Digital Success at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games
Project Overview
The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games bought together 72 teams from across the globe for a multi-sport event steeped in culture, competition and community. To meet the demands of a global audience, the Games needed a digital strategy that could capture the action, atmosphere and emotion while driving fan engagement and long-term digital growth.
Key Results
1200% increase from the previous Games, with 154m impressions and 78m video views
9.7m users across the website and app during the Games, with 132m page views
Global engagement, with 50% of engagements coming from India, and significant contributions from the US, UK and Australia.
Evergreen viral moments such as Helen Housby’s dance, which achieved 22m Instagram impressions and 45m TIkTok views
45,934 media files uploaded to a DAM system, ensuring streamlined content cess for 356 users.
The Challenge
Despite being a highly anticipated event, Birmingham 2022 had to address:
Scalable content production: Delivering high-quality digital content at speed and scale, to a global network of rightsholders and stakeholders, bearing in mind license restrictions
Fan engagement across markets: Engaging diverse audiences including major regions like India, Australia and Africa
Seamless collaboration: Aligning with athletes, sponsors and broadcast partners while navigating complex rights agreements and restrictions
Sustainable infrastructure: Ensuring digital assets and strategies left a long-lasting legacy.
The Solution
Our digital strategy combined storytelling, real-time content delivery and global reach, with a heavy focus on video assets, athlete content and fan-centric campaigns.
Empowering real-time content creation; via a dedicated digital team producing over 150 clips daily, including medal moments, highlights and public reactions; and an on-the-ground “Vibes crew” gathering fan reactions and behind-the-scenes stories from the arenas and fan zones.
Athlete-centric storytelling; including preparing personalised video content libraries for athletes and teams to enable them to share directly with their followers, compiling an “Athletes in Action” series which featured athletes from all 72 teams, and directly engaging with the athletes for immediate distribution.
A multi-market strategy, with tailored content for key markets like India, Australia and the UK, focusing on team achievements and medal celebrations; alongside localisation of stories to maximise engagement.
Data-driven optimisation, with regular analysis of both web and social metrics and constant refinement of the content strategy to focus on high-performing topics; and leveraging trending platforms such as TikTok to drive explosive short-form video engagement.
“We could not have done it without Katy. She was absolutely instrumental to the strategy and the actual event, leading social with a pizzaz that kept the teams going and our results rocketing.”
