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Beast Beauty Brains Bear: The Ilona Maher effect in action at Bristol
By Joe Harvey
Beast. Beauty. Brains. Bear.
That’s the tagline Bristol Bears Women used to confirm the signing of rugby’s hottest property.
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Ilona Maher arrived in the West Country to plenty of fanfare. It’s not hard to work out why.
With over eight million followers across social media, the sport has never seen celebrity like the 28-year-old possesses.
In the fortnight since the announcement Bristol have seen the followers of their women’s team on Instagram almost triple to over 60,000 and moved their New Year encounter with Gloucester-Hartpury to Ashton Gate Stadium because of unprecedented demand.
So, Maher is sort of a big deal.
After helping her nation win bronze at last summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, Maher cemented her celebrity in America with a second-place finish on Dancing with the Stars, became a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model cover and was named on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list the day after signing for Bristol.
Joining Bristol Bears on a three-month deal starting in January, the American is hoping to translate her rugby sevens success to the 15-a-side game in the hope of representing her country at the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup in England.
It is a move that had journalists and supporters glued to their phones as the star teased her landing spot and, in the days after, immersed herself in British culture by getting ahead of the two-year waiting list at The Bank Tavern in Bristol for one of their famous Sunday roasts.
Just how Bristol take advantage of signing rugby’s biggest phenomena since Jonah Lomu remains to be seen, but already the foundations are being laid.
Big in America
There was a different feel to Maher’s announcement.
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The video posted on the 28-year-old’s account offered her the opportunity to display the personality that has made her world-famous, while the ‘Time Person of the Year’ façade oozed a star quality only rivalled by Caitlin Clark later being named Time’s Athlete of the Year in the WNBA’s landmark year.
If you refreshed Bristol’s social media accounts on the evening of Maher’s signing, you could see followers leaping up by the thousands, with the vast majority of those new fans from the USA.
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In many ways that reaction and clamour was the perfect accoutrement to the hours of work that had gone into securing Maher’s signature.
After the initial excitement of knowing that the sevens specialist is plying her trade in Premiership Women’s Rugby in the New Year, those questions began to grow.
Perhaps the biggest was where her hordes of fans can watch games was the loudest.
With TNT Sports broadcasting just one game per round of PWR action, it is at the behest of clubs to livestream home games on their own platforms for supporters to watch.
To date, Bristol have never live-streamed one of their fixtures.
But with their new fanbase in mind, the club is now looking for a livestream provider to broadcast fixtures against Leicester Tigers, Loughborough Lightning and their Storm Darragh delayed encounter with Exeter Chiefs.
“We are actively looking into live streams,” Daisie Mayes, Women’s General Manager & ESG, said. “We’re in the process of looking for a provider.
“It has to be right. You’ll see with some of the other livestream games when it’s not TNT it can be poor quality.
“If we want to get an American and global audience, we have to put a good entertainment package on display. It cannot be poorly produced.
“As you can imagine, we were looking before we signed Ilona, but since we have signed Ilona, we’ve had a flurry of production companies.
“In the past, we were a bit apprehensive in terms of if the weather’s bad, does that then mean more people will then watch the live stream rather than coming to the games?
“The amount of comments on the post that they want the live stream; they want to be able to watch the rugby in the US and further afield.”
Bristol did not rule out collaborating with the league’s American broadcaster, The Rugby Network, to get games on as many US screens as possible.
While you may have to wait until the New Year for livestreams to be confirmed, the club have already began capitalising on Maher’s signing with apparel.
If you visit the Bristol Bears online store you can bag yourself a ‘Maher 11’ shirt (along with Red Roses Sarah Bern and Abbie Ward) and it is believed that numerous shirt orders have already been placed.
“That actually came off the back of people demanding the shirt,” Mayes said.
“Especially from the American audience. People were saying ‘For the American girlies, we don’t care what team, just tell us what jersey we are buying’. That made us laugh.
“We sat some of the players down and just explained that process and they were like ‘You don’t even need to speak to us about it’ and with that in mind, that is where we can use Ilona to make things happen for the other players.
“Off the back of being able to buy a ‘Maher, 11’ shirt on our website, you’ll soon be able to personalise with every other player on there.”
As the club shop braces itself for a flurry of Marston-Mulhearn orders in the near future, Mayes is keen to express the team’s increasing desire to raise the profile of their women’s players.
It is something that head coach, Dave Ward, has been particularly enthusiastic about since taking over the team in 2021.
“This is something he was really passionate about coming to Bears and we were the first team in PWR to have names on the back of the shirt,” Mayes said.
“He, as an ex-professional men’s player comes in and says it is the smallest thing as a men’s player you take for granted and the women don’t even have. He drove that.
“For a lot of us, when you play you think about your reason why and a lot of that will be your support system and your family and people around you.
“There’s a beautiful clip of Lucy Burgess where she sees a girl in the crowd at Ashton Gate with ‘Burgess’ on her back and she just bursts out crying. She was so emotional and hugged the girl.
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“I think that just epitomises how much that means for the players. Hopefully with Ilona here we’ll see many more shirts and we will see more different names.”
Driving personality
It has been found that female athletes offer more influence compared to more traditional influencers.
Over the years Maher has spoken about using her platform to be an ambassador for not only women’s rugby, but women’s sport across the board.
Whether it is talking about body positivity, women’s health or just advertising landmark events in the rugby calendar, it is undeniable that the bronze medallist has only ever used her platform for good.
This rise in reception for women’s sport and social media trends had been noted by Bristol, who altered their media strategy to be more player-centric even before bringing Maher through the door.
“We align completely with Ilona’s values and ambitions about driving the profiles of the other players,” Mayes said.
“She’s already said to our players that she wants to help them, make content and that completely aligns with our strategy.
“We took a different direction with our media strategy this year. We wanted to focus on individuals and the profiles of the players, so we looked at our social content.
“The audiences for men’s and women’s teams are completely different.
“On our men’s team, people engage with rugby footage and rugby-specific content.
“Whereas on the women’s side, they engage more with fun stuff that shows their personality, and they get to know the person behind the player.”
To maintain the growth of Bears’ social media platforms the club began advertising for a three-month Social Media Content Executive.
Following Maher will form just part of the role, with the rest of their time spent helping the club’s other players enhance their own visibility online.
Whether it is taking part in the latest social media trends or just offering an insight into a player’s sense of humour, it could help turn the average social media user into a rugby fan or make rising stars Millie David or Reneeqa Bonner into household names.
“The whole ambition was to get global eyes on our girls,” Mayes said. “You’ve seen from the Maher effect, our tickets for Gloucester have boomed.
“We’ve been able to move to a bigger stadium. It is all the trickle-down effect of how we maximise the opportunity.
“We’ve probably needed an extra media resource for a long time with the Women.
“Someone that gets the female humour and tone. For the work that we do, we do have an incredibly small media team, so it is something that we’ve needed.
“In today’s market and climate, we have to budget. Now Ilona has brought a lot of attention, we can justify that spend.
“If we’re going to bring in someone of global status, if we say we are going to maximise on that, we have to have the resources available.
“If we say to girls; we are going to equip you with the best resources, equipment, knowledge that you can maximise on this opportunity, we have to have someone helping them with that.”
The player
It is unclear when Maher will turn out in Bristol colours for the first time.
Currently back in America spending time with family across the holidays, she will return to England when her contract starts in January.
In an interview with the BBC the 28-year-old said she may not be available for selection on Sunday 5 January when Bristol welcome Gloucester-Hartpury to Ashton Gate, but still encouraged fans to buy tickets and turn the TNT Sports broadcast into a memorable spectacle.
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Maher has made no secret of her intention to represent the USA at next summer’s Rugby World Cup and will be doing everything in her power to be belting out The Star-Spangled Banner at the Stadium of Light in late August.
Outside of individual ambition, there is even a more practical aspect to the recruitment of the 28-year-old.
Ward’s squad has been hit hard with injury.
Emma Orr, Amber Reed and Meryl Smith are all on the sidelines, with Maher expected to compete for a place in the centres or on the wing.
Winning two XVs caps on the wing for the USA in 2021, Bristol’s backs and attack coach, Tom Luke, will be relishing the opportunity to get an extremely talented player up to speed in the 15-a-side game.
“First and foremost, she’s a rugby player,” Mayes said. “We had some big injuries coming back from WXV and we know we were going to struggle with such a short and fast season.
“We needed to bring in some sort of injury cover. She is a great athlete and a great player in the positions that we needed.
“She is a great rugby player with all the physical attributes that we like.”
For me, as an septuagenarian and an avid follower of women's rugby, she needs to do her talking on the pitch over a period of time, not on social media. Only then will I be convinced she is a good player and not all hyperbole.