How WTA Fuels Fan Engagement with PhotoShelter Content Distribution

The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) is a global leader in women’s professional sports, with 1,600+ players representing nearly 100 nations across the globe. To elevate the profile of women’s tennis, and accelerate growth for fans, players, sponsors, and other stakeholders, the WTA needs a high volume of visual content and a fast and easy way to deliver that content to players and tournaments to post on social media.

The challenge: Building up the WTA’s brand fan base

As WTA’s Senior Director of Digital Production and Broadcast Marketing, Beth Hinson’s job is all about growth and creating value across WTA’s partners. She helps oversee social content, content production, and works with broadcasters to get their content onto digital channels. Getting that content directly to players and tournament accounts helps grow the brand’s fan base on social media, but their content distribution process wasn’t delivering:

• Manual content sharing to players. Players often had to request their own images from WTA games. That means content wasn’t being shared during peak media moments, and athletes didn’t benefit from real-time fan engagement.

• Inflexible, outdated content distribution platform. WTA’s prior content distribution platform, Opendorse, lacked flexibility, and the development team was unwilling to tailor the platform to WTA’s specific needs. “We just didn’t like what we were seeing at Opendorse,” Beth recalls. The platform also wasn’t user-friendly and didn’t work well with WTA’s digital asset management system.

• Lack of brand awareness. “A lot of people may not know the WTA brand,” explains Beth, “But they know our players, and their reach is so much larger than our reach alone.” Beth needed the WTA audience to make the connection between their players and the brand so fans would watch more tennis and attend more events.

“Players would reach out to our comms team and say, ‘Hey, can I get that photo of me?’ It was all very manual.”

Beth Hinson, Senior Director of Digital Production and Broadcast Marketing, WTA

The solution: Seamless content distribution with PhotoShelter

PhotoShelter’s social content distribution tool was a game-changer for the WTA. The user-friendly, straightforward platform made it easy for the organization to get content to players with a huge ROI. Here is how the WTA is powering their social media content distribution workflow with PhotoShelter and building the WTA brand:

• Easy-access content for players and sponsors. PhotoShelter’s powerful and intuitive content distribution platform helps WTA build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders. Beth provided this example: “When we released a sponsored video with Sloane Stephens and Morgan Stanley…everything was sent via PhotoShelter.”

• Player content drives brand promotion. “We want people to associate the brand with the players,” explains Beth, and PhotoShelter helps the WTA do just that. “It’s valuable for the players to post a clip with the WTA logo on it,” explains Beth. The content they share with players helps to promote the organization’s events like the WTA Tour, increasing fan engagement and attracting more attendees.

• Brand growth across the board. During WTA’s rebrand, 300+ branded assets were sent out directly via PhotoShelter to 150+ players to help highlight the campaign and bring WTA new audiences. They’ve even expanded coverage to their lower-ranked players in an effort to build up those brands, too.

“Being able to provide content to our players and tournaments helps build their brands, and ultimately, they are the voice of the WTA. So when we send players branded assets, they’re publishing them, and people are starting to make the connection… we’re really seeing it extend our brand.”

Beth Hinson, Senior Director of Digital Production and Broadcast Marketing, WTA

• Analytics help with strategic planning. With built-in tracking to see what content is shared and how it performs on social media, Beth’s team can iterate in real time, cutting down on redundant work and leading to more strategic content creation – only sharing the content that works.

• Unbeatable customer support. PhotoShelter’s development team demonstrated a strong commitment to addressing the WTA’s unique needs and designing a custom solution that aligned with their budget. “They have always been willing and able to jump in and work with us…always shifting and asking us ‘What’s the feedback from our players?’” Things like that help shape the tool.

“PhotoShelter has become a household name with our players. I know when our social team hasn’t immediately uploaded photos because a player will come up and say, ‘I haven’t gotten any photos yet.’ So they know all about it… It ultimately helps us build relationships with these players, and trust.”

Beth Hinson, Senior Director of Digital Production and Broadcast Marketing, WTA

PhotoShelter has been a brand growth game-changer for the WTA

Sharing content quickly and easily has been a game-changer for the Women’s Tennis Association. With PhotoShelter, the WTA can now get branded content into the hands of athletes and fans in real time, keeping players and sponsors happy, increasing engagement, driving ticket sales, and promoting their events, all while building the WTA brand.

“PhotoShelter is huge for the players’ personal brands. And now we can get WTA content to them in a seamless fashion.”

Beth Hinson, Senior Director of Digital Production and Broadcast Marketing, WTA