The Unseen Stats
BT Sport
Issue 62 | March 2022
Agency
Wunderman Thompson UK
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Steve Aldridge Creative Directors Christopher McKee, Richard Morgan Creative Team Sam Huckle, Josh Baggott
Production Team
Designer Tyler Hendy Artworker Nick Firth Head of Studio Paul Grainger Editor Deri Watt
Other Credits
Chief Client Officer Matt Steward Managing Partner Andy Lane Account Director Natalie Wilson Business Director Phil Watson Delivery Director Hanna Apperley Project Director James Wilson Chief Strategy Officer Sid McGrath Senior Strategist Rebecca Pinn
Date
April 2021
Background
In 2021, society, and sport, had reached a tipping point in the battle against inequality.
BT’s brand mission was to Connect for Good. As a sports broadcaster, they wanted to lead the fight against online abuse.
Comments that get you arrested in real life live free online. By exposing this unknown side of the internet the intention was to impact real societal change.
Idea
By combining proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) with quantitative and qualitative research the idea was to unearth The Unseen Stats, facts that would quantify the true scale of the online abuse problem in the UK.
Over 200,000 different data points were analysed and evaluated. For instance, over the course of one match, religious abuse increased by 65%. When both teams failed to score in another match, abusive Tweets increased 350%. 10% of all abusive Tweets came from Troll accounts. And so on and so on.
The stats were dropped into social, digital, OOH and on BT Sport. Finally, a 78-page report was sent to 100,000 BT staff and used to define the company’s anti-online abuse policies.
Results
800,000 earned media generated including 485 pieces of press coverage.
25% reduction in online abuse tracked on Twitter over the first weekend the campaign 500 pieces of online abuse actively reported or removed on BT social channels.
Our Thoughts
Online abuse is such a massive problem it’s hard to know where to start trying to deal with it. Looking at it purely through the lens of sport seems as good a place as any.
Live data collected from online chatter during matches (not just football, by the way) is horribly revealing of the sheer volume of bile.
It’s good that BT has started doing something about it and removing vile content where it can but every other platform should have been doing the same. Now the UK government is wading in and has introduced tough new laws in the first draft of the Online Safety Bill.
Cabinet Minister Nadine Norries says Mark Zuckerberg faces jail if Facebook does not comply with the legislation when it becomes law. Philip Jansen, CEO of BT Group appears to be safe.