PCB's strategy that brought Pakistani fans closer to the cricket team on social media

 PCB's strategy that brought Pakistani fans closer to the cricket team on social Be it the friendly banter between Shadab and Haris Rauf over cake or Saqlain Mushtaq's dismissal of Babar Azam during net practice, all the captains attending Babar Azam's birthday before the World Cup or the Indian team with Bisma Maruf's daughter. With captivating photos and videos, Pakistani cricket fans have been getting to know everything about the players for the past few years that they didn't know before.

Pakistani fans have a similar relationship with cricket because for a long time they longed to see cricket at their home ground, during which an entire generation could only watch the Pakistani cricket team play on TV. However, not only did cricket return to Pakistan in the past years, but with the launch of the Pakistan Super League and the popularization of social media, players got a chance to see them in a new perspective, and amid all this, the relationship between the fans and the players began to deepen.One of the reasons for this is the improvement and continuity in the performance of the Pakistani team, but the other important reason is the interesting content created by the PCB's media team on their social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube. It is shared across media platforms and then goes viral instantlyHowever, not only did cricket return to Pakistan in the past years, but with the launch of the Pakistan Super League and the popularization of social media, players got a chance to see them in a new perspective, and amid all this, the relationship between the fans and the players began to deepen.Not only traditional cricket fans enjoy this content, but according to PCB, a large number of women are now attracted to cricket and youngsters who spend more time on social media are especially crazy about the players. .We have tried to find out how PCB, which was once only producing content for traditional media, came up with the idea of ​​digital media, when did this journey start and what was the strategy behind this change?

Trying to bring fans closer to the game.

Before telling the story, it is important to mention that sports content around the world has changed over time and now 'Sports Communication' has become a regular industry.In cricket, perhaps, Cricket Australia has an advantage in this regard, who changed their strategy regarding creating content on social media long ago, but this change in PCB started coming from the year 2019.

Speaking to the BBC, PCB's director of media and communications, Sami Al Hasan, described the strategy as "an attempt to bring the fans closer to the players".

"The reason for PCB's change in strategy was that the game is played by the fans and it is very important to keep the fans close to the players as it may not be possible all the time,"

A quest to understand fan choice

choice

Obviously, producing the kind of content seen on PCB's media platforms today requires people with similar skills.

For this, a new team was formed whose job was to create content in addition to media management, that is, the media managers accompanying the Pakistani team, if in the past they only did media management, now their work is outside the ground and in front of the camera. It was also to keep the fans informed about the lives of the players out of sight.
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However, after doing all this, it was also necessary to create a strategy that could test the fan's choice as all the content is produced by the media team itself.

Sami Al Hasan says, "The team we recruited worked according to the demands of the times and came up with the kind of ideas that fit the needs of social media users."

He said that 'the main thing was to accept the wishes of the fans and then turn it into content, whatever out-of-the-box idea came to us we would accept it and try to work on it.'

"We don't repeat the same thing over and over again because we've learned that if you show the same thing over and over again, consumers will get bored of it," he explains.

 he said.