Few sports I played, or took an interest in growing up, would be described as mainstream.
Horse racing had weekly terrestrial coverage on Channel 4, but wouldn’t exactly be topic of conversation in the school playground! Darts was in its pre-Hearn era, and cycle speedway held the amateur status it retains today.
Despite this, all would be covered regularly from the amateur game right up to elite level by well-staffed local (and national) media outlets – written and broadcast – who had the resource to proactively go out into the community and report on events.
Of course, this was in an era where if you wanted to read, listen or view news you’d buy a newspaper, tune into local radio or switch on the evening news. How people consume news today is very different and – going slightly off on a tangent – in most cases the public expect to have it for free.
It’s a personal view, but when I see the odd person complaining about not being able to read a high-quality, well-researched, article because it’s behind a digital paywall I wince inside.
Back on topic, my connection to greyhound racing was re-ignited in June 2021 when Kevin Boothby announced Oxford Stadium would reopen. We’ve been fortunate at Fortitude Communications to have built a great relationship with the team who we feel very much part of, despite being external.
One of our challenges in the first months of our work was putting greyhound racing back on the media map. The cynical view – and I hear this often – for the sport’s lull in mainstream coverage is ‘the media aren’t interested in greyhound racing anymore’.
I couldn’t disagree more.
With a good story hook, the right pitch and professional management every track has the potential to positively engage the media – written, radio and TV – to develop people’s awareness and understanding of the sport today.
We’ve had great success with this approach at Oxford and landed page leads in local newspapers promoting and showcasing the outcomes of our Gala race nights. TV slots have been secured, hooked on the remarkable background stories of our trainers. We’ve even had BBC reporters become a ‘greyhound trainer for the day’ as part of major weekend features. All this requires constant communication and relationship building with reporters to get stories to ‘land’.
Seeing an uptick in coverage for other tracks recently is really heartening to see – and it’s what’s required from a PR perspective. The untold stories greyhound racing has to tell Joe public (which still to this day we’re unearthing with a bit of talking and persistence) is remarkable.
Other aspects I personally believe greatly in are community engagement, social media and event management but we’ll save that for another day!
I’d be amazed if five minutes passed in any given day where greyhound racing doesn’t pop into my head. To work in the game I grew up with is very fortunate and hopefully that passion comes across in the output our team produces.
In the meantime, a fantastic 2023 means we’re looking to recruit a sixth member to join team Fortitude Communications full-time. We’re looking for someone with one to two years’ experience in a communications role who’s media savvy, organised, confident and an excellent writer!
If this sounds of interest to you or someone you know, we’d love to hear from you! You can view a full job description here.
Take it easy. Shaun.
