Mass Participation

Human Race has renewed its contract with digital marketing agency WePlay for a second year.

The mass participation events company has worked with WePlay over 12 months to help to drive direct-to-consumer revenues across its event portfolio.

The collaboration helped deliver sell-out fields for the Cancer Research UK London Winter Run and Manchester Half Marathon in 2018.

Human Race, which is part of Tour de France owners Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O.), owns and operates 27 events every year in triathlon, cycling, running and duathlon in the UK.

UK Sport has unveiled ambitious plans to bring up to 60 World and European events to the UK between now and 2025.

The government agency released a list of events it is targeting across Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth sports, following a workshop held for city, national governing body and other UK sports event partners at Lord’s.

The move is being interpreted as part of efforts to strengthen the UK’s soft power in the wake of Brexit.

Limelight Sports is to take over the running of three major mass participation events under license from IMG.

The mass participation specialist will operate the AJ Bell London Triathlon, The Bloodwise Blenheim Palace Triathlon, and Etape Caledonia from 2019.

Under the agreement, Limelight Sports will run all aspects of the respective events with the target of growing their impact and attracting new participants and commercial partnerships.

PR agency Pretty Green has been appointed by endurance event series Tough Mudder as its UK agency. 

With the 2019 season approaching, Pretty Green will be tasked with broadening the appeal of Tough Mudder to ‘social exercisers’ and promoting the new 5k city-based series, Tough Mudder 5k. 

Pretty Green will report into Nikki Emmans, vice president of marketing and the account will be led by Lucy Mart, sport and lifestyle director, reporting into the agency’s founder and CEO Mark Stringer.

Vélo Birmingham & Midlands, the UK’s second-biggest closed road sportive, has revealed an ambition to achieve a gender-balanced field by the time Birmingham hosts the Commonwealth Games in 2022.

The target was announced by the event’s organiser CSM at the Cycle Show, which is taking place this week in the Midlands city.

Legal & General has revealed the shortlist for its inaugural ‘Not a Red Card’ awards, a sport-led initiative that seeks to raise awareness of mental health in the workplace.

The insurance firm has been working with agency thinkBeyond to develop the concept, which aims to celebrate those businesses that have implemented best practices around addressing mental health at work.

Sports media group Perform is to rebrand as DAZN Group, as part of a major restructure that reflects the ongoing global growth of its DAZN OTT brand.

The London-based group has announced plans to consolidate is activities into two distinct brands, which will sit underneath the DAZN Group umbrella: DAZN and Perform Content. 

The move is designed to support efforts to drive the continued growth of properties that include consumer-facing editorial platforms such as Goal.com and SportingNews, as well as B2B products such as Opta and RunningBall. 

The Sydney Invictus Games will be the first to feature a chatbot within its digital communications, thanks to a collaboration with cloud business management solutions specialist, Sage.

The bot will provide the Invictus Games community with a 24/7 digital service, designed to help make the Games easier and more enjoyable to follow.

It will deliver information for competitors and other key groups, while also driving fan engagement. 

Lucozade Sport has released a new short-film documentary with Anthony Joshua, marking the next phase of the brand’s ‘Made to Move’ active living campaign.

The sports drink brand has set out on a mission to inspire one million people to move more by 2020.

It has drafted in ambassador Joshua to add heavyweight power to the push, with the latest activation coming ahead of the world champion’s mandatory challenger fight with Alexander Povetkin.

Lucozade Ribena Suntory (LRS), parent company to consumer brands including Lucozade Sport, is among the latest corporations to launch a sport-led social change initiative. The company’s B Active programme, created in partnership with Active Communities Network (ACN), aims to improve the lifestyles of young people in less advantaged communities, providing them with access to regular sport and physical activity. B Active has already reached 4,000 people across north and south London, Manchester, Belfast, Hull and Newport.