By Business & Finance 
Sport Changes Life was named the Grand Prix winner at the 2013 eircom Spider Awards at The Convention Centre, Dublin last night.
The awards, the longest standing and most prestigious digital awards in Ireland, reward Irish businesses and community organisations for digital excellence.
Sport Changes Life is a Belfast based foundation which aims to raise the aspirations of young people through sporting excellence, vocational and academic achievement and personal development. Its online presence plays a crucial part in its work. They were also winners of the ‘Sports’ category on the night.
The Summit founder, Paddy Cosgrave was awarded an outstanding achievement award for his ongoing work to promote Ireland. Cosgrave’s work over the past number of years has helped to place Ireland firmly on the digital map and the award recognises the vast contribution that Cosgrave and the dedicated team behind The Summit have made to Ireland’s digital economy.
Eamonn and Brian Fallon of Distilled Media scooped the Internet Hero Award for their work in creating some of Ireland’s most successful online ventures, including Daft.ie and thejournal.ie and for their outstanding success in the online industry.
This year’s winner of the eircom Spider Business’ Choice Award, as voted by the public, was Tenderscout while Chris Jones, digital marketing lead with RaboDirect and owner of TheEffect.net was presented with the Digital Future Star Award.
In total, 26 awards were presented on the night, honouring online and digital achievement in categories such as social media, mobile apps, digital start-up, innovative use of technology, financial services and education. Each of the categories in the 2013 eircom Spider Awards is designed to acknowledge and promote business and community enterprise through technological advancements, innovation and e-commerce.
Bizimply took home the inaugural Cloud Excellence Award, which was created to celebrate the technical and commercial success of the cloud industry in Ireland, while Electric Ireland scooped two eircom Spider Awards for Excellence in Social Media and Best Online Campaign for ‘Powering Kindness’ week.
Other winners included Irish First Aid app for Mobile App, My Golf Society for Travel, Tourism and Hospitality, Funked Up Fixies for eBusiness and Linked Finance for Financial Services.
Chairman of the judging panel and marketing director, eircom Business, Gary Disley commented: “Each year the quality of entries to the eircom Spider Awards gets better and the calibre of the 2013 entries really was exceptional. Things move so quickly in the digital space and it is really encouraging to see so many Irish companies keeping pace with international developments. In particular, we’ve seen real progress in the number of SMEs demonstrating new and innovative ways of reaching their customer base online.”
Commenting on the winner of the Grand Prix, Disley added: “Special praise must go to Grand Prix winner ‘Sport Changes Life’. The judging panel was impressed by both the organisation and its online presence. ‘Sport Changes Life’ genuinely makes a difference to society. The contemporary website won praise from the judges for its brilliant use of imagery and typography. The team behind ‘Sport Changes Life’ has also embraced social media in a very successful manner which many organisations try to do but fail to master. The website focuses on the user experience and follows best practice in terms of responsive design and development. Of all the entrants and winners, ‘Sport Changes Life’ excelled the most in the criteria that the judges were looking for when awarding the Grand Prix.”
The Winners 2013
The eircom Spider Awards 2013 gallery
