High Performance Sport New Zealand

For High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ), funding decisions aren’t just about podium finishes. The organisation needed a better way to understand how athletes, teams, and events contribute to the wellbeing of New Zealanders. And they needed to do it fast, accurately, and at scale. That’s where Crowd Reader came in.

The challenge

For years, HPSNZ relied on the Active NZ survey to track population wellbeing and the public impact of major sporting events. However, the survey became increasingly
expensive and response rates started to drop.

At the same time, the way funding decisions were being made was evolving. Instead of just counting medals, the broader contribution of athletes and events to the nation’s social fabric was being considered.

What HPSNZ needed was a fast, reliable way to benchmark and compare public sentiment and wellbeing around specific events, sports, teams and athletes.

What they needed

A way to quantify the contribution of sport to New Zealanders’ wellbeing
Faster, more scalable, and more representative insights than traditional surveys offered
The ability to benchmark athletes, teams, sports, and events against each other and track those changes over time
A platform to build a growing archive of insights for future funding and strategic decisions

How Crowd Reader helped

Crowd Reader gave High Performance Sport New Zealand a new way to look at public sentiment and help make funding decisions. They could look at events they’d funded, like the Rio, Tokyo and Beijing Olympic Games, and the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

And they could also look beyond HPSNZ-funded events to include Rugby World Cups, the FIFA Women’s Football World Cup, and the Netball World Cup, to see how they compared.

What they achieved:

Quantified the contribution of sport to national wellbeing to help inform funding decisions
Created a growing archive of insights covering historic and current events to benchmark against new opportunities
Delivered faster, more scalable, and more representative insights than traditional survey tools
Continues to build value and compound insights as new events, sports, teams and athletes are added to Crowd Reader

With the data at their fingertips, HPSNZ was able to allocate funding based on athletic achievement and how the event, individual or team contributed to the wellbeing of all New Zealanders.

What Crowd Reader customers are saying...

"The NZ sports sector developed an outcomes framework to guide the priorities and investment decisioning for community and high performance sports. Key to achieving these outcomes is monitoring the extent to which sports performances resonate with all New Zealanders. We had a real challenge as there was no way to identify the “Performances that connect” and those that create “Engagement outcomes” - this is where Crowd Reader excelled by providing an independent lens of New Zealanders’ sporting engagement. This allowed HPSNZ the ability to quantify the voice of New Zealand fans accurately and confidently at the event, sport, team, and athlete levels – thereby giving clarity for HPSNZ in the allocation of funding."

ANDREW MATHESON, STRATEGY AND INNOVATION, HIGH PERFORMANCE SPORT NEW ZEALAND