Last month, we brought together senior leaders from Formula 1, West Ham United, the FA, and Baller League for the first Solution Series event in London. The concept: no panels, no keynotes, just 10-minute timed sprints to solve real industry problems. The scenarios may have been fictional, but the pressure was real. And the takeaway was actual solutions they could take back and use.
Halfway through the session, we threw “The Break-Up” challenge into the room.
“Pick one platform your club is too dependent on. How do you slowly break up with it, where do fans go, and what changes?”
Because in reality, 41% of organisations say social gives some data, but not ownership. Broadcast and social deliver huge reach, but the data capture is terrible. You’re renting an audience from platforms that could change the algorithm, ban your content, or simply fade into irrelevance tomorrow.
Despite this, most sports clubs have built their entire fan strategy around channels they fundamentally don’t control.
How the solutions evolved
The first wave of ideas tackled the obvious move: create exclusive content off-platform. One team pitched “Exclusive View” with behind-the-scenes captain speeches, body cams on the pitch, content you couldn’t get on social.
Smart starting point, but it revealed the core problem: fans who stayed on social still got access to the club’s world. There was no compelling reason to actually move.
Another team went deeper with fan-driven content and leaderboards, rewarding supporters for posting by giving them public recognition. It turned fans into co-creators rather than just consumers. The gamification added a layer of motivation.
But the breakthrough came when teams stopped thinking about content altogether.
The insight that changed everything
The winning approach came from a team who understood that fans don’t move for content, they move for proximity.
Their idea, “The Playing Live” was a weekly Q&A analysis session where the coach debriefs fans on the previous game. Fans ask the questions. No PR scripts. All online.
The shift was in converting 2 million social followers into an owned database whilst creating an insiders cohort.
It worked because direct coach access delivers emotional value that social can’t replicate. Fan questions mean influence, not just consumption. The weekly format builds habit, and there’s a visible conversion path where social followers become owned contacts.
But another idea was even bolder.
One team pitched a travelling franchise concept for their fictional club. Play the first and last match of the season in the home city, then take the rest of the matches to different European cities. Bring the team to the wider community instead of asking the community to come to you.
The result was about building a real local and international fan base simultaneously.
This worked because it created belonging through geography, not algorithms. Showing up in someone’s city isn’t content, it’s an experience they were part of. It made ownership physical and it generated owned audience data naturally. Every ticket sold, every event attended equals identity captured.
This wasn’t a social strategy, it was a distribution strategy.
What stopped most teams
The teams who struggled most weren’t lacking creativity. Their organisations have designed themselves around platforms that don’t give back.
They’ve optimised for reach because that’s easy to measure. Chased engagement because that’s easy to report. Celebrated viral moments because virality is easy to celebrate.
But none of those translate into a relationship. None of it gives you ownership. And when the platform changes the rules (or when your audience moves on) you’re left with nothing.
The best solutions didn’t try to make social media work harder, they built something parallel. Owned channels that delivered value social couldn’t match; access, influence, recognition and belonging.
Those are the currencies that create durable fan relationships.
What this means
If your fan strategy can be destroyed by an algorithm change, it’s less of a strategy and more of a dependency. The break-up doesn’t have to be brutal. But it does have to be intentional.
Instead of asking: “How do we get more engagement on social?” start asking: “What would make our most valuable fans leave social to be with us somewhere else?”
The answer to that question is worth more than a million followers.
Want to solve challenges like this with other senior leaders who actually get it? Solution Series brings together CMOs, Marketing Directors, and Commercial Leaders to tackle the hardest problems in fan engagement. No theory. No slides. Just focused problem-solving with people who understand what you’re up against.
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