Be device-friendly

EPL club Manchester City has gone on to the extent of providing high-speed wireless internet access for phones and tablets in a football stadium in England at their home Etihad stadium. English cricket clubs need to understand that now watching the game and sharing live updates with friends are inseparable in a fan’s mindset of enjoying a good game. They need to make sure that all of their online content is mobile and tablet-friendly.

Relevant social media engagement

Do cricket fans in England prefer Twitter over Snapchat? Do they like Facebook video live or laptop notifications of the cricket club’s website? These are some of the questions that English cricket clubs need to answer for deeper fan engagement. The soccer clubs have relevant content as per a particular social media platform and it says a lot about how much they know their fans. Cricket clubs need to use social media similarly.

Be fan-focused instead of club-focused

Cricket is a gentleman’s game and there’s a lot of social association that’s attached with it. But fans have evolved and they are not ashamed of rejecting anything that’s not relevant to them, including content related to their favourite games. Thus cricket clubs need to shift their focus from themselves and pay attention to what the fans really want. Apart from creating a strong social media presence, cricket clubs need to come up with engaging web and mobile applications as per the taste of millennial fans. They should consider creating fantasy cricket applications such as DraftFight or Playzo so as to increase the knowledge about the games and thus raising recall value for their clubs in the minds of their fans.

Fortunately, today there are several options such as fan engagement platforms, fantasy sports applications for cricket, online fan clubs etc for engaging sports fans. English cricket clubs can opt for any of these ideas for deeper and more meaningful engagement with fans. If you need help, we can be your fan engagement partners.