The TikTok GamePlan: To Magnify Women’s Sport

0:02Hello, I'm Leaders MD Laura McQueen and welcome to the Leaders Sport Business Podcast and the first episode in a new series called the TikTok Game Plan. Over the course of several episodes across the year, we'll be exploring the social giant's approach to sport through the prism of some of its key executives and content creators. In this first episode of the series, we dig into TikTok's game plan for magnifying women's sport. To help us do that, we called upon the services of the queen of TikTok herself, England goalkeeping legend, Mary Earps, who announced her retirement from international football a few days ago, having won 53 caps and helped her country to a Euros win and a World Cup final.

0:45She has also found herself central to the battle for mainstream recognition that women's football has been fighting for, particularly through the campaign to get Nike to manufacture and sell her replica goalkeeping jerseys. Joining Mary was TikTok's North American sports lead Kat Marquez and former basketball player and coach Chloe Pavlich, who is now the chief growth officer of startup three-a-side women's basketball league Unrivaled. I went along to chat to Mary, Kat and Chloe at TikTok's first ever UK Women in Sports Summit in London in May. And the first question I asked was to Kat, what is the unique opportunity for women's sport on TikTok?

1:23So we're here at the UK Women in Sports Summit, TikTok's first one, I think, right, Kat? That's correct. And we are gearing up for a fantastic women's sport of summer. Summer is looking very heavy on the women's sport, which we're excited about. But we are here today to hear a little bit about how you as athletes and organisations and TikTok itself are thinking about women's sport and the opportunity for women's sport. And how to essentially create a community of women on TikTok, because it's a huge opportunity. So to do that, leaders, we're excited to welcome Kat Marquez, who is the North American sports lead for TikTok.

2:05Woo! Yeah, there you go. Kat, talk to us a little bit about how TikTok are thinking about the next few months and what you think is the unique opportunity for women's sport particularly. Yeah, on TikTok, every sport has the opportunity to succeed and underrepresented voices are celebrated. In fact, 29 % of our users say that on TikTok, they've either discovered a new sport or discovered a new sporting event, which goes to show the immense discoverability power that TikTok has. When it comes to women in sports in general, obviously, this kind of core tenet translates. In fact, we're seeing massive growth in content featuring content with hashtag women in sports.

2:49And this features content from professional footballers to grassroots amateur players. And to date, the hashtag has over 1.3 million posts, and that number is increasing significantly. And then when you look at athletes, especially female athletes, they are coming to TikTok to break traditional media norms and really taking to TikTok to control their narrative. One really great example of this is Alona Mar. And you'll notice that on TikTok over the past few years, hashtag women's rugby has grown 52%, which is remarkable. And of course, much of that success can be attributed to Alona Mar and everything that she's done for the game of rugby.

3:33So we need to find more Alona Mar is what we're hearing. But we've got a couple with us that can... I mean, I'm interested in delving into the opportunity to have control of that. And I sort of feel like we need a buzzer every time we mention authenticity. But I feel like we've got two great people in the room that can help us bring that to life a little bit. So we're delighted to be joined by, I think, the queen of TikTok, Mary Ertz. It's heavy that. Yes, she is. Is that a name you call yourself? I personally don't identify as queen of TikTok on a daily basis, but I am more than happy to be addressed as such.

4:07Mary. And then to my left, we've got Chloe Pavlich, who is the chief gross officer. Have I got that right? Yeah, you did. Of Unrivaled, which for our UK listeners, you're going to have to probably explain a little bit about that. But you're also a content creator yourself, right? So let's talk a little bit about what is unique around TikTok when it comes to having control of that opportunity to connect with the audience. So, Mary, I'm interested to hear from you. What do you love about the platform? What gets you genuinely excited about engaging with your audience on the platform? I think for me, TikTok has always been a platform over the last few years since I started to be unapologetically myself.

4:48So I see myself as a little bit of a goofball. Just I'm not, in my opinion, a particularly posy person. If someone takes a picture, I feel a little bit uncomfortable. Whereas I found myself finding it quite easy to set up the camera. I mean do a silly TikTok trend or share a little bit of knowledge about women's football or goalkeeping in some way and I found that the fans really enjoyed it they felt like they saw a part of me that maybe they didn't see before and they really related to a lot of the stuff that maybe I was talking about or being vulnerable about online so um yeah for me it's been it's been really great when you say you use that word relatability do you think about that consciously when you're creating content like what's going through your mind when you're thinking about creating content that you want to be relatable but you also probably don't want to overthink it like how are you thinking about it day to day when you create the content itself um I think what's probably more recently I've come away from is doing like lots of trends I think that I've I think that's what I did a lot of when I was growing on the platform and I think it falls really nicely when I'm with my teammates to kind of do that kind of stuff but most of my time obviously I'm kind of focusing on my own individual athlete life and day-to-day stuff so I've found it um yeah really enjoyable and I think that matches kind of where the the direction the algorithm's gone to in terms of like storytelling and showing what you get up to in day-to-day life and sometimes for me that's a little bit uncomfortable but what I've found the fans really enjoy so sometimes I'll post a video and I think so boring but like I'm just going to experiment with it I'm going to see if it reaches someone and equally sometimes you can post a video which doesn't get that many views but for you it was important and equally sometimes I'll post something I think oh that was absolutely terrible like looks dreadful sound quality is awful and it'll it'll just fly and so I still think that that there's this unpredictability of what people really enjoy um but I've just found that the more I've just done what's authentic to me it's just yeah more enjoyable for other people and Chloe does that resonate yeah well you said a bunch you both said a bunch that resonates a lot with me because first I use the women in sports hashtag for my own content on TikTok, which I think is awesome.

6:55And I've also found even some of the people that we hired at Unrivaled, I would just go through that hashtag and just kind of see as we were looking for different contractors and freelancers. But to your point about TikTok just feels like just such a safe space for me. I think a lot of times as a creator, I just overthink on what I want to do and what I want to post. But TikTok is the one place where I just try a bunch of different things, which is the same kind of mantra that we've taken for Unrivaled. We had no playbook. We don't know what exactly is going to hit or resonate with an audience.

7:38Well, let's test out different formats on TikTok, which we just started doing more and more of. But I just feel like anytime I post on TikTok, like, yes, there are negative comments, but I used to want to get into acting. So I started doing skits on TikTok. And that's how I slowly started to blow up a little bit, just because I had a passion to do that. But I was like, I feel really weird posting this on another platform and maybe people I do know judging me, like, what is this girl doing? and you know on TikTok they'd be like well where's part two like what happened to this character and it was just me and a bunch of different hairstyles just trying things but yeah not to you know do the authentic the authenticity we need the buzzer aspect but I think anytime when you're taking the microphone to be able to tell your own story you can just try different things and the same thing goes for athletes and I think that's why they're even posting more and more on a platform like TikTok.

8:41This would be a good time to explain Unrivaled for our UK uneducated audience. Yeah. Go ahead and tell us give us the the idea because it's super fascinating I know there's loads of smaller sports globally that will be thinking how can they launch something from the ground up so tell us your story. Yeah well so first things first if you guys ever want to take a trip to Miami, please make sure you put Unrivaled on your itinerary and here's why. So it's a totally different format and concept of basketball because when you hear three-on-three, people know that three-on-three is in the half court, but Unrivaled, three-on-three is full court.

9:19So there's 36 players and we have six clubs. So that may resonate with the UK audience because I know they're used to football clubs. For us, we have basketball clubs, which are teams. And the whole idea and the premise was the fact to just be able to give women athletes and women's basketball players in particular more opportunities to be able to play basketball within the United States and not necessarily have to go overseas. Because essentially, these athletes would be coming off of the WNBA season and then you wouldn't really hear or see from them. And it was kind of like a blackout. So it's kind of like, how do we build off of the momentum happening from the WNBA season and celebrate these players so that brands can also connect with them so they can continually be marketed throughout the year?

10:11So this kind of always on concept for our athletes and not just hearing from them in the summer. Because for unrivaled we play during traditional basketball season which is January to March. And how has TikTok been a part of that growth journey? Has that been a tool for you to be accelerating the growth and fan engagement? Yeah so we had the ability to create content with our athletes and what we found right now even though we're out of season TikTok users are consuming our content at a higher rate than they were during season which is really cool for us because one they're curious about our players they're curious about unrivaled and now um using that type of data and seeing what type of different content that they like is helping us dictate what our content strategy is going to be during the year and i know mary you were here yesterday in london at the netball super league and the fair cup final what's your take on women's you're in football but women's sport you're obviously a passionate fan about that you are on tiktok talking about other sports how do you think about the opportunity for women's sport and fans of women's sport when it comes to engaging with audiences and that cross-pollination between the sports yeah for me um I mean um I'm going by the tagline women's sport for the win like just at all times in my day-to-day life so for me I think that women's athletes women's sport athletes or anyone who's involved in women's sport whether you're a referee whether you are a fan or whether you're a parent or whatever you can all relate to the fact that it's probably been a pretty tough journey the investment's not there there's been a lot of obstacles and journeys and I think we all have so much in common that we can all share in and different sports are at different stages in their journey and obviously since the year is in 2022 the lionesses and women's football has had an incredible surge absolutely unbelievable um but there's still a long way to go and also other sports aren't necessarily at that stage for example in England and also all over the world but you can see from WNBA for example and like the women's basketball in the US like how far that can travel globally and what impact that can have and I think that I want to be able to share that share my experience help other athletes or other sports to to get to to where I am or get to where we've been able to go to in women's sport um in women's football and I just think that the more that we cross over the more we talk the more we show up for each other I just think there's so much synergy there um and um yeah I think it's just better for us as a collective to to move forward together do you see that in um sort of I guess the fan and the community that you have on TikTok that there's and maybe Kat you can share some data with us I'm sure around female audiences engaging with different sports and and kind of the that your audience is interested if you're at a rugby women's rugby match or a netball match oh yeah for sure I mean I recently um created a t-shirt with my love of the game the love of women's sport um which basically kind of showcases the incredible events that we've got in women's sport this year so women's sport this year as you touched on earlier like there's okay sorry guys in England we've got the euros we've got the rugby world cup we've got the cricket world cup netball are also going really strong the athletics it's going really strong so I wanted to create a t-shirt off my clothing brand ME27 to sort of celebrate that and I sort of kind of created it it was a little bit goofy I launched it on TikTok in typical Mary fashion and I was blown away actually by how many people interacted and in person online emails comments and whatever from all different sports so I showed up to the rugby launching it so it wasn't launched in a women's football setting it was launched in a rugby be setting so cool and then the players were like this is amazing like let us know if we can help and so I gave them a bunch of samples at the time not the finished product because I didn't know if it was gonna go anywhere you know and I think that goes back to your point Chloe about with I'm with TikTok it's very experimental I feel really comfortable to experiment like the consequence of failure is really not a thing at all it's just like oh whatever that didn't work redirect redirect and I think that going there doing it uh launching people like oh my god Mary what about the cricket and I was like oh my god you're so right didn't even think about the cricket but I've been able to incorporate the cricket make a few edits of the t-shirt to include them then suddenly the cricket are inviting me somewhere because they're like yeah Mary you want to show up in women's sports spaces come to ours netball it's the same and then the netball are also called the roses so I've got this t-shirt with a lioness roses and a crown and it sort of incorporates a lot of symbolism from english national team sports and so yeah i know that's a really long answer but my my point being is showing up in these spaces is really important and then being able to create that t-shirt that so many people who weren't necessarily a fan of football were talking about then the football fans were talking about it then the cricket fans and then suddenly i've got a t-shirt that says women supporting women and then there's fathers there or grandfathers there or male allies who are going, hey, like, what about men supporting women?

15:22Like, we're here too. And suddenly you've got this whole, it just snowballs. That's awesome. Yeah, that was a lot of information. No, no, no, it's stupid. And I saw MIE27 is your brand, right? Yeah. So what's driving you when you're talking about that creative process and experimenting? Is that a passion project? Is it a business in your mind? Like, what does that mean for you as an athlete slash business in the future? I mean it's it's a combination of a lot of things like I think I always wanted to have my own clothing line okay um for whatever reason I thought this would be a great idea I had my own goalkeeper academy when I was a little bit younger and I have a business degree so I've always been a little bit business minded and entrepreneurial in that way and then the whole goalkeeper shirt situation happened and I was like you know what this is an opportunity to just dive in and go for something I'm in a position where maybe I can invest a little bit and if it doesn't work out then I you know it's not going to be like my life savings gone if you know what I mean I can sort of afford to experiment a little bit so I did and then again launched on TikTok so I ended up posting something in a comment on one of my videos which said like something special coming soon follow MAE27 or something and it created a group of people of maybe about a thousand who just followed this account from one TikTok comment and it gave me almost like a control group of people who I could run things by who were super invested nice and so yeah it's like definitely a passion project for sure but also hopefully one day I can turn it into um yeah a real business because right now it's it's not like a a business that makes a tremendous amount it's just covering costs it's more about the message to the world but one day would I love it to be a mainstay in women's football clothing women's sport clothing merchandising for sure it's going to take a little bit of time to build but yeah that's that's the plan you're thinking about it now though of course of course yeah she's got her own focus room and everything well we're talking about women's sport and obviously the the uniqueness on you know this platform and the community can build from tiktok's perspective what what do you see accounts or individuals doing brilliantly that you you think is kind of i guess the best in class when it comes to nurturing the community on the platform yeah one of the things actually that mary you mentioned and chloe you of tapped into was that TikTok really allows you to reinvent yourself and experiment.

17:40And I think that's what's really widening this funnel and allowing more women to participate in sports. It's far more accessible. There are far more entry points. You don't necessarily need to know the X's and O's of a sport in order to feel like fandom is accessible. And so you might follow an athlete that you learn is a chef on TikTok first, and then you discover that they're an athlete second. And I think that's so core to so many athletes, kind of TikTok presences, which is a beautiful thing. And, you know, on TikTok, the Olympics account is one that I love. If you think back to the Olympics coverage over the summer, you'll of course see that much of their coverage included traditional kind of competition highlights.

18:21But it also showcased athletes as humans first and athletes second. And it was a great way for TikTok to really crystallize itself as a platform where athletes can show up as their true self, not necessarily as athlete first, and show up in new ways and grow their fan bases beyond sport. One really fun example of this is U.S. Olympics snowboarder Chloe Kim had this fantastic video at a press conference asking for snacks. And that video outperformed her actual video of her gold medal finish. So it goes to show that you know sports is becoming more and more accessible by way of the periphery and as a result we're finding that there's far stronger gender parity on TikTok in terms of audiences than other social platforms which we're happy to see.

19:09In talking about and I'm going to hit that authenticity buzzer again but one thing you talked about earlier Chloe on your session which I thought was fascinating was the concept of the seventh man. Can you tell the story of that and what that means to the content that you create for a rival? Yeah. So the seventh man, I love that. So basically it's called a social media specialist. So what exactly is the seventh man? I think when it comes to just team sports in general and how pivotal social media, social media plays such a big role in telling these athletes stories in a different light, right?

19:46Because what you see on the broadcast isn't exactly what you see on social media. And so for me, especially because one, I've been a content creator, but two, I started out as a social media manager and I slowly realized just how much a part of the team that person is, right? Every day when an athlete walks in, yeah, of course you see your teammates, you see your coaches, but you see the person that is running that account. So it was really important for us to make sure that that person felt like they were a part of the team, but we didn't even have to do that. It was the athletes that really made them the seventh man.

20:25It was the athletes where, you know, let's say if our Rose Basketball Club for one of their player experiences, they decided to choose, they wanted to go on a yacht. Well, you know, then they ask us, they're like, hey, but, you know, our seventh man is coming, Right. She's she's on the Rose Basketball Club. She's supposed to be on the yacht. So it was this way because I think athletes were just so appreciative of us trying to get to know them as people first before just putting that camera in their face. So the seventh man is a part of, you know, each basketball club, but they're capturing these athlete stories on TikTok.

21:07talk. They're asking these athletes, hey, you know, I know you don't want me to just sit down and interview you for five minutes. What are you doing today? Right. Is there something within your day that maybe you don't feel like we should cover? But I'm telling you, it's such it's so cool that we want to cover it and other people want to learn about this. So two of our athletes, Ryan Howard and Alicia Gray, they're really good friends. They would just do an activity each day. So one day they're golfing. The next day they're doing arts and crafts, but they weren't recording. And I was like, can you please just let us come?

21:44Like, we won't ask you any questions. We just want to be on the fly on the wall to do that. So the seventh man is just such a big part of sports. Like social media managers do so much for the teams and they are a part of the team. We just wanted to make sure as we were hiring these contractors, they felt like that. I love that. And Mary, from an athlete perspective, you know, your time is so in demand, you know, and you have your own content, you have brand partnerships. How do you like to work with collaborators around you, whether that's a brand or the team you're playing for or, you know, like your colleagues that are asking you for your time?

22:22What engages you and gets you excited about doing content on platforms like that? I'm going to press the on test in. It's the on test in. I can't even say it anymore. For me, my favorite partnerships are always the ones that kind of go, hey, like, this is kind of the message that we're looking for. We've obviously selected you because we think that it's, you know, authentic to what you do. What do you think? And then I can sort of like brainstorm with them a little bit or suggest things. Not in the sense of like come up with a whole creative concept, like different camera angles. Not that like my stuff is very low production value.

23:01but it's more just like okay this I think fits and the more open-minded the brand or like not necessarily easygoing that they have to say yes to everything I do but more like cool get that angle that hits our messaging run with it like and I feel like those are the brands that that will work best for me if it's a TikTok that is very much like right this is exactly what we want we want it to be edited in this way that first of all I'm not an editor I'm filming stuff by myself I'm self-shooting a lot of the stuff so it's not like it needs to be easy going and I think that's also what the fans engage with is they don't want to see like respectfully like high production value where it feels forced and fake and it's a clear advertisement it's like something that naturally is part of your day then the engagement the viewership is better the brand are happier and I'm happier because it's been lower energy for me in terms of like balancing everything recovering for training um but also it it it feels better for me like it doesn't feel fake and like I'm selling something and I'm forcing people to buy stuff so yeah I think just again the authentic partnerships are the best ones earlier today they were talking about um intuition and sort of the intuition to know what's going to land or not going to land with your audience and you talked about experimentation earlier have you got and this may be for both of you but Mary do you have a pretty good sense of what's going to land with your audience now or I wouldn't say so because I think that like I know roughly like say for example I do a trend I know that'll go pretty well because that's very much like in line with the algorithm at the time or like if I'm doing a dance like with my teammates especially a teammate because women's footballers are getting more onto TikTok but they're not super into it it's not really like seen as cool and it definitely wasn't a few years ago it's a little bit more cool now but people think it's i don't know like they don't want to get up and dance in front of the camera i think there's a lot of i also think the more high profile you get the less people want to put themselves out there it comes with a lot of challenges that's interesting why why do you think that is i just think it people open themselves up to more criticism um and they want to just kind of like keep their head down focus on training or games and i think naturally and it's valid like if you post a video and naturally the first thing you'll get is like you should be concentrating on your training like why are you filming a 15 second video in your free time how dare you this is outrageous like also you have the element of being a woman and it's like women's football is not as good as men's football and women's sports sucks and then it's like no wonder you don't have the investment no wonder you're not respected because you're too busy going on TikTok.

25:43And so like you have this negative narrative around athletes showing their authentic selves with a certain audience, with a certain type of person, I suppose. But most people, like 90 something percent of the audience, that's what they want to see. They want to see who you really are. They want to see what you actually do because for so long, athletes are just these polished individuals that drive around in Lamborghinis, stay in fancy places, jump on private jets. And I mean, I can't speak for all female athletes, but that's personally not my life. And so that is just not our reality at all. And I think that because you then get to do, like I get to do football for my job and I love it and I'm so grateful for it.

26:29The perception is you have no problems, you have so much money, your life is so great. And yeah, I think that, I don't quite remember what the question was at this point, but it's hard to how do you make do you have the intuition to know what's going to land but that's my point it's like the the most like tiniest thing kind of what you're saying about like the the two girls that go and do arts and crafts or whatever like it can be I mean this might be oversharing but I had a gynecologist appointment in France okay and I was super nervous about it I was like super nervous about going and doing a medical appointment a very personal appointment in another country it was set up by the club so I was like really happy that the club had made me do that because in England you can't you have to like go and make an appointment with the NHS which is a hell of a waiting list and with an athlete schedule you get your your schedule two weeks in advance it's just impossible anyway so I was super nervous about it this video people were so happy about it they were like I can't believe you're speaking about this topic like fair play to you I had to do mine the other week I've been putting mine off and now I'm gonna book I'm gonna book mine in because you've like Like, yes, I need to feel confident to do it.

27:41And so first of all, how amazing that many women have now had this really incredible appointment. Just because I posted a goofy video of me walking out the training ground being petrified of going to this appointment. But then I can do something else with having, oh, yeah, this is top. This video, if one's the one. It will just not really do that well. But yeah. First of you being real and something that is relevant to women everywhere, right? Like it makes you relatable. That's kind of what I want my platform to be is just like my day-to-day life. If you can share in it, sharing that success, great.

28:14If you can also share when things don't go so well, great. But if you can realize that yours and my life, a lot of similar problems, a lot of similar things. We're not so different. And Chloe, what about you? You got the intuition to know like when something's going to land, when something might not land. Gosh, no. It's so crazy. It's the same thing. You know, you put all this work sometimes into a video. Sometimes it may perform super well. Sometime it doesn't. And then other times, especially at Unrivaled, we'll just test something and it crushes. And now we're like, hey, guys, let's do this with all of our players, you know.

28:48So for us, it's also, too, it's personality driven. So, for instance, one of our clubs, it's the Laces Basketball Club. So those six players, if you sat down with them or talked to them, none of them were really on TikTok. However, the Laces basketball club, TikTok, was our best performing TikTok account because people who had their favorite players, they never get to see them in this light. And I think going back to the seventh man, she just fit them and she just did such a good job with that club because they're just like a super calm, chill group, very easygoing. and she would have them just do these different type of skits where she would literally just sit them down and be like, just do this.

29:39You don't even have to talk to the camera or do anything. I'll make it work. And now it's funny if you would have told me one of my best friends who's actually on the Laces basketball club, Alyssa Thomas, that she would have been on a TikTok. I'd have to say, no chance. It's not happening. And now you see her guest star appearing in multiple videos and the fans are going crazy. So to answer your question, you never really know. But I think the most empowering thing is the fact that you can try and you can fail and you can reimagine how your content is going to look on TikTok. And I think that's the best part about it.

30:19Chloe, you said something interesting on our panel in that folks were seeing content from present day on Unrivaled's channel. Yeah. Like these skits, for example. And then going back and watching content from those teams that was posted back in February and March. And I think it goes to show that there are so many entry points on TikTok. But once you're in, you know that the demand is there and you keep searching for more. And I think that's the beauty of TikTok and driving the visibility and discovery of women's sports. Let's talk a little bit, Kat, about women on TikTok. Because everyone around women's sport, and it feels like it's been a conversation forever around who is the fan of women's sports.

30:51And there's obviously a huge opportunity for more women to engage or female fans, followers to fans. And you shared some of the stats with me around women on TikTok and how it is particularly unique in terms of the engagement from women on that platform. Can you share a bit about that in terms of what you think is the opportunity for rights holders or athletes? Yeah, I think the opportunity really is that the more that you experiment, the wider that funnel becomes, right? And the more gender balanced of an audience you have. I think traditionally the sports space has been dominated by highlights, but TikTok has really introduced the opportunity to show up in new ways.

31:28And as a result, sports has become far more accessible. There are more entry points to sports fandom or athlete fandom. A lot of folks discovered, believe it or not, Suni Lee during the Olympics because of her viral lip combo that she was applying before a competition. And so because of these many entry points and press the button authenticity, women's sports is really taking off on the platform. And as a result, our audiences, even between men's leagues, are seeing far more balanced audiences in terms of gender. And it's something that we are hoping to see continue to grow. So what's interesting, too, about that point is even for us at Unrivaled, our best performing pieces of content aren't our highlights.

32:13Really? At all. For sure. So for us, before I was like, you know, and this had, I had to adjust how we were posting on TikTok because I was like, we got to put the highlights out. We got to do this. We got to do that. And then we just started just, we literally just let the athletes kind of take over the account. And now all of a sudden we're trying all of these different things. And it's not necessarily that people don't care about the game. But to your point, it's they started discovering them not as athletes, as just normal people that are really into a certain niche. Thinking about that, actually, Mary, earlier today, the BBC Sports social media manager was talking about their TikTok account and how you, am I right saying you hugged Grace yesterday?

33:02Yes, I did. And he said that he knew that that clip would perform better than anything on the pitch. And it did. Well, I mean, I'm happy to be a part of their high performing content. I mean, I can definitely echo kind of what you guys have just shared around. I mean, from my personal experience, the stuff of me performing, of doing my actual job, doesn't get engaged with particularly well. Like within tournament, like if I posted a highlight reel, it would do okay. but if I posted an angle like in the Euros 2022 I would post the highlights of like we beat Sweden in the semi-final right posted some highlights of the game it did fine and also the engagement around that time is pretty high so it's fine the next one I posted was literally hours later of me uh the captain jumping on my back Leah Williamson jumping on my back and us celebrating one of the goals did far better and it's just like from my experience it's not about the skills that you have I think sometimes like social media is very showy offy it's about look what I have look what I do isn't my life so great isn't my life so perfect and the stuff that I've found does the best is normal stuff like day-to-day stuff regular relatability type pieces.

34:23Let's talk about TikTok as a business tool because Kat, I think, you know, I know people will be interested in how does TikTok fit into their marketing strategy. So I'm fascinated to hear your thoughts on that. But from your perspective, Kat, when you're working with organization rights holders or athletes, how are you encouraging them to think about TikTok as part of their broader marketing strategy? Yeah, I think for a long time, TikTok has been known as this next generation audience development tool. And at TikTok, it is our goal to drive folks lower down that conversion funnel. And we are testing with an entirely new suite of products under the name of Gameplan.

35:00And within those products, there are certain tools that we're using to drive conversion, whether that is using a Ticketmaster link out to buy tickets to a game directly on content or using a link out that will drive users to a tune in page. And so we we recognize that TikTok offers this massive funnel, massive audiences. What's the next step that we can take? And we are committed to experimenting with those levers to drive conversion and drive legitimate business results for our value partners. So, Claire, when you think about the next series of Unrivaled or the next season of Unrivaled, how are you thinking about TikTok as part of your strategy or growth strategy?

35:41Yeah. I mean, in many ways, first things first. when we look at even all the accounts that we have on TikTok, right? So we have our Unrivaled League account, which is technically our main account. And then each of our clubs has its own individual account, right? So that you as a fan, if you want to learn more about the Laces, you can come to the Laces TikTok. But then how does that work into our overall growth strategy? because, like I said earlier, we aren't, we're trying to get to the point where we're always on, right? And so Kat had talked about some of our TikTok is now just being discovered for the first time.

36:22Now fans are like, where's the merch? And so for us, it's like, hey, we can link out to our merch store on TikTok. This is a totally different audience that we have anywhere else. And then on top of that, being able to show our brand partners already having this kind of blueprint. Hey, here's what did well for us. Here's what we want to do more of during the season. Is this something that you guys want to be a part of? Because we already have proof in the pudding that it does well. That's cool. And then, Mary, I guess from your perspective, I'm sure you get a lot of brand partnerships requests.

36:58how do you decide what you do and don't do and how do you balance the personal goals on TikTok with ultimately a money driver for you? Yeah I think TikTok has definitely been a great way for me to get brand partnerships so thank you everyone. Awesome thank you. I think for me honestly they're pretty easy decisions. Okay. I have a great commercial agent who I have a great relationship with and we talk very directly to one another and have really open conversations but as much as of course I use platforms like TikTok to help me have a sustainable future a secure future um I think that's why women have such a unique space on the platform and female athletes have such a unique space on the platform because we have to do something different and our male counterparts don't and that's great for them but we have to go about our business kind of differently I think the way I select my brand partnerships is very much around what is your message?

38:03Does it align with who I am? And can this fit in my schedule as an athlete? I think those are really the considerations because I'm very conscious of making decisions that might be financially fantastic. and of course everybody wants to be paid their worth that's that goes without saying but the reality of it is is that you only have a limited time or limited um what do you call it like bandwidth I suppose and if you spend that on something that might benefit you in the short term but what is the long-term play it might cost you on sort of in the future so anything that aligns with me I'm passionate about um that kind of gets the the green light um but it has to fit into my yeah athlete as a as a as a footballer which is provides the most challenge and I've heard you speak before Mary about what you do outside of football and how you're building towards your future post career I think proper you're into property right a little bit yeah um how do you see TikTok as a platform of that kind of relationship I guess you're building with your followers and your community in 10 years from now is it something that you'd like to is part of a longer term strategy for you definitely I mean I don't think my relationship with TikTok's ever going anywhere because I think it's been a part of my success with the fans I feel like I have such a special bond with them because of the stuff that I do on TikTok for example because they're able to see the real me and build a real relationship with who I am and what I stand for.