RESOURCES

SailGP is a global sailing racing league that travels and competes in international Grand Prix events and uses high performance and top-notch F50 foiling catamarans and other sailboats. SailGP races for a better future by measuring and reducing its entire carbon footprint and championing a world powered by nature. Many teams compete across a season of multiple Grand Prix events worldwide. 

The American billionaire-businessman Larry Ellison came up with the idea of SailGP along with prominent New Zealand yachtsman Sir Russell Coutts.

To increase ticket sales and awareness, SailGP enlisted Code3 to drive fan engagement and ticket sales through real-time event coverage, creative strategy, and social media advertising. Our client wanted to sell as many event tickets as possible and position the league as the most prominent event in the nation.

We were up for the challenge!

Today, many sports businesses and sailing leagues and championships operate in both traditional brick-and-mortar and online sales environments. And event tickets are most commonly bought online before a physical, in-person experience. On Feb 21, 2019, SailGP launched online ticket sales for its highly anticipated event in San Francisco. However, there was a decline in online ticket sales in 2021. Also, the lack of national awareness of the sport made things worse for our client.

Amidst many options for discretionary spending, SailGP was looking to drum up fan interest and passion and increase awareness. Increasing ticket sales was a big challenge for our client.

• Creative strategy 
• Media strategy
• Digital media
• Media buying
• TikTok advertising
• Data and analytics

From young professionals and local families with kids to out-of-town visitors, sailing fans come in many different forms. The team at SailGP knew that they needed to leverage a variety of solutions in order to find and target the right individuals who were likely to purchase tickets and go to the events.

Code3 and SailGP established a creative strategy with media support to reach a relevant audience of fans via online targeting tactics. We created a strategic social media ad campaign in order to generate awareness of the events and increase engagement, with the goal of driving conversions and increasing ticket sales.

After carefully crafting our strategy, Code3 launched highly targeted campaigns on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and other social channels to build awareness and increase ticket sales.

Keeping SailGP top of mind was our priority. In the past seasons, the media was ineffective and disjointed and a guessing game of “if we spend money, we think we will sell tickets.” For the new season, a systematic and prudent media approach was required that could deliver an effective and evergreen strategy, create a steadily increasing pool of hand-raisers and then nurture them to conversion: buying an event ticket. We prepared a multi-platform content calendar and a 10-day posting plan.

We used a multi-tiered marketing approach using paid and organic channels to create targeted Instagram and Facebook ads. Code3 also offered real-time event coverage on various platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, to boost fan engagement.

On-site at the SailGP Season Final, we prepared, executed, and managed content production and publishing for all US SailGP social channels, such as Facebook and Twitter. We also provided community management and responses to real-time events during the race. We also wrote more than 250 posts for five platforms that helped increase awareness. For our conversions campaign, Code3 used ad copy and imagery that created a sense of urgency to purchase tickets.

Overall, our paid search and paid social ad campaigns led to record attendance at the event. Multi-team collaboration was important as it allowed our bi-coastal teams to work together on real-time creative in response to PR opportunities. 

With real-time coverage, we posted instant replays and capitalized on moments on race days when SailGP’s audiences were online and most engaged. Our real-time event coverage offered the audience many options to engage. Using Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, and Twitter proved an effective organic strategy to get the fans involved. We also launched the brand’s organic TikTok channel using trends and engaging sounds.

With our services and social media efforts, SailGP saw a significant increase in ticket sales revenue and increased followers by 2,500. There was a 75.9% increase in engagement level, and IG reach improved by 576%.

Whether you want to increase audience engagement on your various social media channels or want to convert more of your social media audience into profitable paying customers, Code3 can help!

If you want to build accurate, streamlined, and efficient reporting for your brand using GA4, while simultaneously keeping CAC at an efficient level, Code3 can help. Working with Code3 is an opportunity to strengthen your brand by capitalizing on awareness across multiple platforms, channels, and markets to acquire new customers.

Code3 can help set up and implement your ad accounts, reporting tools, and analytics platform. We will create a comprehensive strategy for your brand that tracks each critical company benchmark and delivers measurable results. Contact us today to learn more.