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The Next Big Leap In The Sport Of Show Jumping

This article is more than 8 years old.

Ask someone to name a sport that includes a Springsteen, Bloomberg and Gates and chances are they will pick the something akin to the tame sport of golf. But they’d be wrong. Daughters of Bruce, Michael and Bill all compete in the ever popular and ever growing sport of show jumping – and the stakes are half a million high.

Nearly 6 years after it started as a single show horse event in Paris born into the middle of a recession, EEM has turned the sport of show jumping into an international sensation.

Now sporting 3 international events on 3 different continents, Paris, Hong Kong and Los Angeles and looking for a fourth, the company gave me a rare glimpse into the growth of competitive show jumping.

“I was inspired by the tennis Grand Slam events to create an international series, starting with the Gucci Paris Masters (now named Longines Masters of Paris) in 2009,” Christophe Ameeuw, Founder and CEO of EEM told me.

And Ameeuw hasn’t stopped there.

He and his team have helped bring more awareness to the sport by educating fans on show jumping and building local community networks to help generate interest around each event. They’ve also built the EEM brand by using social and digital technologies.

From the start, Ameeuw knew that social media was an integral part of the Longines Masters events because it allowed them to connect with their fans and local businesses around the world to create a show jumping community. “We collaborated with Los Angeles vendors, sponsors, American show jumpers, and more to highlight the variety of cultural aspects featured at the Longines Masters and form an organic integration through shared messaging and branding,” he told me.

Ameeuw also worked with Olympians Laura Kraut and Nelson Pessoa to help announce Longines as the title partner of the Masters on social media. At last year’s Longines Masters of Los Angeles, riders shared photos and news about their participation on Facebook, Twitter , and Instagram.

For instance, Kaley Cuoco posted about competing in the event multiple times on Instagram and had approximately 100,000 “likes,” and fan favorite Reed Kessler shared her location for the meet-and-greet and autograph signing on Facebook.

EEM’s title sponsor and event namesake Longines, has been involved in the equestrian world since 1878 when it engraved a jockey and a horse on a pocket watch. For them, partnerships with equestrian competitions represents a strong match with the brand’s image and philosophy.

“The Longines Masters match with the core values of the brand; elegance, tradition, performance. Elegance is one of the key factors when it comes to the decision if Longines partners an event or not,” Juan-Carlos Capelli, Vice-President of Longines and Head of International Marketing told me.

To support its partnership with EEM, Longines has developed a social strategy that involves its own equestrian twitter account @LonginesEq and from its primary account @Longines. They post live results and pictures of all the equestrian events they sponsor.

On Instagram @Longines focuses more on the visual elements of their equestrian sponsorships; on Facebook they cover news of their events and on YouTube they tell stories. They use their social channels to strengthen the brand and engage current and future customers of the brand through their association with the equestrian world.

But has it worked?

According to Longines, show jumping is also one of the only sports where men and women compete together, and because their watch collections are split between sexes equally as well, Capelli claims it’s a very good demographic fit for their brand.

Capelli admits they are looking to grow with the sport and anticipate their investment will continue to pay off long into the future. On the surface, it appears a safe bet given the equestrian space in the USA alone has grown to over 6.9 million show horses with 7.1 million participants generating 112 billion in revenue. Better yet, the median income for households owning horses is $60,000 far above the U.S. average of $36,000, and nearly 65% of those households make more than $75,000 a year.

Longines’s customer base appears to value their sponsorship of show jumping, and the discussions on social media reinforces that its commitment is working.

Still, with top show horse stars averaging far less in social followers and influence than their counterparts in other sports (e.g. NASCAR, NBA, MLB or the NFL), EEM and Longines have their work cut out for them. They will need to rely on other forms of marketing and awareness to drive new fans to the sport.

They will also need to convince people that aren’t equestrian participants to tune in and develop an affection for the sport. That’s happened in other sports, but not until a critical mass of enthusiasts was reached first. The show jumping space is working on that next milestone, we’ll see if it makes the jump.

It’s an exciting sport to watch.

To get a horse and rider to the Grand Prix, then clear a course of fences more than five feet high without faults, you have to have a lot of talent in horse in rider. You have to have a lot of patience. You have to have a team of people around you that you trust.

It’s a true feat from everyone involved. The coordination and partnership between team, sponsor and event can be found in sports like tennis and NASCAR. And both have built significant fan bases around the world. Show jumping looks destined to follow.

You might ask if show jumping is just a sport for the elite. It isn't. Show jumping is both a connection with our past and our future. It’s the partnership of man and animal, and is symbolic for how both will continue to be inextricably linked well into the future.