By David Pembroke, Alison Kennelly & Aleyn Silva
4,400,000 views. 118,000 likes. 10,000 comments. 11,000 followers.
And that’s just eight months of Rugby Unity on TikTok.
Over 8 busy months, we have built the Rugby Unity platform (podcast, social media, guides, and event) through persistence, curiosity, and experimentation.
From single-digit views to viral moments, from publishing Lions Tour visitor guides to a very public ‘sing a long’, we’ve created a global community united by our collective mission to ‘help to secure the future prosperity of Rugby Union around the world’.
Read on to find out we built a global fandom that cares about the game they play in Heaven.
In communication, experimentation is your friend.
So are agility and permission.
Technology is perpetually changing the way people send and receive information, education, and entertainment.
Preferences shift, behaviour moves, and personalisation is elusive.
It means one thing.
You must be clear, and you must have a point of view.
You must be consistent, add value, and try new things.
And you must stick at it.
Earlier this year, I created the Rugby Unity podcast. After a 30 plus year career in professional Rugby advising elite coaches, players and national teams, I found myself without a role. But with the Lions Tour, the Nations Cup, multiple Olympics and Men’s and Women’s Rugby World Cups, I was never going to sit the decade out.
So, I retrieved a mothballed asset (The Eddie Podcast), changed its focus, and tested my thesis that there would be interest in an ongoing conversation around ‘helping to secure the future prosperity of Rugby Union around the world’.
And I was right.
Our anchor is a podcast: a twice-weekly, hour-long conversation with notable Rugby coaches Ewen McKenzie and Eddie Jones. Posted to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all other major podcasting platforms, the video-based content examines issues from across the world of Rugby both on and off the field.
We then clip that for Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok and create additional and unique content for Substack. We create unique content for Substack and during the Women’s Rugby World Cup published a weekly podcast with Wallaroo Bella McKenzie.
THE THIRD VOICE
The Rugby Unity community has a voice.
Each week their comments and questions shape an editorial segment of the show.
We have discovered the formula for success in modern media.
‘Attention received = Attention given’.
The ‘Third Voice’ is pure engagement. People feel valued. They are heard. Their questions are answered.
For our TikTok community we publish half a dozen ‘down the barrel’ answers each day. We participate in the comments section to let people know we care.
@rugby_unity_podcast Replying to @proudlysa7 were big fans of Siya Kolisi! #fyp #trending #springboks #francerugby #sarugby @Springboks.rugby @France Rugby ♬ original sound - Rugby Unity
the experience ECONOMY
Effective brand-building includes taking the online world offline.
That’s exactly what we did in the early days of Rugby Unity.
Cast your mind back to July this year: the British & Irish Lions touched down on Australian soil for the first time in twelve years. It was an exciting moment for European and Australian rugby fans alike with swarms of people gearing up for the much-anticipated series.
So rather than just continuing to contribute to the vast stream of online discussion (although we certainly did that), we created an experience — A Fan Zone.
Partnering with local sports bar, The Dock, run by former Wallaby star Ben Alexander, we created a place for rugby fanatics to celebrate on the day of the Brumbies V Lions match.
It attracted 600+ fans, many from the UK and Ireland, to mingle with Australian rugby legends like Doctor Brett Robinson, Stephen Larkham and David Nucifora.
On a bitterly cold Canberra afternoon there was a sausage sizzle, a pass the ball competition, a singalong with the Australian Rugby Choir, and of course, plenty of Guinness on tap. We raised $25,000 for local community rugby.
In a world dominated by clicks, experiences matter.
They create emotions, memories, and relationships.
The Fan Zone was a space where people could feel their connection to Rugby.
The real people, real stories, and atmosphere of the day created a treasure trove of valuable social media content.
In brand building, real things matter.
Never underestimate the power of experience.
THE ATTENTION ECONOMY
People consume content in different ways.
A few weeks ago, a son of a good friend of mine stopped me in the street and said, “I love your podcast”.
I said, “That’s great, do you listen to it each week?”.
He said “No, I don’t listen to it, I watch the Instagram reels”.
Others prefer time stamps so they can jump to the bits that interest them.
45% of our audience on YouTube sits back and watches the program on their smart TVs at home.
The modern adage of effective communication is to ‘meet people where they are’.
Never a truer word spoken.
Every touchpoint is uniquely valuable.
@rugby_unity_podcast Eddie Jones talks about the incident during the Wales v Japan game on the weekend and how red cards need to change. @ラグビー日本代表 @Welsh Rugby #wales #japan #rugby #rugbyunion ♬ original sound - Rugby Unity
WHAT WE'VE LEARNED
‘Helping to secure the future prosperity of Rugby Union around the world.’
The mission is critical.
It guides every decision we make and action we take.
On the program, we refer to it constantly. Our clarity is community service.
A person’s most valuable asset is their time and attention. The last thing they want to do is waste time on irrelevant content. We work hard to let them know who we are and what we are about. If our mission is not of interest, they know they are in the wrong place.
We also get straight down to business.
There is no idle filler at the beginning, middle, or end of the program. We are not comedians. Our audience is not interested in how many beers we drank or what happened on tour. They want the good stuff and they want it fast.
We’ve learned that you don’t need permission. Just crack on, make good programs. The audience decides. There are no exclusive rights fees, no payments, no nothing. Just a commitment to a mission and to creating the best possible programs we can. There is a preference for the voice of the individual over the institution, and that trend is only heading one way.
We’ve learned that subscriber growth is hard. It takes effort, time, relevance, and consistency to encourage people to commit. Trust is hard-earned, and you must keep turning up and meeting the audience’s expectations if you want people to sign up.
We’ve learned that technology is your friend. I was fortunate to visit Japan for a week of interviews leading into the Japan v Australia game. Using the Eleven Labs platform we had that content translated into Japanese. It’s remarkable. If you tune into those episodes, you can hear the tone and timbre of my voice but speaking Japanese.
And the benefits of Artificial Intelligence don’t end there. We have undertaken a root-and-branch rebuild of all workflows, carving out hours from research, production, distribution and analysis through the clever application of automation, data and AI.
You can never have enough good content.
The audience’s appetite is immense.
Volume counts but only if it is in service of the mission. You must be good, and you must be good on every platform.
And you must tell it like it is. No fence sitting. Only this week, our commitment to clarity saw our content quoted in the Roar, Rugby Pass, Planet Rugby, Wales Online and SA Rugby magazine. It’s unusual for a week to pass without us featuring somewhere on Rugby’s major global media platforms.
I don’t go much on the word authenticity. It’s a bit cringe, overused and a tad pretentious. But it’s true. You must be yourself. The community can smell phony. It’s why we do little editing and keep it real.
The production of our Lions Tour guides was helpful. And it worked. Our community appreciated the free content that added value to their experience. It helped build trust with people more prepared to go from a casual to committed member of the community. These days, resonance is more important than reach.
Rugby Unity is a platform, not just a podcast. We see a clear path to our community contributing to their experience of the game.
As we near Xmas 2025, we take great satisfaction knowing we are engaged with tens of thousands (and in many weeks hundreds of thousands of people) from all over the world — united by the love of our great game and its future.
It’s been a great start, but it’s just that. A start.
This is a marathon and not a sprint, and the future is bright.
Very bright.
