World Bowling, the international federation for ten pin, nine pin and parabowling, has moved to ramp up its digital content offering in a deal with Curveball Digital, the UK-based digital content and social media agency that launched in February.
Curveball has been appointed to provide services including digital strategy, content creation and social media management.
Announcing the agreement, World Bowling said that Curveball’s “expertise in video production and social-first content strategy” would bring the international federation a “new look and an innovative way of speaking to a wider and more engaged new generation of audiences”.
Curveball was set up by Paddy Sloane, who previously led the digital video and boxing content teams at pay-television broadcaster BT Sport, Niall Sloane, the director of sport at commercial broadcaster ITV, and Kevin Blundell, the former head of social and video at digital media company Squawka.
Niall Sloane is a non-executive director at Curveball.
Andrew Oram, World Bowling’s chief executive, said: “Curveball’s fresh and dynamic approach to all things digital and social is critical to the next steps of the build process.
“Content needs to be created to be seen by as many people as possible – this means ideas need to start with those who have a strong understanding of what will make an impact across social and digital media.
“We need to reach wider, younger and more varied audiences, speak to people who have never been spoken to before and in a way that resonates with them.
“Curveball will provide the strategy to our digital environment to allow us to optimise the launch of the new ecosystem to capture the attention of the vast bowling community along with QubicaAMF, Stack Sports, YBVR, Strivecloud and future partners.”
Paddy Sloane added: “The team at World Bowling have really big ideas for the next few years and we are excited to be at the forefront of it. Curveball strive to build audiences and engage with younger and previously untapped demographics, so we aim to revolutionise how the world views the sport of bowling.”