How Ten Toes works with sports clubs, leagues & federations
“Oh, Ten Toes – you’re the player social guys, right?”
No. Well, yes. But no – that’s not quite right.
We’re really proud of our roots and the fact that we’ve been able to help some of the biggest names in sport build their personal brands – and, yes, that’s often involved helping them manage their social media accounts. Captains at club and international level, stars of the women’s game and future heroes have all trusted us to assist them in building better relationships with their followers.
But we’ve done more than ‘player social’ for quite some time now. We’ve worked with brands like KFC, EA Sports, Beats by Dre, Samsung, Mitre and Budweiser for years and, since the start of 2021, we’ve also been helping sports organisations get closer to their fans.
We’ve built a consultancy team with experience from the likes of UEFA, the England national team, the Women’s Super League, Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton FC – and it’s that background, coupled with our work for players and brands, that’s seeing more and more sports organisations turn to us for a helping hand.
Tom Biggs & Ella Jerman, who both joined Ten Toes in 2022 to work with FIFA
For example, we’ve been working with FIFA for almost three years now, supporting them on social strategy and helping them manage channels like their newly-launched Instagram account, @fifa. It’s racked up two million followers in just over six months, and is a beautiful account to follow (if we don’t say so ourselves…). We’ve also helped FIFA with their drive to tackle online abuse during last year’s FIFA World Cup and are currently doing the same at the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
We work with clubs, too. During the 2022/23 season, we worked with a leading Premier League club to help them develop their content and channel strategy, starting with an audit of their accounts and going all the way through to sending a Ten Toes social media manager ‘on loan’ there for a few months.
During our time working together, were delighted to get this testimonial from the club:
“A big thank you to the brilliant team at Ten Toes who supported us at the start of a new chapter for our content strategy. They audited our channels and helped us make sense of the dependencies on our platforms to find ways to balance priorities and bring supporters closer to the club.
”Ten Toes helped establish the foundations of our platform strategy and connect our publishing team with our re-defined values, and also helped us identify and implement tools to support publishing plans and protect our social media channels to make them safer places for our players and supporters. Thank you, Ten Toes!”
As if those kind words weren’t enough, you know something’s going right when a client recommends you to one of their rivals. That’s what happened when they pointed their counterparts at Chelsea in our direction.
After a few months working together on a similar basis, we were proud that the Blues’ head of publishing, Simon Meehan, told us that “Ten Toes is quite simply the social media experts in sport. It’s the agency for trusted advisory, counsel and strategy on reaching and engaging digital audiences globally.”
Our work with sports organisations naturally varies from client to client, ranging from an audit of their channels to help them benchmark against their competitors through to creating branded content that promotes their commercial partners without sacrificing the attention and affinity of their audiences.
One area of particular interest to clubs and federations is our ability to help them unlock the power of their players – something that taps not only into Ten Toes’s experience of ‘player social’ and building personal brands for leading athletes but also some work my colleague, Tom Biggs, and I did in our previous life working with the England national team.
By working closely with their squad members, teams have access to an incredible group of influencers with their own highly-engaged audiences made up of not just supporters of the team they play for but fans from across the globe, whose interest in the player in question could be leveraged in the club’s favour. Having a proper framework for supporting and empowering players to use their own channels is an opportunity that remains untapped for many clubs, and we’d love to work with more of them to help them unlock the clear value that comes with having a squad that’s active on social media.
With a new season looming, we’d love to work with any clubs, leagues or federations who need a bit of help with any element of their social/content strategy. To get in touch, feel free to drop me an email – it’d be great to chat a bit more about what we do at Ten Toes and how we can get you set for the new campaign.
Jim Lucas, Managing Partner