Supporting sport with Contested
Find out more about a new app aiming to connect fans, players and businesses together.
What to get more content about your favourite sport and find out more about the players you love to watch?
Contested is a new platform for sports fans, players and businesses. They’re currently launching a new app, which fan can register interest for. You can also learn more about your favourite players by clicking on their profiles. (fans of Cliodhna Moloney and Sarah Beckett should check out these links)
Editor Jess Hayden, author of ‘The Red Roses: Behind the Scenes with the England Women's Rugby Team’, explains more:
Contested is a new platform built specifically for sports. With a mission to elevate athletes, we are building a platform to connect businesses to inspirational athletes, and empower fans to engage with and support their favourite sportspeople directly.
We know that the current sports ecosystem favours the big stars with a long tail of athletes that can get left behind, both in terms of media attention and financially. Thousands of top athletes, including gold medallists and world champions, barely make a living from their sport, and we want to change that.
Players can sign up to Contested and get a dedicated athlete page. Through the platform, we support them with their online profile and help them with the commercial side of things, by linking them to businesses who want to support athletes and reach new customers.
Contested helps athletes by first understanding where they need support, be that in telling their story, connecting with fans, or finding partnerships, and then helping them in that journey.
Fans and businesses can support athletes directly with small payments via their athlete pages; while businesses can partner with athletes as part of their marketing mix and support the athlete’s journey.
Whilst Contested helps all athletes, there are many more women’s sports that lag behind their male counterparts when it comes to attention and funding.
There are still biases that exist within the sports ecosystem and it’s important for us that the team working to make this change truly understands that.
We are so proud to be working with a team of athletes and have been delighted in their response so far. Handing the microphone over to athletes is really important to us, so the video we made with Poppy Cleall was particularly important in staying true to that.
Speaking with businesses, we know that there is more education to do for brands to understand the true value of these top athletes, and we cannot wait until we see the rewards from that.