Episode 213 Snippets: Ryan Ellul of LADbible Australia Sport

Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 213: Ryan Ellul
@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 213 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Ryan Ellul, Sports Lead for LADbible Australia.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the
full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast
platforms and at www.dsmsports.net.

Ryan’s Career Path
“I studied business in Wollongong, which is just south of Sydney on
the coast in New South Wales…I studied business; I did a double
major in marketing and public relations. I knew when I started there
that one of my goals was I wanted to work in the NRL — the NRL is
the National Rugby League. It's the governing body for premier rugby
league competition in Australia. I followed that sport as a youngster
and have continued throughout my life. So that was one of my key
goals…I wanted to work there before I was 30.

“But continuing on from that, I finished up uni [and], to be fair, I
struggled a little bit after finishing university; it took me about eight
months before I got a job within the marketing space…I think it’s okay
that that’s the case. I think a lot of people who finish university or
college in America feel like they need to get a job straight away. I
think part of the reason why I didn't [was] I was probably a little bit
naive…I enjoyed university for the social aspect of things probably
more so necessarily than the learning. And then also I probably wasn't
as prepared as I could have been. So, just an interesting little moment
in my life.

“Then I landed my first job at ADMA. So ADMA, or A-D-M-A, is the industry body in
Australia for data-driven marketing and advertising. So it was actually a perfect start to
my career at this I’m at this industry body who, at the core of their job,focused around
all of the people within Australia and all of the businesses within Australia who worked
in the marketing and advertising space. So a few years down the track after working
through a marketing assistant role, and then into a coordinator role across traditional
marketing and also digital, I ended up with my first connection to the NRL…
“[It was] a really funny story. My boss at the time one day came in and she said, ‘Hey,
I'm just letting you know that we're heading to the NRL today. We're going to pitch to
them about ADMA membership and what it means and e're going to try and get them
on board.’ And I was pumped. This was, like, this is unreal. My worlds are starting to
collide. I can start to see there's perhaps an opportunity that I'll eventually land that
dream job.

“We got to the meeting and my boss…she would say it's unprofessional and when I look back today,
it probably was, but she pretty much just said ‘Look, we're actually not here to talk about
membership. We'll talk about it for a couple of minutes, but I just want to tell you about Ryan, and
why you should bring Ryan on to work at the NRL.’ It completely blindsided me; I didn't know she
was going to do that. But that one conversation, that one act, eventually led to me being hired there,
which I'll get to in a sec.
“I continued my job at ADMA, and then a role came up at the NRL probably about eight months
later. I applied for the role, didn't hear anything for a while and then I got a call from Nicole
Cheshire, who eventually would become my boss at the NRL, and she said ‘Hey, Ryan, I remember
you from when you came in from ADMA. I'm so sorry that we haven't got back to you; I was going
through about 300 different applications and people who've applied for this role, we'd love to get
you in for an interview.’ And then that was history. So Nicole, who I met at that time with my boss
when I was at ADMA, was the person who ended up hiring me.
“She was my manager for the first couple of years of my time at the NRL and we continue to be
really close friends and our work lives have just crossed paths again, which I'll touch on a bit later.”

“So that took me to my time at the NRL. I was fortunate enough to be
there for six seasons. I landed there well before my 30th birthday,
which was fantastic as well to be able to achieve that goal so early. My
time there was a progression. I started as a marketing coordinator
working across a mix of traditional and also digital, but then I really
kind of took the reins from a digital marketing perspective. Prior to
me being there, there wasn't really anyone in a digital marketing
capacity. We had a social team that sat separately. We then had a
more traditional marketing and fan engagement team. And then I
kind of came along and really pulled the reins of digital marketing and
set the direction for the next five or six years.

“During that time, there were some really interesting moments. One
was the bringing together of the social media team and the digital
marketing [team]. That was something that was in the works for a
couple of years and was probably one of the things that I felt made the
biggest difference to the business, in creating this hybrid team, which
was effectively called the customer marketing team, and in my most
senior role I was leading a team in that space. We were working quite
closely with our social media counterparts and it just created this
beautiful hybrid team. Unfortunately that didn't last forever and that
team was again separated just before I finished up. But it was
probably the best part of my time in the NRL.

“And then, you know, six years was a long time. We obviously went
through a year of COVID, there were resource cuts everywhere, like
all businesses across the world, and I just felt personally at the time
that it was time for me to find something new. I knew I wanted to stay
in sport, and so here comes Nicole Cheshire again. I was having a
conversation with her; she had recently moved on from the NRL as
well and she mentioned LADbible and they had a sports, role. So, a
coffee interview later, there was this opportunity presented at my feet
to head over to LADbible, to move into publishing; a place that I, to
be honest, never really considered.

“But I knew what LADbible were doing and I knew that they had
something that I wanted to be part of. I took a leap of faith and 12
months ago started my role as the sport lead at LADbible. I'll be
honest, it's been the best 12 months of my career. I've had the most
fun, I’ve met some amazing people,and there's so many amazing
things that are gonna be happening in the next couple of years for
LADbible, from a sport perspective, particularly. So I'm very excited
to be on that journey…

Ryan’s career tips based on his experience
“I'll jump into a couple of tips, I've got three. So my first is, when it
comes to opportunities presented, be a ‘yes’ person. I don't think you
need to be a yes person for your career or for your job or for your role,
but whenever there's an opportunity, I think there's a time to be a yes
person. Take those opportunities when they come. They might seem a
little bit outside of what you're comfortable with or what you're used
to, but there's no knowing where they'll go. And I think that, to me,
has been one of the greatest things that I've done is being a yes person
to those opportunities.

“The second is surrounding yourself with great people. When I moved
into a position where I was managing people, the greatest lesson I
learned — I can't remember who told me, but they said the biggest
thing about management is [to] bring in people who are better than
you and who have more knowledge than you, and nurture and
harness that knowledge because that's your role as a manager; it’s not
to be afraid of those people, not to try and push those people down
because if you're building a great team, you're going to elevate
everyone in that team. So that was really interesting and, for a lot of
people, it's quite a difficult concept to grasp, but that was a great piece
of advice and one that I would encourage people to take on as well.

“And then third, this is a bit of a sport analogy, but it’s getting
comfortable with the uncomfortable. So don't be scared of those new
things or those areas you're not familiar with. I think those are the
times when you learn so much about yourself and if you fail, it's okay.
You learn as much from a failure as you do from success and
potentially even more so. It's one of those things that I try and take
into my life, not just from a work perspective, but getting myself
comfortable with being uncomfortable has led to a lot of growth for
me, and it’s something that I'll continue to live by.”

Describing LADbible
“LADbible very much at its core is a social publisher. And it's a
publisher who primarily engages those in the age group 18 to 34;
that's kind of our sweet spot. It started as a page of sharing video
content of just everyday people, funny content, emotional content,
sports content. That's what it started as, and over time it has
morphed. We've kind of created the mission statement, which is
giving youth communities a voice by building communities that
laugh, think and act.

“So those three pillars of laugh, think and act — and they guide us in
all their decisions in all of the content, the platforms that we go to, the
partnerships that we create — they all fall back into making that
community laugh, think, or act. So I wouldn't compare us to probably
anyone. We've got 10 verticals and those verticals are continuing to
grow. So we've got LADbible, which is a little bit more pop culture and
entertainment. We've got SPORTbible, which is sport, we've got
GAMINGbible, we've got FOODbible, we've got ODDSbible, and then
we've got the whole UNILAD arm, so we've got UNILAD tech and
UNILAD Adventure — UNILAD is a little bit more underground, a
little bit more niche.

“So what we've done is we created the verticals and diversified them,
and then scaled them. So we’re bringing in these national audiences,
but we've also got this really kind of overarching social audience that
just likes to engage with good content. So it's hard to mirror us to
another publication. I think we're definitely our own. And fortunately
for us across our group we’re the number one social publisher in
terms of audience reach, which is fantastic for us, and we've got a very
considerable audience in the US, which is great as well.”

On starting out at the NRL and taking his data-driven marketing experience with
ADMA there
There was a lot of learning as I went. As you mentioned, I took a lot away from my
time at ADMA, they did things in a very structured, very by-the-book way, which
very much helped in establishing the direction that we took at the NRL. I kind of
stepped into my role at the NRL and there were a lot of things happening that just
didn't really make sense. There were email programs that a number of teams
within the business were utilizing, but with no central management of it, so we
didn't really have a great view of our customer; were kind of bombarding them with
potentially similar or potentially conflicting messages all throughout the day; which
you know, is not a great experience. We didn't really have a digital marketing
function. There was no digital advertising. Social advertising was pretty much non-
existent. A lot of these things kind of weren't there.

“And I took my inspiration both from my time at ADMA, just because
of how clean and specific they were around their operations. But then
also from a sport perspective, I spent a lot of time looking into the US
and what the US sports were doing — the NBA and the NFL were
probably the two at the time that I spent the most time looking at, and
just understanding exactly what they were doing. The biggest thing
for me was we really had to shift what we're doing to ensure that the
customer is first, and make sure that that experience for them feels as
seamless as possible, regardless of how difficult it may mean our jobs
are.

“And that takes a lot of time. It took a lot of time as well to build trust internally, and then
to be able to build the resources internally to build that team and that function out. So for
me, it was a couple of years of grinding, a couple of years of hustling, lots of long hours —
which is great when you're in sport, it doesn't feel like it's work because you're working in
sport and you're in your early to mid twenties, so you've got a lot more battery in your
motor and you're happy to work those longer hours. But yeah, it was a lot of hassle, a lot of
grinding.
“Those first couple of years were very much around learning on the go and trying to
implement things that I knew were best practice, and, and bringing people along for the
ride. That's the most important part — making sure those people who are making decisions
above you are along for the ride. One of the things that I've continued to work on, being as
good as a manager up as I am a manager down, and making sure my communication is
streamlined and those people that need to be in the know are in the know, and know
exactly what they need to know.”

On marrying digital and social, and taking a data-driven approach to
social and content
“To be honest, it's something that I think so many brands still struggle
with, especially sports brands and sports organizations. I see it a lot in
Australia, there's this kind of unknown or this gray area of what is
actually the role of social. There are a lot of exec executives who have
been in the game for many years and so their expectations of any
output or any expenditure is that it's going to be bringing in dollars
that can be tracked; so it's a very difficult conversation at that level.

“It's a very difficult conversation to tell your CEO or your C-level suite that you're
creating content just for fans to enjoy. There's not that tangible dollar to come back. But
if I take a bit of a step back — and I'll kind of go into the world of what the NRL was like
when I started. The social team was probably the one digital department that actually
existed and existed well. They were led by a guy by the name of Matt Henry, and Matt is
— I still listen to Matt today andI still take his advice on board. He's an extremely smart
individual, who has done a lot for my career, whether he knows it or not…
“He created a team that was very much focused around content, and he was able to sell
the idea that the social team should be assessed on how they grow an audience and how
they engage that audience and nothing else, which was fantastic to have a team that
could do so. The challenge for us was we were in marketing; for us, throughout any
campaign, we're working quite closely with social. They're the voices of the NRL. They're
the closest, aside from email to touching and talking to our fans.

“The challenge was that our goals were very revenue-focused and so we're
trying to align and work together on achieving revenue dollars from the
app perspective. The social team — they're focusing purely on growth and
engagement, and it led to this very interesting friction within the business
because our goals weren’t aligned. So I think the first thing that
businesses need to really understand is how do we align goals across
departments? Because I think without that, you're ultimately just going to
end up with the same friction points, where one team is given very clear
KPIs around audience and around engagement, and then another team is
very clearly given revenue goals, and those two teams have to co-exist
together. So setting really good goals across teams I think is extremely
important.

“It's definitely something that we learned along the way. We were able
to get to a point where it made a lot more sense for both teams. Both
teams had an understanding of, well, from a digital marketing
perspective, how can I help the social team? How can I drive more
data so that we have more first party data? How can I use our
channels to drive people to social and then vice versa? The social team
— we're able to understand ‘Okay, I understand now how I can
actually help drive revenue. I know how I can use content as part of
the marketing mix or as part of the consumer journey to actually drive
revenue. And I can still do my other things of growing that audience
and engaging that audience.’

“So ultimately for us, it always comes back to why is this content
valuable? And understanding the reason behind pushing out that content.
And that takes a lot of time. A lot of people to kind of strip back their ego
in some of those instances and go, you know what? You've spent a lot of
time on this piece of content and it's a great piece of content, but you
didn't ask yourself why we created this basic content, and it actually
doesn't make sense. You're actually spending a lot of time creating great
content, but it just doesn't actually make sense for what we're trying to
do.
“So always coming back to that, why is this content valuable to our
audience?”

On optimizing and personalizing content for audiences and platforms
“It's a good question, and I think first and foremost is wherever you're
creating content where you know your audience is, create content that's made
for that platform. I still say it so much and it's unfortunate when you see
people or brands putting 16x9 video on TikTok, and you see these sponsored
or branded content highlight pieces where — let's say, for example, a sport
has a branded partner and they’re showing the highlight from the game, and
the brand partner actually has the first eight seconds of the sizzle as just a
brand play. And you kind of think, well, you're not actually creating content
for the platform because the person who's going to be consuming this is not
going to get past the first three seconds of seeing that brand [ad].

“So I think the first thing is really just thinking about what platform we are
creating content on, and let's make sure we're creating content in the right
format for that platform. And also you don't have to play on every platform. I
think there's this requirement where, you know, as new social platforms come
out, you have to play on it and continue to play on every other platform.
“I think the brands that really succeed are the ones that really own the
platforms that they're on. And when they're resourced — a lot sport teams in
Australia, there's not a significant amount of resource — you have to be
selective. You have to really define exactly the audience that you're going after
and make sure you're creating that content on the platforms that they're on.
That's an extremely important thing for people to keep in mind…”

“We, especially at LADbible now, we’ve got an extremely talented and
growing team dedicated to data and insights across everything that we
do, whether it's across social, across web, across new technologies —
and those data points inform us significantly around the types of
content. Whether that be the length of the video across different
platforms or the style of video or the format of video, or the structure
of editorial content — we’re taking those insights in real-time to be
able to deliver the most appropriate content.

“We as a team are meeting daily on those things, especially some parts of our business at
[LADbible] where we've taken control of the channels and the strategy of the brand’s
social media channels. We're meeting with them daily to share insights around this is
what we're finding from the audience, they're really enjoying this style of content, so we're
actually going to go look harder on that and spend less time on this. Sometimes that's
really hard because especially when you're working with other brands, they’ve got this
that preconceived idea of ‘I want to spend all my time on YouTube or Twitter, and I want
to spend all of my time creating long form video,’ and then when you get data and insights
back saying, actually the fans are really loving just static meme content or they're actually
enjoying a lot more vertical video — it's very hard to challenge them on that. But I think
as you get better relationships with the partners those conversations become a lot easier
because ultimately you're just using data, and it's not based on your opinion. You're
taking data [and showing] this is proven, this is what our audience is doing, and these are
the actions, so therefore we need to pivot our approach accordingly.”

On following the data even when it feels counterintuitive
“I think to your first point there is way too much data; for any professionals
working in that space, there's way too much data. And you know, that's a good
thing; it's [also] a bad thing. You have to be selective around what data points
you do look at and what data points you kind of take with a grain of salt. So
yeah, I would a hundred percent agree with that.
“And then, totally, I think there are times where sometimes you do need to be a
little counterintuitive. You can't just rely on the data, especially where the
industry that we live in and work in — it's so creative [and] sometimes the data
points just aren't there or the data points aren't necessarily showing what you
feel they should be showing.

“So sometimes you do need to be counterintuitive. Like TikTok, for example — when I
was at the NRL, it was 2019 and TikTok had started to kind of creep into our culture in
Australia specifically, and I was someone who was quite early on that, not as a creator,
but just as a consumer. I thought, man, this platform is unreal. There are endless
opportunities for creativity. And it took a while to actually get that over the line at the
NRL to jump on board. It was kind of like, wow, this is a channel that actually goes
against a lot of our very corporate guidelines. It's very loose, there's not these really
stringent boundaries in which we can play. How do we actually go about this?
“And you made a very good point; you have to take a step back and say ‘You know
what, I'm not the target audience. I'm not the person who is meant to be consuming
this content’. So whilst I have an opinion on it, whilst I have thoughts on it, I have to
actually take a step back and go back to our original point — is this content valuable to
the audience that's on this platform and, and then go from there.”

On LADbible’s approach to sponsored content and keeping the quality high
“It's a question that we always get, and I would say it's especially hard when you've
got a new brand coming on board; that education piece is really important, [there
is] a lot of handholding, a lot of utilizing examples from previous content, and
branded content partnerships that we've done to just kind of get them to
understand what the value and role of LADbible is. And ultimately what we're here
to do is extend the reach of that brand in a way that they're potentially not
comfortable doing so on their own channels. That's often what we find; it's kind of
like ‘We really want to play in that space and we really want to target that youth
audience, but we just can't quite do it on our own platforms because they're a little
bit more corporate, they're a little bit more front-facing.’ So that's often where we
get approached to help extend into that youth audience and do it in a way that they
know works for that youth audience.

“That's our consistent message — it’s (that) over the past 10 years, we've
been able to grow to be this worldwide publication, to be the biggest social
publisher globally, so we know what we're doing. We know how to engage
this audience. We’re doing it daily. So, give us some direction; we'll
obviously ensure that you're along for the ride and we'll ensure that your
brand comes out the back of it in a positive way — but let us kind of drive
it. We'll bring you along for the ride and we'll show you the results at the
end. And fortunately for us, we've got a lot of repeat customers and I think
that talks to the fact of us being able to show that we can create this really
great branded content with another brand in a way that people are easily
able to engage with and not feel like they're being bombarded with this
really clunky branded content, which you often see across so many brands.

“I really feel for sporting organizations as well — sponsorships are
often the lifeblood of a lot of these organizations and unfortunately
their content is dictated by it. And one of the big learnings, especially
when I was at the NRL as well, was you really need the social team to
be involved in that commercial process. They need to be involved in
the ideation process, so that integration, as you said, was seamless
and it was really nice for the consumer. a

“The beauty about commercial content, as well, and this is probably
taking a step back from LAD, but the beauty of it is often some of the
branded content is actually content that sports fans might have not
ever been able to see if not for the sponsor, which is a beautiful thing
— they're often responsible for creating new content franchises, which
fans wouldn't have been able to get access to without that sponsor
coming on board. So when organizations think of it like that, they're
actually creating a new stream of content that they wouldn't have
been able to do without that injection of money or that partnership.”

On being willing to say no or imparting to the partner the value of LADbible’s
quality content for the sponsorship
“I mean, sometimes you kind of do need to take that approach. I don't think it ever
really gets to that point, fortunately, but we have to be conscious of the fact that
we're engaging an audience and we can't jeopardize the engagement of that
audience and the growth of that audience by putting something out there that we
don't truly believe has value for them. So it's definitely something that we have to
continually be conscious of. I think fortunately for us, we've been able to work with
so many brands here in Australia and globally that are prepared to be taken on the
ride and on the journey and understand that they can't just put a 30-second TV ad
on our social channels and be done with it. So we're in a fortunate position where
we haven't really had to [decline a brand partnership], but it's always something
that we do need to be conscious of.”

On trying new platforms and content types that may not guarantee metrics + how
success is measured in those cases
“I'd say first and foremost the beauty about LADbible is the way that the business is
structured allows for the leaders in the business to have a really good view of what's
coming and what's ahead. And that's primarily their goal. Their goal is not to be
stuck in what's happening right now, it's to really prepare the business and ensure
that we're across different technologies or platforms or experiences, and always be
thinking months and months ahead. And when there's an opportunity that's
identified that we could potentially bring into our businesses as part of our
portfolio or as part of our offering, we're able to very quickly put a team behind that
to spend time and resources researching, understanding what it actually means,
and then spend time working out how would it fit into the LADbible group. So from
a new experiences perspective, the business is set up so well in that space.

“I can't touch on specifics so much, but over the course of the next year or
two you're going to see so many new developments in that space, and it's
because we're set up in that way. I think when we start to talk about how
do we actually go about doing that from a branded perspective, there's
probably been a couple of instances — let’s say TikTok for example, from
a publisher perspective, I still don’t know if publishers are utilizing
TikTok in the way that they could be. In Australia, we’re the first
publisher to crack 1 million followers and the reason that we've had so
much success from that is we enabled and brought in people who are
dedicated to TikTok as a platform, and they kind of live and breathe that,
and we found this really cool niche of content that we're able to work with
across our TikTok.

“To be able to hit a million followers is a massive milestone for us, both
from a purely brand perspective, but also commercially. We're able to
find new ways to commercialize TikTok, which has been fun as well. And
again, it’s one of those things where we didn't really know what was going
to happen, we didn't know if it was going to be successful, but we've had a
number of brands who we've worked with from a commercial perspective
on TikTok and have been able to extend their reach on TikTok or help
them make a leap into TikTok, or help them grow their own TikTok
channels. That's a really great example of something we didn't really
know at the time where it was going to go or what use was going to be; it
was kind of like we know that there's value here, so we're going to spend a
lot of time thinking.

“Another example is last year was one of our fantastic partners, Amazon
Prime Video here in Australia — they were releasing Wheel of Time,
which is one of their big series… and they wanted to make a big splash
and wanted to do something different. That's always a great thing to hear.
It's like, okay, cool, you want to do something different? Well, we'll give
you something that's different. So we partnered with GABA, which is a
metaverse platform. You can create your own avatar and build worlds in
the metaverse. And we essentially recreated nine important areas from
within the Wheel of Time series. So we're talking castles, we're talking
farms — we recreated that in GABA and created this world where
basically all of the promotion that we did from our side happened in this
world.

“We held events in there, we had superfans in there, we had some of the actors
from the show in there and you were able to go in there and chat to them in this
metaverse, which was really interesting and really different. And when you ask
about what are the metrics and how do you measure the success on that — it's
very difficult because often it's just to make a big splash. It's just to make a lot
of noise. It's not necessarily about volume. The goal there was really bringing in
those really rich and invested fans to talk about it. And then what we do is use
some of our other more traditional content to bring in a wider group of fans. So
we're able to use original video and editorial to bring in some of those wider
groups of fans, and go really hard on that niche audience using this
collaboration with GABA. So that was really interesting. We had a lot of brands
come to us afterwards and say ‘How do we get involved in something like this?’

“And then there are so many others; we're playing quite heavily in the AR and VR
space. We've got a team in the UK that are resourced to build this for us internally,
which is really cool, and we've done a few cool activations in Australia around that.
And then in the next 12 to 24 months, there's so much on the horizon. But I think in
12 months time we should pencil something in to chat about all those things that
have happened in the past couple months, because I think there's going to be some
really crazy activations that’ll happen.”
“It's going to be an interesting time — it's always listening to people that we bring on
at LAD who are in their early twenties, they're in their first year or second year out of
university, but they've got all of this native knowledge of the intricacies of channels;
it's unbelievable and it's great. I go back to that point around surrounding yourself
with great people. You can't be bringing in a person who's been in social for 20 years
necessarily to be better at TikTok than someone who has grown up and lived it...”

Ryan’s favorite content or campaign from his time at LADbible so far
“I'll give you a couple. The first is we created this series called In My
Own Words. It's a platform for us to be able to speak with athletes
and get them to share their stories. The first big piece that we did
together was with a boxer by the name of Tim Tszyu; [he is] an
Australian boxer and probably most famously his dad was one of the
best boxers for Australia…So he has this aura about him; this legacy of
his father.

“So to have him talk about his own legacy and who he is and all the
things that he loves outside of boxing and the world of boxing and just
who he is as a person was really interesting. It was my favorite. We
got to go to his gym, very much a community gym. There was a
community class going while we were there interviewing him. We got
to watch him train and go through a two and a half hour workout. He
was there with his trainer and they're all these really hardcore
Russians. It was such an interesting insight into an athlete and
someone of his talent…So that's definitely my favorite piece of content
that we've done.

“And then the other piece is something that's recently happened, which we just
announced 48 hours ago. This year we’re an official sponsor for the women's NRL
team the Parramatta Eels. It’s their inaugural season this year. We've entered into a
two year partnership with them, and will see us with SPORTbible Australia
branding across their jerseys — but importantly it allows us access to their playing
squad. And what we're going to do is create a whole bunch of content throughout
the season and throughout the year bringing about their personalities, who they are
as athletes, [but also] who they are outside of being athletes — their personalities
and help them raise their profiles. And importantly for us is investing in women's
sports in Australia. So it’s something that we're really excited about and we can’t
wait to see come to life. And we've had such a great reception in the last 48 hours
from, from people in and outside of the industry. So definitely going to be up there
with one of my favorites, I think throughout my whole career.”

The most under-utilized or underrated social media platform and why
“I think it's TikTok. I wanted to say Twitter because I think Twitter in Australia is
probably underutilized, and especially from a learning perspective, I learn pretty
much everything I know from Twitter. But I think I'm going to say TikTok, it took
over the number one spot for apps in 2021 and it's becoming part of people's
vernacular. It's like ‘Oh, did you see that TikTok dance? Or did you hear that
TikTok song?’
“I wrote a piece in 2019 when I first started deep-diving into TikTok and I kind of
said, you know, TikTok is going to be the new launch platform for artists. It's going
to be the place where artists are now going to launch their music. To be fair, it kind
of has been. There's been so much new music that has originated on TikTok. I think
it's an amazing platform, it’s built on creativity.

“And I don't know if you know this story, but there's a young TikToker up from the
UK named Francis Bourgeois and he’s got this amazing passion for trains and
trainspotting. So he literally just creates videos of himself at different training
stations or different areas with steam trains and electric trains, and all these trains
flying by and he just gets so excited and he's got this camera that sits over his face,
which has got that fishbowl effect and you can just see the joy in his face. So he
used TikTok to create content about trains. Recently, he just signed a deal to be the
face of a Gucci and The North Face collaboration, which is unreal. I think it just
shows the power of TikTok as a platform for creative.”
“So I think you can get on TikTok and it doesn't matter what type of business, it
doesn't matter what kind of person you are, you can create content about things
that you love and you’ll find an audience and if you do it well, you can engage them
and create a massive following.”

Which US-based sports league and which US-based athlete are the most popular
in Australia?
“It has to be the NBA. i think the NBA is the most popular sport league. I think
there are some [other] contenders — the NFL, college football, even the PGA Tour
I think is starting to increase in prominence over here in Australia, but I definitely
think the NBA is far and above leading the rest.
“And then it's really hard to go past LeBron James, from an athlete perspective. I
think you started to see in the last couple of years of his career, Tom Brady started
to harness social a little bit more, probably because he realized that his career was
coming to an end and he needed to ensure that he built an audience and could
remain relevant post-career. But I think you can’t go past LeBron James.”

Among the sports leagues in Australia, which one is Ryan buying stock in today?
“If I was buying stock and I wanted a conservative return, I'd invest in the AFL.
They run a really good operation. They're investing significantly into the women's
game, they're expanding into the Asian market really well, and they've also got a
really strong membership community. Their membership numbers are just
massive. They've got two extra teams compared to the NRL, but I think they’ve got
something like 800,000 extra members across those teams compared to the NRL.
“So they built this really strong community around Aussie Rules [football]. And
when you move — a lot of people say when you move to Melbourne, the first thing
people ask you is which AFL team you go for. So I definitely from conservative
perspective would go with them.

“If I was wanting to take a bit more of a punt, I'd probably invest in the
NBL, which is the local basketball league here in Australia. They're doing
some really great things. They went through a bit of an identity crisis for a
little bit, but they've now realized they're not competing with the NBA.
They can't compete with the NBA, it's virtually impossible. But what they
can do is they can be the second best league in the world. They can be a
breeding ground for future stars. You see what happened when LaMelo
Ball came out here. He absolutely killed it and he's absolutely killing it
now in Charlotte. That's the thing that they can now do and that's what
they want to own. And they're doing it really well, they’re powered by
some really great technology and some really good people. So I think
there's some interesting developments to come from the NBL…”

Ryan on the global and local nature of meme culture
“I think they are definitely global, especially now that there's so many ways to be connected
with countries outside of your own. I think that helps so much in meme culture — people
can, people can very easily connect with memes that are created in the US or created in the
UK or created in a completely different country to theirs.
“I think the beauty of it though, is you can have these global memes that everyone can
resonate with, but then you've also got these very local memes that there would be certain
people or certain images or certain clips that only people from Australia would know who
that person is or why that's relevant.
“So I think it's both; there's a reason to say that they're global, but then there's also these
really local memes. I think that's the beauty of it. It means that you can have a variance of
content.”

On the future of the business model and proposition for media
publishing companies
“I think one thing that will remain constant is those brands that will
succeed are going to be the brands that provide that connection to a
community or audience. You look at the NFT space at the moment and
the success from those are it's people are able to foster an audience,
they're able to create a connection to a community, and that's how
they're creating success. And I think that's going to continue
regardless of where that community or where that audience is playing.
Those brands that will succeed are going to be doing that well.

“I think there's definitely going to be some consolidation, whether
that's bigger media companies bringing in some of the smaller media
companies, whether it's potentially social media publishers acquiring
other social media publishers — I'm not really sure. I think there are
so many possibilities in that space. I think broadcast, original content,
streaming [is[ going to continue to rise in importance, and I think
social platforms are going to play such a big role in that in the next 10
years.

“In Australia specifically, I think we're probably a little bit behind in that space, but you put your
Amazons and your Twitters and whatnot who are purchasing rights to NFL and NBA games, so I
think that will continue to evolve. I also think that the broadcast and the streaming space is due
for some consolidation as well in the next 10 years. You know currently, if you just want to watch
soccer in Australia or football, you have to have like four streaming platforms to be able to watch
them all. It's a little bit crazy, so I can see some consolidation happening there…
“Advertising will still very much play a role. I don't think that that will ever leave, but I think what
it looks like will be different. There'll be a lot of scrambling in the metaverse around advertising —
I've seen a couple of companies coming out and already own billboards in Decentraland and
whatnot. So I think that will obviously play a role, but the format of it will be different.
“So, I think the media business will be around. The format of it is going to look very different. I
think there’ll potentially be a lot more individual or consumer-led media as well; maybe a little bit
more power to individuals rather than these big corporations as well.”

Which software tool or tools does Ryan tend to spend the most time
for his day to day?
“For me, it's probably CrowdTangle. I spend a lot of time in
CrowdTangle just understanding what's happening from a content
perspective across Facebook and Instagram, both from a branded
perspective, from other sports, from other media organizations. It’s a
really great listening tool to understand what kind of content is
popping off.”

The best meal to get in Sydney and where to get it
“I'll give you two because, [both] for very
different reasons. The first is Bistecca in Sydney.
It's
a beautiful place if you love meat. It’s a really cool
vibe as well., like this really cool underground
space. Good wine and they do amazing dry aged
steaks cooked Florentine-style. And you can't go
wrong with that.
“But then for the view — Cafe Sydney. It's got
amazing food…you will have unbelievable food,
but the view at night time — you can see the
[Sydney] opera house, the [Sydney] harbor
bridge…It's an amazing place to sit and have a
meal.”

Bonus food question – the food that tourists visiting Australia have to
have for an authentic Australian experience
“I'm going to go with something that's not a food, but a drink. I think
that anyone coming to Australia has to try a freshly poured schooner
of VB, which is Victoria bitter. It’s a beer that you just have to have.
It's iconically Australian. A Lot of people think it's very lower-class,
but I think a freshly poured schooner of VB is one of the best beers
you can drink.”

Which metaverse platform will we most be talking about a year from
now?
“I think it's going to be Meta. I can't imagine that we're not going to
be talking about them. And potentially it'll be for good reasons and
potentially to be for bad reasons. But I think it's going to be hard not
to be talking about them. But if we're talking purely — a Decentraland
or a Sandbox — I'm really excited about Sandbox. I'll be following
Sandbox quite closely.”

The Australian athlete we should all be following on social media and
why
“My favorite athlete on social is a guy by the name of Josh Addo-Carr.
He plays in the NRL and he has this personality and charisma I don't
think I've ever seen in anyone else. He's just genuinely infectious and
so many Aussies love him outside of being rugby league fans. So I
think from a social perspective, he's amazing, and he's unbelievable
on the football field as well.”

Ryan’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
“Jeremy Darlow (@JeremyDarlow) is the author of Athletes Are
Brands Too. His content is very much focused around athletes and
brands and how athletes are shifting to be more of their own
individual brands. I love his insights and I've read his books. I think
he's great. He's very true to his brand, which I love as well.”

Where to find Ryan and SPORTbible and LADbible on digital/social
media
Ryan is @RyanEllul13 on Twitter and Instagram and find him on
LinkedIn
And check out @sportbibleaustralia and @ladbible and @ladbibleau
across all social platforms

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
Thanks again to Ryan for being so generous with his time to share his
knowledge, experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me
on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net.

Episode 213 Snippets: Ryan Ellul of LADbible Australia Sport

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