BRITISH WEIGHT LIFTING MOVES ONLINE
BRITISH WEIGHT LIFTING MOVES COMPETITIVE PARTICIPATION ONLINE USING LAUNCHPAD6
Challenged by COVID-19 restrictions, British Weight Lifting moved all events online to keep participation up and skilled technical officials engaged.
THE CHALLENGE
British Weight Lifting had to cancel all physical events during covid. Physical competitions are critical to keeping participants engaged. This includes both lifters and technical officials.
“We were facing the complete shutdown of the sport at the participation level” says Mathew Marshall Head of Events at British Weight Lifting.
British Weight Lifting needed to not just protect national event participation but also a whole range of regional events which drive grass roots engagement into the sport. It was these participants that were particularly vulnerable. The long term risks to grass roots involvement unacceptably high.
So British Weight Lifting decided to create an online competition portal for all national and regional events.
A EXPERIENCED PARTNER WAS CALLED!
The competitions would be open to members to service national and regional events. The specific goals for the online competitions were to:
-
Provide participants of all ages with a key engagement outlet with their sport and ensure members continued to be supported by British Weight Lifting
-
Allow members to qualify to National level events and subsequent Olympic qualifiers
-
Provide the ability for remote and relaxed participation to help promote the sport amongst beginners and participants not experienced in competing
-
Maximise engagement from technical officials to keep involved in the sport and ensure skills are maintained
Running an online competition meant finding a platform partner that would:
-
Manage the scale and detail across multiple events within one solution
-
Be easy and fast to set up
-
Give entrants an intuitive and seamless way of uploading video entries and other supporting content from common devices
-
Deliver a judging portal to assess and award medals and achieve qualifications
Challenge
Provide participants an engagement outlet and ensure members continued to be support by British Weight Lifting
Ensure technical official’s skills were maintained
Provide a way to allow new and remote participants to compete
Solution
Pivot to an online weightlifting competitions with Launchpad6
Work with a partner who delivers video upload, gallery and judged assessments
Provide a simple to use solution that works the way they needed
Services Offered
ContestPad Video Contest (Premium)
White labelled microsite for dedicated British Weight Lifting branded portal
Results
✓ Over 1000 entries
✓ Over 3000 registered users
✓ 57,000+ page views
✓ Fantastic positive feedback from participants and judges
LAUNCHPAD6 DELIVERS
British Weight Lifting looked at many different options from simple manual solutions through to competition specific platforms. It was critical that the solution was both flexible but also simple to administer. Launchpad6 was the only solution that ticked all the requirements:
PLATFORM CAPABILITIES MATCH REQUIREMENTS
-
Launchpad6 allows for seamless judging of entries across multiple rounds
-
Launchpad6 supported multiple individual events within the one platform
-
Launchpad6 could collect important participant details and also allow participants to pay to enter each event
-
Multiple video and other files could be uploaded with each entry to support lift validation and assessments
-
The website can be easily branded and styled to match the specifics of each event
-
Launchpad6 was one of the only suppliers with experience in delivering a solution for an international weightlifting organisation
Multiple events are now managed using Launchpad6 including National Qualifiers and Regional events.
A ONLINE EVENT SUCCESS!
The online events generated an overwhelmingly positive response from professional and amateur competitors. So far British Weight Lifting have received over 1000 entries and that number continues to grow with each event.
An additional and often overlooked measure of success was the ability for the solution to keep technical adjudicators engaged and skills up to date. In fact, relative to the number of technical officials that would be involved in a physical event, British Weight Lifting have been able to engage significantly more officials using Launchpad6.
“The solution has taken away the barrier of distance and we have been able to bring more technical official involvement into the sport than what was possible with physical events.” said Mathew.
While British Weight Lifting originally anticipated going online with Launchpad6 was going to be a stop gap measure during COVID-19, within a couple of months the value of participation made it obvious that the use of Launchpad6 for online weightlifting events would become part of the long term events calendar.
“One of the biggest success stories of using Launchpad6 is the way we have been able to keep technical officials involved and the relationships that we have been able to maintain with them”
MATHEW MARSHALL,
Head of Events for British Weight Lifting