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Our first face-to-face event since 2020!

This sector has seen huge changes in recent times, with the digitisation of services, new phenomena such as NFTs and the Metaverse, and more diverse audiences than ever before. Join SEGA, Roblox, Rugby Football Union, Sport England and others to hear how market research in this area is transforming.

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What can you expect?

The return of face-to-face events gives us the opportunity to enjoy a focused learning experience, make new connections in an informal setting, and have a much-needed catch up with old friends and colleagues!

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  • Case studies of hot-off-the-press research
  • Panel discussions on broad topics & challenges facing the sector
  • 1-to-1 interviews with influential speakers
  • Networking lunch
  • Drinks reception
On the agenda

It’s a time of profound change for this sector. During the last two years the world of sports has seen wide-scale digitisation of broadcasts, betting and ticket sales. The gaming sector too experienced huge changes to its operating models and audiences. Player and spectator participation across both areas now reaches far beyond the usual demographic groups.

At this conference we’ll be asking: “How can insight professionals respond?

Delegates will be examining the latest trends shaping the landscape and hearing from key players across the sports and gaming sector.

Key contributors include: SEGA, Eurosport, The England and Wales Cricket Board, Roblox, Rugby Football Union, the7stars, Sport England and The Stars Group 

Click here for the full programme. 

Learn how to:
  • Measure and improve audience engagement
  • Grow and diversify participation and audiences in sports and gaming
  • Demonstrate demand, revenue and growth potential for live sports and gaming
  • Maximise brand impact through authentically partnering with teams and players
  • Understand behaviour, attitudes and concerns of players and participants
  • Harness the emotion sport brings to people’s lives 
Venue

Radisson Blu Edwardian
9-13 Bloomsbury Street,London,WC1B 3QD

Ross Antrobus, VP Insight, Analytics and Loyalty, LIV Golf Investments

@rossantrobus @LIVGOLFSGL

Ross is the VP of Research & Analytics at LIV Golf. LIV Golf is a newly formed company, with group companies in the USA and UK. Its purpose is to holistically improve the health of professional golf on a global scale to help unlock the sports’ untapped potential. At LIV Golf he is charged with delivering a research programme from scratch across multiple markets covering sponsorship valuation, event feedback, media monitoring and brand tracking.

Prior to his move to golf, he led the award winning Behavioural Insights & Business Analytics team at The English Football Association (The FA) for 9 seasons.

A career spanning 25 years of brand and consumer research experience including senior positions at research-based consultancies specialising in communication, brand, engagement, and customer research. He also has experience client side as a researcher and marketing manager at Müller, and seconded posts with Unilever, Coca-Cola and Vodafone.

 

Bev Blackburn, Head of Behavioural Insight, Sport England

@bevblackburn @Sport_England

With over fifteen years’ experience working in the Sport and Physical Activity sector Bev is an advocate of the benefits sport and physical activity can have on improving the physical and mental health of the nation.

In her current role at Sport England as Head of Behavioural Insight, Bev’s focus includes working with partners on campaigns such as This Girl Can and We Are Undefeatable, providing thought leadership on behavioural insight and behaviour change thinking to tackle inequalities.

 

Dan Brilot, Head of Insight, Differentology

@brilotd @differentology

Dan Brilot is the Head of Growth at Differentology. He is responsible for growing Differentology through business development, key account management and leading flagship projects for major clients such as Sky Media, ITV and BBC Studios. He has over 20 years experience in media research, having previously worked in the Kantar Global Digital team and at YouGov. He is also the current chair of the UK Media Research Group committee.

 

Rob Calder, Commercial Director, The Hundred, The England and Wales Cricket Board

@thehundred @ECB_cricket

Rob Calder is Commercial Director on The Hundred.

Back in 2018 he appointed and worked with Craft and FutureBrand to develop the research, insight and brand work which ultimately became The Hundred and the eight city team brands,  which finally launched in 2021.  The work is central to all touchpoints on The Hundred and the competition’s audience-led approach has attracted a range of commercial and brand partnerships, including New Era, Unilever, Universal, KP Snacks and Robinsons.

Prior to working in sport Rob worked in various brand, marketing and sales roles at Kopparberg, Magners and Heineken. 

 

Tory Clarkson, Insight Manager, Rugby Football Union

@EnglandRugby

At England Rugby, Tory specialises in community participation, women’s rugby, and young people’s relationships with rugby.

Tory’s launched a Community Game Dashboard, a Player Panel, personalised player communications, and a ticketing demand model since joining the RFU in 2020.

Prior to joining England Rugby, Tory worked agency-side. While at Two Circles, she helped the ECB to monitor ticket sales & matchday experiences for men’s and women’s international cricket over several seasons. At the start of her career, she worked in sponsorship - defining Credit Suisse’s strategy for its sponsorship of Roger Federer & EY’s strategy for sponsoring The Ryder Cup.

 

Konrad Collao, Founder Craft

@craft_strategy

Konrad co-founded multi-award-winning strategic insight agency, Craft, in 2011. Since then, Craft has been at the vanguard of understanding audiences at the intersections of media, technology, sports and entertainment. He has worked across the globe for clients including the BBC, The Football Association, Twitter, Samsung, Warner Brothers Discovery and The R&A. During this time, he’s consulted for brands, teams and competitions from the timeless (The Olympic Games, The Open Championship) to the emergent (The Hundred, esports). Konrad specialises in assisting brands in gaining a holistic 360-degree omnichannel understanding of how their audiences engage with their properties.

 

Chris Dean, Associate Director, Harris Interactive

@Harrisint_uk

I have 14 years’ experience in market research, having worked in both the sports and gaming industries. I joined the gaming team at Harris 3 years and have had a fantastic experience working with great clients and genuinely interesting projects, including concept testing, pricing analysis and market sizing. As a team, we’re always aiming to deliver fast, high quality research, looking for ways to bring greater insight to our clients and provide actionable solutions.

 

Steve Evans, Head of Entertainment & Technology, Harris Interactive, Toluna

@Harrisint_uk

I’ve been a gamer all my life and I’m lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with many of the world’s leading publishers and studios in the video gaming industry. I have 25 years’ experience in market research, with most of that time at Harris. I’ve worked in many sectors and I can say with confidence that clients in the entertainment sector, especially gaming, are simply the best. Working at Harris Interactive and Toluna is a great fit with the gaming industry, offering high quality, agile solutions to a broad sweep of insight needs, including concept testing, usage and attitude, segmentation, monetisation, communications testing and brand/franchise development. It’s an exciting, fast moving sector, always growing, always innovating and we do our best to match that with the solutions portfolio and insights we offer.

 

Ben Fox, Department Head, Group Research Consumer Market & Understanding, The Stars Group

@FlutterPLC

Ben Fox heads up the Consumer & Market Understanding team for Flutter International, a team which uses a blend of research, brand tracking and social analytics to ensure colleagues across the globe know who their customers are and how they can best engage them.

 

Josephine Hanson, Managing Director, YouthSight Research

@JosephineHansom @YouthSight

Josephine is a Fellow of the Market Research Society and has focused on understanding Gen Z and Millennials for the last decade.

Josephine is a regular on the conference circuit, sharing her take on generational theory supported by Savanta’s unique State of the Youth Nation tracking data.

Listen to Josephine talk about the Youth Market on Radio 4’s The Bottom Line https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080xk99

 

Cameron Hatter, Junior Research Executive, Opinium

@OpiniumResearch

Cameron is a researcher in the gaming team at Opinium, and works across brand, communications and thought leadership research. He has worked with brands like EA Games and Xbox.

Cameron has been playing video games for over a decade and has been involved with the Mental Health & Disability in Gaming project since its inception. He looks forward to sharing these insights and hopes that the research will push the industry towards positive change.

 

Laura Higgins, Director of Community Safety and Civility, Roblox

@laurahiggins_ @Roblox

Laura Higgins is Director of Community Safety and Civility at Roblox with years of experience building safeguarding, online safety and civility programs. Roblox’s digital civility initiative is focused on providing the community with the skills needed to create positive online experiences working with the world’s leading safety and industry organizations.

In her previous role with the UK Safer Internet Centre, Laura founded several award-winning helpline services, and worked with the biggest names in tech. She has spoken on digital safety topics across the globe and regularly appears in the media sharing her expertise with industry experts, parents and kids.

 

Chris Kebbell, Sports Insights Manager, Eurosport

Chris Kebbell has been working internationally in sports, news, and entertainment research on both the client and agency side for over 15 years. Chris joined Eurosport in 2017, and primarily works with editorial leads to measure success against production goals for events across Grand Tour cycling, Grand Slam tennis, the Olympics and WBD Sports Events (such as WTCR and the 24 Hours of Le Mans). Chris believes strongly in the power of research to bring clarity to content creators and improve the audience experience. There are few things he likes more than turning stream-of-consciousness work discussions into tangible research questions and projects that deliver high-impact insights. If Chris isn’t watching the pros cycling on Eurosport, he’s riding sportives on his own bike albeit at a (vastly) reduced pace.

 

Hannah Kilshaw, Research Director, Walnut Unlimited

@WalnutUnlimited

Hannah has researched a wide variety of societal issues throughout her career, ranging from understanding physical activity and health behaviours through to exploring political perceptions. She has held previous positions at Kantar Public, EVERFI UK, and BritainThinks.

As a Research Director at Walnut Unlimited, she works closely with Sport England exploring the motivators and barriers to engaging with sport and physical activity. She is particularly interested in translating research findings into communications and strategy, utilising behavioural science principles.

 

Aneta Marco-Wadey, Research Consultant, InSites Consulting

@InSites

Aneta studied Marketing and Management at the University of Sussex, which is where her love of research began. She then decided to further develop her knowledge and continued with a master’s degree in International Marketing at King’s College London. Aneta joined InSites Consulting as a quantitative researcher but has since diversified by working on a multitude of hybrid projects. Currently, her clients are within the media & entertainment sector, where she is working in the space of online communities for global brands.  She is passionate about the study of consumer behaviour and enjoys using research methods to further understand consumer experiences. Aneta loves that in research she is able to connect clients with their consumers whilst simultaneously empowering consumers to have their say in the decisions brands make.

 

Ande Milinyte, Senior Research Manager, Opinium

@OpiniumResearch

Ande is an award-winning researcher with strong quantitative and qualitative expertise. She won the MRS Young Researcher of the Year 2021 award and has been named one of Significant Insights’ Global 30 under 30.

Ande’s focus lies in brand, communications and consumer understanding research. She heads up Opinium’s Gaming team and has worked with brands like King, Xbox and Riot.

Ande is passionate about using the research platform to raise awareness on societal issues and drive real change. She is delighted to present Opinium’s thought leadership report on Mental Health & Disability in Gaming at the MRS Sports & Gaming conference.

 

Helen Rose, Head of Insights, the7stars

@the7stars

Having fun in the work that I do, and with those that I work alongside is my passion. I started out in media over 20 years ago. There’s been much change in that time, but my constant is putting people first.  Whether that’s the people we’re trying to target through communications, or the people I work with. At the7stars I’m lucky to work with both a diverse range of clients and business challenges and a talented team of people.  -  Helen is a Managing Partner at the7stars and runs the Insight & Analytics team, previously having held roles in insights and planning at Viacom International and the BBC.

 

Chris Sadd, Associate Director, MTM

@MTMLondon

Chris Sadd is an Associate Director at MTM Sport, with 8 years’ experience in quantitative research across both agency and client side.

An expert in tracking and longitudinal studies, Chris has worked across the world of media, sport and technology to help clients reposition their brands and adapt to the changing behaviours and perceptions of their audiences.

His interest in the sports and gambling sectors in particular has seen him work with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Flutter International, The Football Association, The European Club Association and the BBC.

 

Jonny Sampson, Insights Analyst, Rugby Football Union

@EnglandRugby

Jonny started his career at Formula 1, analysing car and timing data for the broadcast production throughout a race weekend. These included comparisons between rivals, qualifying predictions, race strategies which were delivered to audiences through TV graphics, articles on f1.com and social media. His analysis was also used to better understand the behaviour of how F1 cars interact when racing.

At England Rugby, he has helped embed data within the company, automating reporting, driving the expansion of the new data warehouse, and creating insights across Rugby. This includes a new ticketing demand model for Red Roses’ matches.

 

Alex Teasdale, Head of Women’s Rugby, Rugby Football Union

@EnglandRugby

Alex has spent the majority of her career working in sports management, specifically working with team sports across cricket, hockey and now in rugby union. After starting out in retail and studying consumer habits, the switch from selling a product to selling a lifestyle choice was an interesting transfer of skills.  

Within sport, Alex has been responsible across a number of roles for growing the customer base in new and innovative ways. In her current role as Head of the Women’s Game at England Rugby, Alex oversees the development of strategies to grow the number of players and followers of women and girls rugby, in order to create future commercial sustainability.

Jen Vile, Marketing Director, The Hundred, The England and Wales Cricket Board

@thehundred @ECB_cricket

After completing her MA in journalism in 2008, Jen decided to follow her passion for sport. Following a variety of roles at the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), Jen joined the ECB in 2016 and has gone on to work on brands and campaigns across cricket, from the county game through to England teams, the England men’s and women’s World Cups, and latterly The Hundred. Jen leads on the audience and marketing strategy for the competition and its eight teams. Now in its second year, The Hundred combines sport and entertainment and was seen as one of the sporting success stories of 2021.

 

Daniel Vincent, Research Executive, SEGA

 

Alexandre Weber-Zuanigh, Account Director, Head of Sports & Esports

@gwidotcom

Alex Weber-Zuanigh is heading the Sports & Esports Account Management at GWI. In his role he manages the consumer research programmes of some of the world's leading sporting organisations, rights holders, agencies and brands. He also inputs in the company's strategy related to sports and esports content as well as product development related to the sports industry.

Alex has been spending more than 10 years in this industry, both in the UK and in France, building expertise in various areas such as consumer research, media and social media evaluation, sponsorships consulting and international events organisation.

 

Stuart Wood, Research & Impact Manager, Internet Matters

@IM_org

Stuart leads the research and impact evaluations at Internet Matters. This responsibility includes running major research projects for the organisation and its members and applying strategic thinking into measuring the impact of the resources being developed.

Working in research and strategy roles for over 10 years with global research agencies, sporting governing bodies, and now non-profit organisations, Stuart can interpret data to deliver clear insights, identify trends and inform strategic plans.

Volunteering with a local young people’s charity, Stuart wants to make digital spaces not only safe but a platform for growth and innovation for young people.

 

09.00 Registration & coffee

09.30 Welcome from the Chair

Ross AntrobusVP Insight, Analytics and Loyalty, LIV Golf Investments

 

09.40 Global sports & gaming trends

The sports and the gaming landscapes are constantly evolving, and are not particularly easier to comprehend. There are a multitude of profiles of consumers, with different interests, different aspirations, and different ways to consume media. Adding to this complexity, the pandemic highly disrupted both industries, accelerating the development and adoption of new technologies, and working on new ways to better reach and interact with consumers.

Leveraging the world's biggest study on the online consumer as well as more focused datasets on sports fans and gamers, GWI will be unpacking a series of trends in Sports & Gaming, and their impact on the future of these two industries (which are ultimately not so different).

Alexandre Weber-Zuanigh, Account Director, Head of Sports & Esports



10.10 The Hundred: reframing cricket to grow and diversify the game

In 2018 cricket was suffering from a crisis of perception – pale, male, stale, posh. The England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) response was to develop a new competition and format of the game – The Hundred. The Hundred’s express aim is to smash down the barriers to attendance and ultimately participation by making the game more dynamic, younger and more diverse in all ways.

This case study will show how, through an ongoing partnership, the ECB and Craft have used strategic, ethnographic, qualitative and quantitative insight to take The Hundred from a blank sheet of paper to success - commercially and in terms of attendance and brand perception.

Konrad Collao, Founder, Craft
Rob Calder, Commercial Director, The Hundred - The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)
Jen Vile, Marketing Director, The Hundred - The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)

 

10.40 Racing hearts and sweaty palms: analysing biometrics to engage audiences, with Eurosport 

Understanding the emotional impact of sport content on fans is crucial for Eurosport so it can optimise its broadcasting development. This case study shows how viewer engagement was measured across five live sports events using a biometric audience emotional engagement tool which was deployed across a bespoke online community of Eurosport viewers in France, Germany and the UK.

Hear how biometric measurements-based research is having a wide-reaching impact on Eurosport content and how the key findings were applied across the business for greatest impact.

Aneta Marco-Wadey, Senior Research Consultant, InSites Consulting
Chris Kebbell, Sports Insights Manager, Eurosport

 

11.10 Morning refreshments & networking

 

11.40 Harnessing insight-led strategy to empower This Girl Can in a post-pandemic world

This Girl Can (TGC) is an insight-driven campaign; its premise underpinned by insight that women are less likely than men to participate in sport and exercise. But what barriers do women and girls face? What contextual challenges need to be overcome? What motivations can be harnessed?

This case study will highlight how a strategy that is built on insight, with behavioural science at its heart, can produce ideas to help tackle inequalities in activity. It will show: how research design aligned with strategic direction elicits rich insights; the importance of triangulating campaign insight with wider data sources and organisational strategy and how to develop a campaign that resonates within a post-pandemic framework, informed by changing habits and lifestyles.

Hannah Kilshaw, Research Director, Walnut Unlimited
Bev Blackburn, Head of Behavioural Insight, Sport England

 

12.10 Supporting teenage gamers online

Online safety is an ongoing area of development. Internet Matters, Roblox and YouthSight have been working together to qualitatively deep-dive the experiences of young gamers to explore what makes them feel supported online now and what could be done to improve support in the future.

This session will reflect on the impact of this research for Roblox and Internet Matters, and how other organisations can truly connect with gamers, content creators, as well as internet users in an authentic way.

Josephine Hansom, Managing Director, YouthSight Research
Stuart Wood, Research & Impact Manager, Internet Matters
Laura Higgins, Director of Community Safety and Civility, Roblox

 

12.40 Lunch

 

13.40 How brands can champion sports partnerships authentically

After COVID played havoc with the 2020 sporting calender, 2021/22 has been a bumper period with a return of major sporting events. Fans love and passion for sport has not been quashed. the7stars wanted to harness the emotion sport brings to people’s lives, and maximise the impact its brands could have through authentically partnering with teams and athletes.

Partnering with Differentology they aimed to discover who was engaging with sport at different levels beyond stereotypical sports fans. They wanted to understand how brands could effectively harness the power of sports partnerships to drive brand growth and unpick the differences in perceptions around sports sponsorship vs partnerships.

Dan Brilot, Head of Insight Differentology
Helen Rose, Head of Insights, the7stars

 

14.10 Building a partnership based research function

In 2019, Flutter was an organisation that led decision making through more functional business intelligence. Following an acquisition by Flutter, the company was looking to build and integrate a research function that would provide more opportunities to incorporate the voice of the customer and to shift the insights culture to enable more nuanced, long-termist views on decision making.

Hear how a “partnership” model, allowing MTM Sport researchers and strategists to act as an extension of the team was implemented. Together, Flutter|PokerStars and MTM Sport have implemented brand tracking, produced a ‘viral’ international qual project, utilised online facial coding and revenue modelling to inform brand and marketing strategy and tangibly shift company culture.

Chris Sadd, Associate Director, MTM Sport
Ben Fox – Department head, Group Research, Consumer Market & Understanding, Flutter

 

14.30 The drive to subscribe in video gaming

We’re witnessing seismic changes in video gaming. Microsoft acquired Bethesda and will acquire Activision Blizzard, the latter being the biggest deal in gaming history. Sony is acquiring Bungie. There are also major changes in how gamers access titles, with Xbox Game Pass driving a shift to subscription. Acquisitions affect platform exclusivity, which could accelerate subscription, and change gamers’ often tribal platform loyalty. Simultaneously, another trend is publishers issuing NFTs, a controversial area.

Considering such trends, Harris Interactive, Toluna and SEGA Europe will share insights from bespoke research to hear from gamers; investigating their awareness, appreciation, concerns and the impact on future behaviour.

Steve Evans, Head of Entertainment & Technology, Harris Interactive
Chris Dean, Associate Director, Harris Interactive
Daniel Vincent, Research Executive, SEGA

 

15.00 Afternoon refreshments & networking

 

15.30 How can England Rugby make the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup a success?

England Rugby is accelerating the growth in the number of players and fans of women’s rugby union between now and 2027. In 2020, the question of whether England should bid to host the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup was raised. England Rugby began a journey to determine whether it could make the whole tournament a success.

This case study will show how England Rugby brought together multiple sources of attitudinal and behavioural data to create a bespoke interactive tool predicting potential audience sizes, ticketing demand and scope for growth in interest in playing rugby union at the grassroots. As a result of this work, England Rugby submitted a bid to host the 2025 World Cup and is now the preferred partner of World Rugby for this tournament.

Tory Clarkson, Insights Manager, Rugby Football Union (RFU)
Alex Teasdale, Head of Women’s Rugby, Rugby Football Union (RFU)
Jonny Sampson, Insights Analyst, Rugby Football Union (RFU)

 

16.00 Mental health & disability in gaming

Examine the findings from Opinium’s online quantitative survey of 1,361 UK weekly gamers which reveals insights into how gaming supports mental health but falls short in accommodating gamers with disabilities and with accessibility needs.

What can the gaming industry learn from these user insights?

Ande Milinyte, Senior Research Manager, Opinium
Cameron Hatter Junior Research Executive,  Opinium

 

 

16.30 Closing comments from the Chair

 

16.40 Networking drinks reception


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