Case Study: Solar energy at Utilita Bowl

About the Client

We’ve worked with Hampshire Cricket for many years, providing powerful media coverage for the club, and the venue – now known as Utilita Bowl.

Collaboration

In 2024, the club announced a partnership with Utilita, which saw the energy firm take the ground naming rights for the newly named Utilita Bowl.

The partnership led to the venue announcing ambitions to become the world’s greenest cricket ground. We set to work generating positive profile around the partnership and ground’s new name, getting stuck into phase one of the partnership – the panels.

In September 2024, Utilita Bowl officially switched on 1,044 solar panels, marking the culmination of a summer-long installation. This represented the first major step in the venue’s ambition to become the world’s greenest cricket stadium, through a pioneering partnership with Utilita Energy.

Our job was to amplify this.

Our Objectives

Build a strategy to mark the completion of the panel installation

Generate positive media profile for the partnership

Set the narrative for venue’s ambitions

The Results

Around 600 pieces of media coverage, reaching an estimated audience of 41m says it all.

Utilising an England international fixture at Utilita Bowl provided us with the opportunity to align with the wider news agenda, where county cricket often struggles to cut-through. Demonstrating the potential impact, working with journalists across sport, news, trade and sustainability.

Featured across BBC Sport, TalkSport, Sky Sports, PA, ESPN, trade and regional media, the launch rounded off phase one brilliantly.

Marking the one year anniversary of the switch on, Utilita Bowl announced significant environmental impact achieved by the installation. Since going live, the array has generated 367,791 kWh of clean electricity; enough to power around 105 homes for a year. By reducing reliance on conventional energy sources, the venue has also prevented 55.17 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, the equivalent of removing 24 cars from the road for a year or planting more than 2,400 trees.

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