Overview

We were tasked with promoting the 2024 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, the world’s longest established and most valuable literary sports-writing prize. SITA were required to provide the award maximum exposure, across national, local and sports media. The Award is always a highlight for sports fans and book readers to see which title has received the biggest honour in sports writing, and it gave us the opportunity to work across a wide range of PR streams to build anticipation and execute an effective PR strategy.

The Activity:

The activity kicked off with the judging panel announcement, where we unveiled the news that broadcaster Gabby Logan had joined an esteemed collection of experts, including judge chair Alyson Rudd. Once we’d announced the prize’s longlist midway through the year, the selected titles were whittled down to a coveted final shortlist. We then worked with the shortlisted talent and publishers to arrange a batch of media placements, with titles such as FourFourTwo, Tribal Football and The Mancunion.

In the weeks leading up to the awards dinner in Central London, SITA worked with the William Hill team to finalise the guest list, with media from across the sector in attendance. On the awards day itself, we issued a press release moments after former Irish professional tennis player Conor Niland was crowned the prestigious 2024 winner. Our announcement received national attention from titles such as The Mirror and Metro and regional coverage in distinguished Irish titles such as The Irish Times, Irish Independent, RTE, Irish Examiner, Sunday World and The 42. The press coverage also included a wide range of different industry titles such as The Bookseller, Sports Journalists’ Association, Sport for Business and SBC News.

Following Conor’s win for his memoir The Racket, exclusive interviews were placed with The Athletic, The Sun and Tennis 365, to continue media exposure for the award through to the end of the year. Alyson Rudd also spoke with leading literary website Five Books to explain the work involved in the judging process as we kept up the momentum of media coverage heading into 2025.

The Result:

Overall, our work resulted in more than 200 individual pieces of coverage for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, with more than 70million estimated online views, and a print audience of close to 1.5million.

Our work continues into 2025, to ensure the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award remains the most respected annual prize in sports writing.