In September 2022, toward the end of their Table Stakes Europe participation, the team from Italian newspaper Il Giornale de Vicenza launched a Design/Do sprint exploring a new offer aimed at the fans of their local football team, L.R. Vicenza. They wanted to create a space that would bring people together around a club to which they have remained incredibly loyal, even if its history has not spared their emotions.

The pandemic forced the German local newspaper to rapidly rethink its approach to sports journalism. The company quickly identified the fans of the local basketball team, Brose Bamberg, as a potential target audience, and its sports desk has revamped its content production to successfully engage them.

Editorial coverage of amateur football is of interest to those who play it as well as their families, friends and sponsors: people who are loyal to their local teams in their victories and defeats. These engaged communities represent a significant potential for a regional daily newspaper. La Voix du Nord has long been aware of their importance and, since the end of 2021, has been saying it loud and clear to fans.

A participant in an earlier Table Stakes Europe round, Le Parisien has established a strong foundation on TikTok since it started publishing on the platform a year ago. Here, the company’s head of video shares what they have learned along the way.

The UK-based publisher planned to adopt a new approach to covering topics relevant to people in their twenties and thirties. The result – Quarter Life, a series of articles for young professionals – has been an eye-opener in showing the impact of audiences-targeted journalism.

An ageing subscriber base in print. A weak flow of new young paying digital readers. And no real focus on how to tackle the problem. That was the situation for NWT, a regional Swedish news outlet, in October 2021. One year later – a total change. This is how NWT succeeded in reaching young audiences and increasing revenue from that target group, and what six steps it took to build a better and younger future.

The Spanish newspaper used the Table Stakes methodology to identify a new focus audience, the Spanish Legion and the broader community around the military unit. La Voz de Almería has since launched a dedicated website section, newsletter and a YouTube channel to serve this target audience.

Nederlands Dagblad is a national news outlet with Christian roots in the Netherlands, writing about Protestant and Catholic news. But in the Netherlands, there is also an evangelical group of Christians – about 200,000 of them – with no media outlet focussing on this group. ND saw an opportunity, and jumped right in: in the fall of 2021 it started to create content about and for Dutch evangelicals.

The Austrian publisher had already made the strategic decision to focus on digital subscriptions when it joined Table Stakes Europe, and this year they launched a freemium paywall. In this interview they discuss how the TSE experience helped them engage their audience and increase their digital subscriptions.

The daily 24heures has a real presence across the canton of Vaud and its capital, Lausanne. One of the things that set this area apart is the diversity of the foreigners who call it home. Although these people number close to 260,000, articles about their lives, interests and concerns are few and far between. As part of its Table Stakes Europe challenge, the 24heures team went out to find out more about Portuguese expats, who make up the largest foreign community in the area.