Interview with Martin Leroy, founder of House of Stories, an influencer agency in the world of sport and entertainment

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Advertising and sports stars have long gone hand in hand, mutually benefiting from the credibility generated by sporting excellence. The development of influencer marketing and the popularity of sports content creators has added complexity and opportunities to the relationship between brands and athletes. Lesser-known athletes have more opportunities to both make a living and make their voices heard through social media. But are athletes content creators? Do they have the same relationship with and impact on their followers as successful sports opinion leaders? How do social issues such as diversity and equality influence sport? With the Paris 2024 Olympic Games just one year away, founder of sports and entertainment influencer agency House of Stories Martin Leroy looks at the challenges and opportunities for brands looking to leverage influencer marketing in the sports sector.


What are the challenges of leveraging influence in the sports sector?
Influence can be a real lever for development in the sports sector and a means to achieve several objectives. One of the main challenges is how to combine the codes of influence with those of sport, without distorting either. This means not breaking with the traditions or values ​​of sport, but without ceasing to be disruptive, interactive and open to new actions and formats.

When we talk to federations, leagues and event organisers, they are faced with issues such as recruiting new members, developing women's sport, attracting young people and changing formats and sports. Influence can play an important role by attracting new opinion leaders with the ability to raise awareness among younger generations or target specific players.

What makes influencing in sport special compared to influencing in other sectors?
Some sports have historical traditions that can be difficult to change or adapt. Tennis has strong values, traditions and match formats that can be very long. These elements are important to tennis fans, but the sport struggles to a canadian ceo email database ttract younger generations , who find it too long or lacking in some aspects. You can't come in by influence and break all that. You can't forget what the sport is, its values ​​or traditions, and just apply the codes of influence.

The arrival of influence has forced all sectors to adapt, change and accept new elements. Sport may be doing so a little more slowly, but it must address these issues if it wants to continue to interest the younger generations .

Olympic athletes often start competing at a young age – does working with athletes who are not yet adults pose a problem for influencer campaigns?
There are a lot of young, promising athletes, or athletes who have already had very successful careers when they are 16, 18, 20 years old. We can fully trust them; just because you are a sixteen-year-old athlete doesn't mean you have nothing to say, it doesn't mean you don't have any impact.

But we return to the question of whether an athlete is an influencer . Do we distinguish between athletes and content creators? Yes, because their main job is different. The main job of an athlete is to dominate his sport. A content creator, as the name suggests, creates content, speaks on social media.

Can an athlete influence, have an impact, inspire people, create change? Of course they can. A lot of people follow sports idols, they watch them on the football field, on the basketball court, and they get inspired by them. Does that make athletes influencers as we understand it today? It depends. We're seeing more and more athletes who are interested in content creation and become influencers, like [French tennis star] Gaël Monfils on Twitch . We're seeing athletes who want to do it out of passion, because they love it, they love being able to tell stories. But there's a fine line between the two.