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Transforming fan experience: UK Sport introduces new engagement strategies for Olympic and Paralympic sports

Published 15 May 2025

UK Sport is thrilled to announce a groundbreaking partnership with creative studio Weirdo to launch two innovative fan engagement pilots: the first focussed on collaboration across urban sports and the second the Athlete Creator Club.

This partnership aims to explore how to enhance the visibility and engagement in Olympic and Paralympic sports outside of Games time.

Both initiatives, starting from Summer 2025, are part of a wider programme of transformation work to create a more sustainable future for British Olympic and Paralympic sport.

UK Sport supports over a thousand elite athletes across the UK, competing globally and supported by events on home soil. Despite the unity and excitement during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, maintaining athlete and sport profiles year-round has been challenging. The new partnership with Weirdo seeks to address this by testing how we might create a centralised fan engagement service, to help support growing reach and relevancy of sports and athletes beyond the Games.

The urban sport pilot will see four National Governing Bodies working together to create a shared editorial platform to bring the stories of their sporting communities to life. Meanwhile the Athlete Creator Club is supporting six athletes to experiment with creating content that helps them reach new fans and build their profile across social media.

Simon Morton, Director of Events, Sporting System and External Affairs at UK Sport, commented: “As an Olympic and Paralympic community we recognise that we cannot stand still. Across sport and society there are ever-changing audience expectations that we need to face into. Through these pilot projects we are hoping to innovate and evaluate how we can grow engagement with our sports and athletes, allowing us to use these learnings to support British Olympic and Paralympic sport in a way that is ready for the future.”

Lewis Evans, System Master Planning Manager, added: “We are excited to be collaborating with Weirdo on these two initiatives. They bring extensive creativity, ambition, and authenticity, and understand the aspiration to embed Olympic and Paralympic sport into modern culture. I cannot wait to get going and see the impact we can have.”

Weirdo, founded in 2020, is renowned for blending sport, entertainment, and culture to create content that celebrates originality, distinctiveness, and diversity. Their impressive client roster includes Arsenal FC, Reddit, lululemon, Bumble, Snapchat, and the BBC. The London-based company leverages The Index, a unique database of over 2,000 grassroots community groups across the UK, to grow and nurture fandoms through inclusive storytelling and modern media thinking.

Louis Persent, Founder of Weirdo, said: “This is a project that in every respect represents our mission as a company. It is a dream for us to take on this huge challenge with so much scope to be creative, experimental, and ambitious. It is an honour to play a role in shaping the future of Olympic and Paralympic sport in this country, and we're excited by UK Sport's vision to build a new kind of fandom for these sports and their incredible athletes.

“Before the creative industries, my career was in track and field as a 400m runner. A torn achilles ended that journey for me, but it's been an amazing full circle moment to be back in the world of Olympic and Paralympic sport, and I can't wait to see what we can build together with UK Sport, the sports, and athletes.”
 


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15 May 2025
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