ProTouch Africa & AMG partner to power African athletes on to the global stage
PROTOUCH is a purpose-driven Sports Tech business that provides teams, clubs and federations with fan engagement strategies and digital solutions, to help engage their fans and enable new revenue streams. Leveraging the internationally-developed fan engagement platforms it represents in Africa, PROTOUCH uses its deep knowledge of activating fans – having spent 30 years in the rewards and loyalty industry – to devise and implement solutions that engage the African Athlete fan base for the sports industry.
Since 2019, sports agency AMG has been collaborating with athletes, partners and brands to understand, manage and build the personal brands of elite athletes, bringing their extraordinary stories to life, while creating meaningful commercial partnerships. AMG has supported more than 200 athletes – with a combined social media reach of 5m+ – securing over £1,3m in revenue for athletes and more than £5m in value from media and PR exposure, across 350+ campaigns.
AMG’s unique SPRINT framework draws on its years of experience working with some of the biggest global brands and elite athletes, some of the these include England Women’s Rugby captain, Marlie Packer; double Olympic Gold medallist, Hannah Mills OBE; leading British female triathlete Sophie Coldwell and professional boxers Isaac Chamberlain and Hannah Rankin. Its team of experts work closely with athletes to ensure they maximise their brand impact potential, not only during their time in sport, but also beyond.
The toughest challenge facing athletes is that of funding and this is particularly true in Africa. PROTOUCH understands this first hand, having supported twenty-six road cyclists from six African countries including five national champions and one African Continental Champion – as part of Africa’s #1 UCI Continental Cycling Team from 2019 – 2022. Over the past 18-months, PROTOUCH has been focussed on the development of the World’s first, fan-owned Athlete Impact Investment Platform – Podium Pursuit – which aims to provide a transparent and sustainable funding mechanism to further enable Athletes from Africa, supported by fans and brands globally.
“We have been assembling the Podium Pursuit ecosystem of more than 4 000 of Africa’s top performing athletes from fifty-four African Nations, across thirty-six sports codes. We plan to activate their 30-million fans globally, alongside brands in the lead up to Paris 2024 and beyond”, announced Rebecca Eliot, Founder of PROTOUCH AFRICA. “Our AMG partnership augments the planned Athlete value proposition by providing services to top performing athletes in need of personal brand, media and commercial support. Podium Pursuit has curated digital athlete profiles on its platform where athletes can connect with fans, promote sponsorships, aggregate their social media, upload pictures and videos to their gallery, as well as feature their rankings, notable results and achievements, set up and manage crowdfunding campaigns and access a range of benefits such as preferentially-priced offerings, to lower the cost of funding for athletes]”, Eliot added.
“I am very excited about this partnership with PROTOUCH as it gives us an important footprint into the fast-growing African sports market. It allows us to take our purpose-led proposition to a new continent of elite athletes and we look forward to helping to create, develop and grow the personal brands of these talented athletes by bringing their powerful sporting stories to life while creating meaningful connections with carefully curated brand partners to help raise their profiles, fund their journey and power their purpose” Mark Middlemas, CEO and Founder of AMG.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Rebecca Eliot
PROTOUCH AFRICA
Mobile: +27 83 656 4632
Email: Rebecca@protouch.africa
Mark Middlemass
AMG
Mobile: +44 795 230 4340
Email: mark@athletemedia.co.uk