Benjamin Stoll on building the FIS digital and innovation strategy

Benjamin Stoll joined the International Ski & Snowboard Federation (FIS) in January 2023 tasked with leading the digital transformation of the federation. Much like with many international federations, digital and innovation strategies are seen as critical enablers to connect with younger generations as well as drive new revenue streams.

In an interview with iSportConnect’s David Fowler, Benjamin explains more about the FIS digital and innovation strategy, including their ambition to create a ‘centralised platform’ to create value for the snow sports communities they serve.

“We are looking into how we create better content in order to achieve our objectives. How do we utilise content as a currency to satisfy our existing communities but also as a currency to reach and engage the next generation. At the same time, when you look into younger audiences, but also existing communities, they’re all digital nowadays and shifting away from only focusing on broadcasting windows. Utilising content and digital experiences as a service beyond the broadcasting windows and also as an attraction model is also really important for us for value creation in the future”.

“It’s also about business Innovation. How can we create our next access and rights model? How can we utilise digital- and technology-driven value for monetisation, not only with commercial partners, but also in completely new forms of value creation in a platform economy. How can we use technology in order to improve the broadcasts and livestreams? How can we also bring additional content to our broadcast partners and better support them with driving new audiences and value?” 

The FIS centralised platform strategy

A large part of Benjamin’s focus in his first year has been on understanding the needs of their key stakeholders as the basis to create what is known as the ‘centralised platform strategy’.

“We did a lot of analysis work and in the first year really tried to learn who our audience is and what they prefer. What are their values? Where do we do a good job and where do we need to improve? Based upon those insights we have written a strategy called the ‘centralised digital platform strategy’. The vision is that FIS becomes a platform and a service for all our stakeholders, including the 140 national associations and our athletes”. 

“We have restructured our operations, especially on the content and the digital side into launching a new digital infrastructure. We’ve launched a new mobile app. We’ve launched a new website based on a modern content management system and an open architecture”. 

“Why is this important? So that we are much more in control of working towards personalised and contextualised experiences as well as capitalising on the future promises of AI and automation. If we really want to harvest the benefits of LLMs (large language models) and automation at a certain point we need to have a certain level of data structure and digital experience architecture. So this was basically the first step to work towards this”. 

“This is not only an exercise which refers to digital channels only. This, in the future, will be a 360 degree approach where we hopefully then will also provide new content assets to broadcasters and to other partners, to the athletes, and to the national associations and make sure that we come up with meaningful services and products across the entire service journey across snow sports”.

Benjamin explains that, while the key performance indicators (KPI’s) for each stakeholder vary, they cut across three areas.

“We have created three dimensions. Number one is content. Number two is channels and dimension number three is services. The KPI’s all depend upon the different stakeholders. This also requires a deeper dialogue because a service roadmap with the national associations is only as good as the value it provides for those national associations in order to achieve their goals and unlock efficiencies”.

“In terms of content, we’ve massively increased the content output, especially on social media where we gained quite some incremental followers, reach and interactions over the last season delivering new value to the athletes, to sponsors, to the national associations, to the local organising committees and to the sports in general”. 

“This is not something which takes away value from the broadcasters. In a very crowded entertainment and media space we’re reaching and engaging audiences with the sports and driving them towards watching the sports live as well. Here we want to make it as seamless as possible to let audiences know where to watch and then drive them to the broadcast partners in the respective markets”.

Content is king. Distribution is queen

Benjamin is quick to highlight the importance of creating a connected digital ecosystem taking into consideration the needs and contribution of all stakeholders, not least broadcast partners, with the sum of the parts being greater than the whole.

“We are shifting away from a classical ‘one-size-fits-all’ digital model. We use the channels and acknowledge the different audiences on those channels and also how those channels work in terms of distribution. We are living in the age of distribution and it’s important to acknowledge that we’re not only producing content for people but also for algorithms in order to reach and engage with people”. 

Amongst the FIS’s recent digital product launches is FIS TV. Benjamin emphasises the importance of ensuring that, in its formative years, it is an accessible platform where audiences can experience video content without the friction that is often associated with sports streaming platforms.

“Before the last season we did a soft launch of FIS TV. We didn’t want to create it only as a destination but as a video experience platform. In the first phase, we wanted to make it as easy as possible to bring video content in the best possible shape or form to the fans and interested people worldwide. So it’s not about forcing people to come to this platform”.

“We did some really successful experiments with the junior world championships and also streaming to markets that are not yet served by broadcasting partners. So that suddenly created exposure to World Cups for communities that weren’t there before. We deliberately said that this is not only about FIS TV, this is also about using existing platforms such as YouTube as the main principles were to maximise the reach and make it as seamless and easy as possible for consumers to actually engage with our sports and athletes”. 

“I’ve seen a lot of experiences in the marketplace where you really need to fight to get into the (digital) experience because there’s two factor authentication or you need to overcome a data wall. If you’re a casual fan and you just have a generic interest, I think if you make it really really hard for the people to engage with your sports, then it’s a huge burden to actually pull them further into a funnel and create a meaningful relationship”.

While the FIS centralised digital platform strategy is in its infancy, the early signs are positive.

• Growing social: 2.5 million followers across all disciplines’ channels (+37% compared to season 23/24), a total reach of 506 million (+76% YoY) and 20 million interactions (+45%).

• Successfully implementing vertical video strategy: Vertical video accounted for 8.4% of all posts on FIS channels, but generated 44% of the total reach (with 221 million video views).

• Unlocking the potential of archive: Achieved a reach of 19 million with 163 archive posts across all FIS disciplines. For alpine skiing, 55 archive content pieces were shared to create anticipation for various upcoming World Cup events and generated a reach of 14.4 million (and driving promotion for the events, the athletes and also the respective broadcasting schedules).

People-driven innovation and a culture of learning

Benjamin believes that innovation starts with people and a willingness to learn (and unlearn).

“This is about people at the end of the day. It’s about going for a mindset that is focused on output, teamwork first and perpetual learning. It’s a little bit also about an ‘unlearn, learn strategy’ where we need to be courageous, form assumptions and then do the respective tests in order to learn if something is working”. 

“We are still a world governing body and that comes with a certain responsibility and  burden. With a platform approach we want to celebrate the achievements of our athletes, to celebrate the unique joy of our different sports, the performances and the specialties of the unique environment that our sports offer. This is driven by passion and people and trying to establish a respective culture of learning, teamwork, making mistakes and hopefully quickly correcting the mistakes and then accelerating and progressing together”.

One important prerequisite for FIS as it delivers on the central platform vision is to own and control its digital and data architecture so that it can flex and adapt to change, but also have full control on how value is created for its communities.

“I think it’s important that we control our architecture and that we have an architecture which is very flexible towards an unknown future. Beyond that, we have a small but strong technology team and, as we have different sports, we probably have unrivalled complexity. So the architecture needs to be able to deal with complexity in a sport and a world where the circumstances are often shifting quite quickly. So in terms of ownership, I don’t think that we really need to own a lot. It’s more about controlling the outcome and having the flexibility to quickly steer the outcome in a way that provides value”.

Tech and the future of snow sports

Artificial intelligence is not far from the thoughts of anyone in Benjamin’s position and he is excited by the many use-cases that this can unlock. 

“I’m fascinated about what LLMs and AI and automation can do in order to further transform our value chain. So that’s something we’re really looking into at the moment. We’re just scratching the surface here”. 

“In terms of the personalisation and the contextualisation of the presentation of snow sports this is something we’re looking into. Also when you look into the explanation of sports performances, if you compare the performances of two athletes and especially with outdoor sports you have a lot of different conditions. Driving insights with LLMs and explaining where an alpine skier has won over another one or what has led to a ski jumper winning or losing and then taking into account other external factors, can be really fascinating. This can really unlock the next generation of ‘datatainment’ and data-driven explanation of the sports is something we are really looking into and we’re fascinated by”.

The identification of audiences with sport is often driven by the relatability of athletes and, like motorsport, snow sports have the challenge that the faces of athletes are hidden behind helmets and goggles.

“It’s really hard to actually know who this guy or girl is and why I should relate to her or him. Here we are looking into how we can create better TV experiences. How we can also create a live stream for the next generation. Also we’re looking into more interactive-driven experiences and how to use content to put the athletes and their stories ‘front and centre’”. 

“We’ve also learned from survey data that identification and the audience relationship is basically driven through the athletes. Here we are back to digital and social media and how we can enable the athletes to basically create more reach and to tell their stories and gather as many followers as possible and then hopefully grow the sports and the communities together”.