2017

Avon & Liverpool Ladies FC

The landmark partnership between Liverpool Ladies Football Club and Avon highlights the increasing momentum of women’s football in the UK. Avon, the company that gave women an independent income before they even had the right to vote is now the first female-focused brand to sponsor a premier ladies’ football team. The Liverpool Ladies FC are also the only team in the top tier of the FA Women’s Super League (FA WSL) to have a shirt sponsor independent from their male counterparts. Avon will feature on the front of shirt for all levels of the Liverpool Ladies teams from the under 10s right up to the First Team Squad.

The launch of the partnership featured a private reveal event for the Liverpool Ladies team and staff as well as a public announcement and digital launch ahead of the FA WSL Spring Series. The traditional and social media reach and results were a powerful statement supporting the relevance of women’s football. The partnership between Avon and Liverpool Ladies FC will only amplify the conversation surrounding women’s football and the progress being made toward developing a bright future for the next generation of female footballers.

Beko & FC Barcelona

Beko’s challenge was to use fans’ passion for football and FCB to drive awareness, consideration and sales of products in a low interest category (white goods).

Beko’s target audience is 25-45-year-olds in transition from a large amount of leisure time to being time poor and under pressure in their professional and personal lives.

Combining this audience truth with the asset truth that FCB is the most playful club on the planet and the brand truth that Beko’s efficient products give you more time to do the things you love, we created the ‘Official Partner of Play’ campaign.

For season three, the campaign focused on highlighting the diminishing time to play in modern society, inspiring fans to play more, and then providing them with the ultimate opportunity to play. We did this through a series of connecting activations to successfully drive brand perception, propensity to purchase, and FCB partnership awareness…

1) ESTABLISH
The World Play Shortage Report: A global study into play habits to substantiate the brand message

2) INSPIRE
Playful Places: FCB stars recalling childhood memories of play, encouraging fans to share their own playful place

3) CELEBRATE
#Time2Play: Rewarding fans with a once-in-a-lifetime chance to play at Camp Nou

Betstars and Leicester City FC

In August 2016, BetStars became the Official Betting Partner of Premier League champions Leicester City – a deal negotiated, planned and activated by SportQuake. Through the partnership, BetStars wanted to make a mark in the crowded sports betting market, creating content that gains them a foothold both on and offline.

A great partnership will provide mutual benefits for each party and grow both brands in turn. We believe the BetStars and Leicester City partnership has leveraged each brand simultaneously to enhance the other.

Marathonbet & Hibernian FC

There’s a reason Hibernian fans have praised Marathonbet for being the club’s “best ever sponsor”.

And it’s clear The Hibees faithful enjoyed last season for more reasons than just their brilliant promotion back to the Scottish Premier League.

“The involvement Marathonbet has with the club is brilliant. Many more years please,” said one fan last month.

“Signing a new deal with Marathonbet was one of the best things the club could have done this summer. They really engage with the fans as often as they can”, said another.

We don’t want to blow our own trumpet too much, but the team at Marathonbet has loved working with Hibernian and their fans as much as they have us.

Virgin Media & The Football Supporters’ Federation

With multi-million-pound transfer deals the norm and players earning more per week than the average fan earns in a few years, you can forgive supporters for feeling cut-off from the game Football supporters are only too aware of the vast amounts of money in football but they continue to turn up in large numbers, hand over their hard-earned cash for a ticket and book their increasingly expensive seat on the train They’re the heartbeat of the game As FSF CEO Kevin Miles said “Away fans in particular bring noise and colour to grounds, adding to the spectacle immeasurably But following your side on the road can be expensive and, despite football being wealthy, we believe very little of it is used to reduce costs for match-goers” Virgin Media have truly aligned themselves with fans not only in the Premier League but throughout the pyramid Even those fans that have not benefited from a cheaper ticket recognise that Virgin Media are for the fans They haven’t stopped at the sponsoring of a shirt but have went that extra mile They have supported the supporters – a member of the football family that often feels overlooked and for that, fans are grateful.

Burnley FC in the Community

We are Burnley FC in the Community, the official charity of Burnley FC. We use the power of our football club to inspire, support and deliver change to a cross-section of people in the communities surrounding the Turf Moor stadium.

We are a dynamic, innovative and fast-growing organisation. In the space of three short years since our founding, we have expanded to a £2m charity, employing almost 70 members of staff and delivering over 30 community projects across East Lancashire.

During the 16/17 season, a big focus of our work was on the planning, management and execution of our facilities strategy.

Working to a strategy from August 2016, we have opened an education hub at UCFB Burnley to great success, started work on a brand new leisure facility, we are refurbishing and reopening a much-loved local outdoor education centre and we are working on the implementation of a new town-centre Community Kitchen.

Our submission gives the details of the development of our facilities portfolio and the reasons why we are proud of the work that has, and will, be done via these spaces to address the needs of the special people in our communities.

Everton in the Community

Everton in the Community was the first football charity in the Premier League to nominate a ‘Neighbourhood Manager’.

Since the Club and charity launched the role of Neighbourhood Manager in August 2015, a lot of feedback has taken place around how we can become a better neighbour. Through various consultation forums, we aim to support local employability schemes, become transparent with our neighbours about ongoing work, champion local business and help bring investment into the local area with housing support, as well as working on crime awareness and matchday activity.

Goodison Park is based in the heart of the Everton ward and our Neighbourhood Manager is easily accessible to neighbours and sees them on a day-to-day basis through various events/programmes that the charity runs, right through to drop-in sessions.

We have off site facilities in Everton Free School and a Community Hub which is open to local residents and businesses.

This work undertaken in our neighbourhood, and by supporting the security element along our local High Street (County Road), has meant that more businesses have opened and closed for the first time in 10 years. It has also contributed to the decrease in crime statistics by 7%.

Liverpool FC

Football has the exceptional ability to bring communities together and span generations to inspire positivity and drive change.

The Red Neighbours team’s combined experience and knowledge allows them to seamlessly work across Anfield and the surrounding areas, pulling together agencies to work collectively for the benefit of the wider community.

They understand that a collaborative way of working is the ideal approach to making a real impact and that the Club cannot tackle the deeply entrenched issues that these communities face alone. The team is focused on tackling local perceived need whilst so taking into account intelligence and data reports from local health authorities and council departments in order to understand the wider landscape and broader priorities.

In addition to the team we have a range of fantastic assets available to us including; our players, our staff, and our fantastic stadium, which is situated in the heart of the Anfield community.

As a universally recognisable brand, with over 700 million fans worldwide, we also have access to a global platform, which can be used to highlight and raise awareness of key issues in order to gain support to help address them.

Swansea City AFC

Give A Jack A Jacket was a social inclusion marketing initiative that aimed to not only give back to the community, it aimed at bringing the fans and the club together.

As a Premier League football club, we have the power to improve the lives of our fans and the less fortunate within our local communities, and that was the challenge we set ourselves when devising this social inclusion marketing campaign.

A simple, yet inventive initiative, Give A Jack A Jacket wasn’t just a positive piece of PR, it was a campaign that the whole club and community got behind to give back and to do some good.

The Football Foundation

In delivering The Premier League & The FA Facilities Fund, the Football Foundation has transformed the landscape of grassroots football in towns and cities across the country.

It is a truly unique public-private-partnership CSR scheme that brought together the whole football family, with government, to radically improve the nation’s grassroots football infrastructure and open up access to our national game to record numbers of people.

By also linking these new sites with Professional Football Clubs, from the Premier League to Non-League, the Foundation also ensured that this new generation of sports facilities did not just enable many more local people to enjoy regular football. These sites have also become inspirational venues at which this country’s Football Clubs deliver life-changing outreach work to real people in their communities, week-in, week-out.

Aston Villa FC

Our 2017/18 season ticket campaign revolved around ‘#MyVillaMoments’ and included the combination of various live data sources to create a progressive, fully personalised and responsive website for every season ticket holder and match ticket purchaser. The PURL allowed them to re-live the defining moments of the 16/17 season – to truly see what they’d be missing without a season ticket in 17/18. Using rich media, behavioural data and Opta stats we created over 50,000 websites with 19 variable sources of data in each.

The campaign goal was to build a 1-to-1 conversation with our supporters, highlighting to them the exciting moments of their attendances at Villa Park in order to encourage season ticket renewal or purchase. Other aims included a target of early bird sales, a specific marketing ROI, a % renewal rate and a set revenue vs. number of season ticket holders.

The campaign went on to be the most successful season ticket marketing campaign in the past 10 years, breaking several records and all targets, despite the Club finishing in its lowest position for 44 years.

Derby County FC with NewTek

In order to engage more effectively with fans and increase revenue streams, Derby County made significant investments in NewTek’s live production equipment and dedicated staff to produce high quality content for Pride Park Stadium’s jumbo screens and the club’s subscription-based online offering, RAMS TV.

In a relatively short space of time, Derby County has transformed the way in which it communicates to fans, and enabled the club to enhance its offering to sponsors and advertisers

Hull City

The launch of our new Club website which combines our news, ticketing, Tigers TV and new Tigers Rewards scheme in one domain.

Using in-depth CRM and analytics we are able to create bespoke advertising using over 25 pieces of supporter data. This enables us to ensure supporters only see relevant information and advertising but also has the commercial benefit of selling the same advertising to multiple companies.

The new site also houses our ticketing sales allowing supporters the ability to browse stories whilst adding tickets to their basket. They can also purchase Tiger Travel and car parking passes all within one location.

We have relaunched Tigers TV to be the main stop for all supporters for the latest videos and highlights. This is accessed through a free login on the site to enable us to analyse which demographics are viewing certain videos allowing us to cater more accurately for their tastes. We believe that this content should be free to all supporters and do not believe in hiding behind a pay wall.

In comparison with 2016, on launch in July 2017 we saw a 145% increase in users to 135,000 and almost double the number of page views with 669,000.

Leicester City FC with Seven League

Leicester City Football Club renewed all of their digital platforms in Summer 2017 – from main club website to ticketing, e-commerce and in-store retail.

Integrations across multiple vendors delivered in just 5 months from start to launch resulted in the most unified digital fan experience of any club in Europe, with a Single Sign On solution underpinning consistent UI and UX across all sites.

SSO and the associated Foxes Rewards scheme enables a membership scheme that combines access to tickets and content with cash value on purchases and a clear, incentivised journey through free and paid tiers.

Content presentation is beautiful, engagement stats are up and sales conversion rates are much improved, in particular on mobile.
Insight around site usage is market-leading, as is the Club’s ability to understand and improve the fan experience.

All of the above enables the club to deliver great content to fans on any device, and to create much improved commercial value for partners.

Manchester City FC with SAP

Manchester City, alongside official Cloud Software Provider and trusted technology partner, SAP, collaborated to place technology at the heart of the fan experience.

SAP designed and created the Premier League’s first fan-friendly interactive digital wall, entitled #CityPulse, featuring touchscreen interface and video display, located in City Square – the social hub of the Etihad Stadium.

The #CityPulse Wall, powered by SAP HANA, was designed to enhance the match-day experience for fans and help change how they access and consume football data, providing them with access to data-driven insights, real-time statistics and player profiles for every player across Manchester City’s First Team, Women’s Team and Youth Squad.

Through these insights, fans are able to analyse their favourite players throughout the season and dive deeper into tailored performance indicators.

The #CityPulseWall Teaser video and Launch video had very positive engagement on social media with more than 232,000 and 55,000 views. Media coverage was impressive, including stories on Sky Sports and The Drum.

The position of the #CityPulse Wall, located near key transport links, provides a perfect location for fan footfall. The #CityPulse Wall has become part of the fans’ match-day experience, creating an estimated number of 472,500 impressions across the 2016/17 season.

tv

Three years ago ADI undertook a game-changing project – to connect all 72 professional EFL league stadia to its SportsHub operations centre. The purpose: to increase the value of the broadcast rights, and create the infrastructure for a revolutionary new streaming platform that would make every match available to an international fanbase – live.

A huge undertaking, ADI connected all 72 stadia to its broadcast fibre-optic network operations centre – digging trenches and laying fibre cables across cities in the most demanding urban and rural environments. No infrastructure project of this kind had ever been attempted before in such a short time, and ADI completed it within two years.

ADI’s 28,000km of fibre network now delivers live EFL match feeds in HD for broadcasters and streaming services, including the EFL’s new iFollow platform hosted by NeuLion which has the potential to reach a global audience of 270,000 fans and raise significant new revenue for the league and its clubs.

Arena Seating

Arena Seating has been supplying temporary, demountable seating to sports clubs for the past 50 years and has helped hundreds of teams to improve their stadiums without burdening themselves with huge outlays.
Supplying high-quality temporary and semi-permanent grandstands that can be installed quickly and easily and comply to the relevant safety regulations, Arena Seating have worked at all levels of the football pyramid from non-league clubs up to the Premier League.

For the 2016-17 season the company worked across the UK in Wales, England and Scotland from their WIltshire base, overhauling grounds and installing bespoke stands.At Bristol Rovers we helped the club – which went into the season on the back of two successive promotions – meet increased demand for tickets at the Memorial Stadium ahead of a move to a permanent, new ground on the outskirts of the city. At Hungerford Town they helped the club get ready, at short notice, for a crucial FA inspection.

Arena Seating’s products are being used at more than 200 clubs, from Ross County and Inverness Caledonian Thistle down to Fulham’s Craven Cottage and at the training grounds of Premier League clubs Manchester United, Everton and Swansea City.

Levy UK

Levy UK, the sport, leisure and hospitality division of Compass Group UK & Ireland, is a specialist sports caterer and the name behind legendary retail catering and hospitality experiences. Levy UK has built long-term partnerships with many of the UK’s top stadia, the portfolio includes; Chelsea FC, Swansea City AFC, Leicester City FC and Sheffield Utd.

At each of the venues Levy UK operate in the business is responsible for match day catering and hospitality as well as non-match day meetings, events, exhibitions and conferences.

By merging functional design with cutting-edge trends for great food and service, the team create bespoke innovative solutions to make sure that whatever the score, guests get an amazing day.

In 2017, Levy UK was awarded a 10-year contract to be the official catering partner for Tottenham Hotspur FC at its new stadium, which is due to open in 2018.

The 61,000 capacity and largest club stadium in London, will represent a major new landmark for the capital, delivering a world class sport and entertainment destination and setting a new benchmark for fan experience with its offering of year round facilities for match day and non-match day events.

Portview Fit-Out

Portview is a multi-award winning universal fit-out company working for some of the world’s most prestigious brands.

Established in Belfast in 1975 as a “one man and a van” construction company, Portview has grown exponentially to a turnover of over 40 million since solely specialising in luxury fit-out in 2006. With a strong reputation for providing clients with a highly personalised service that transforms the most ambitious of design concepts into reality, the client experience is at the heart of everything that Portview does.

Portview was integral to the transformation of the UK’s only venue capable of hosting both world class football and athletics events -the London Stadium in Stratford, London.

The stadium originally built to host the 2012 Olympics and having only pop-up hospitality areas had to be re-configured for post games legacy use.

Strategic design firm 2020 Ltd created a scheme for the 8,547m2 space over the entire four floors of the West Hospitality Stand Boasting nine hospitality lounges and 16 VIP boxes, enabling Portview to create impressive revenue generating spaces for the hospitality areas in the stadium.

In tribute to the project’s success, it was selected to host the first Restaurant & Bar Design Talk of 2017

Reading Room

Following months of research, development, strategy and design, Reading Room’s bespoke sports platform – Playmaker – has now launched and is already being used by three top clubs.

The platform adds to the extensive suite of digital services that Reading Room already provides the football industry with, and enhances its offering by delivering the powerful tools needed to enable clubs to shape a truly distinctive, yet successful digital presence.

While only recently launched, the three clubs live with Playmaker have already seen significant year-on-year visitor improvements.

George’s Park

St. George’s Park is truly a 21st Century destination for football, where innovative technology solutions underpin elite training facilities. With a focus on service delivery and visitor satisfaction, the facility brings together the latest technologies to enhance learning, training and performance.

The national football centre is more than a venue for elite footballers. It is a centre of excellence for football talent and innovation, a community facility, a hub for global businesses and a place from where the football industry can learn.

Almost 2,400 coaches have passed either UEFA Pro, UEFA A or UEFA B Licence since the opening of St. George’s Park and 337 coaching, education, medical and referee courses have been completed. An online community of 9,600 coaches also has access to support, advice and practical resources thanks to the facility.

However, despite the innovative technologies in place, none of this would be possible without service excellence and St. George’s Park is committed to service delivery and visitor satisfaction.

This commitment ensures consistently high customer satisfaction scores, which go some way to demonstrating the high standards achieved, including 9.18 out of 10 for overall experience (based on average scores May 2017 – July 2017).

STATSports Group

STATSports Group Limited was founded by Alan Clarke and Sean O’Connor in 2008 and has since changed the way sport is analysed, coached and viewed, by combining cutting edge technology and sports science. STATSports are the world leading provider of player tracking technology to elite sports teams, operating in the NFL, NBA, EPL, La Liga, Serie A, 6 nations and many more.

Originally based in Ireland, STATSports clientele include the majority of the English Premier League teams such as Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal as well as Juventus, English FA, FAI, RFU and the IRFU.

Spring 2017 saw the launch of STATSports’ revolutionary APEX device. APEX is worn by athletes during training sessions and in matches to collect intricate data on their performance and physical wellbeing. This allows managers and coaches to make decisions to adjust player or team workloads based on the data provided.

StreamAMG

StreamAMG has had a phenomenally busy year in our work with football clients in providing top tier online video solutions.

Our teams have been hard at work making sure our clients make the most of their digital offerings by providing ways to live stream to other countries, increasing revenues through advert monetisation and aiding fan engagement by providing video libraries of classic content. All of which is hosted securely and seamlessly within the club’s own websites.

We would like to thank our clients for offering such challenges and are overjoyed at the response so far! We look forwards to seeing where the future takes us and the industry next!

Arsenal FC

Arsenal’s 2016/17… starring the fans

As part of a club-wide shift in tone of voice and fan engagement, we wanted to make our supporters central to our output throughout the 2016/17 season while also driving engagement across our platforms.

We also recognised that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach was not the optimal way to engage our global fanbase – so we set out to create a bespoke content strategy for key commercial regions and bridge the gap between the club, the players and the fanbase.

By making the fans central to our approach for 2016/17, our aim was to start long-term relationships through data capture and CRM, driving digital membership sign-ups and referrals to the club’s retail arm.

We did this across both club-owned platforms and our social media channels through a variety of measures – innovative and unique signing announcements on Twitter, geo-targeted content on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat stories and the use of Playbuzz to offers polls and quizzes that put supporters at the heart of our content during the 2016/17 season.

Leyton Orient FC, Kick it Out & the Football Supporters’ Federation (FSF)

In August 2016, the Fans For Diversity campaign, a joint initiative run between Kick It Out and the Football Supporters Federation, teamed up with the Leyton Orient Trust and Leyton Orient Football Club to create a new matchday area for first-time attendees from the local community that welcomed them into the football environment.

The ‘Fans For Diversity Hub’, situated within the East Stand of the Matchroom Stadium, home of Leyton Orient FC, gave a number of communities from the east London and Essex area the opportunity to experience a professional game in a safe and comfortable environment.

During the course of the 2016/17 season, 20 matchdays were hosted with groups from the Asian community, mental health projects and local schools Over the course of the season, a number of groups including St Joseph Hospice, Stepney FC and Asian Women’s Support Group all attended Leyton Orient fixtures through the hub

Akik Miah from Stepney FC, who were the first group to use the Hub, said, “The youngsters had an experience that they will treasure forever.”

Liverpool FC

For many of our global fan base they will never get a chance to visit Liverpool or see their favourite team play at Anfield. The mission of LFC World is to bring Anfield directly to the homes of our fans, offering them money can’t buy experiences that they will never forget.

LFC World offers our fans a money can’t buy experience, directly in their own city. It has been specifically designed to give a real flavour of the Club to our fans, allowing them to feel what it’s like to be at Anfield on a matchday and hear the roar of the Kop, as well as having the truly special experience of meeting some of our greatest players. Its success as a fan engagement programme is overwhelmingly evident in the statistics presented in our supporting evidence. We look forward to the continuing success of LFC World and to bringing this one of a kind experience to even more of our fans in the coming season.

Manchester City FC

Our match day fan experience covers five and a half hours at our dedicated Fan Zones with live post-match analysis. Our match day experience is spread throughout the Etihad campus, reaching out to our different fan groups. By constantly gaining feedback from our fans, the Club have tailored our match day experience around them.

This season Manchester City has developed and evolved our provision for supporters including:

• Enhanced pre-match activities in our dedicated fan zone, City Square
• Improved and extended our Blue Carpet Experience, providing unique contact between fans and the players
• Introduced a new dedicated ‘City Family Day’ before every home Premier League fixture at City Football Academy – a Premier League first and attended by more than 1,000 people every event
• New activities within the Family Stand for this season include ceiling flags featuring fan chants, a letterbox for junior fans to send questions to their favourite players, photo opportunities and activations, FIFA 17 competitions and a colouring-in wall.

A dedicated team of x40 enthusiastic and energetic ‘playmakers’ welcome and help fans at different touch points around the stadium. Very engaging, they hand out giveaways, run spot competitions, face paint young fans.

Rangers FC

Rangers’ successfully engaged with their supporters and strengthened their bond with the Club over the course of the season by creating unique and memorable experiences which included from private press conferences with the Manager, surprise doorstep visits from the first team squad and opportunities to play on the hallowed turf at Ibrox Stadium on a matchday. The initiatives carried out within the campaign ensured that supporters were getting added value and rewarded them for their continued loyalty.

The content generated from these experiences resulted in massive engagement with supporters watching nearly 2,500 hours’ worth of content from the campaign on the Club’s YouTube channel alone. The campaign successfully catered for the various demographics included in the Club’s fan base and utilised a variety of touchpoints to engage with supporters in different environments which added authenticity.

Sunderland AFC

Sunderland AFC delivered a world footballing first by broadcasting a match between two local Sunday League teams on Facebook Live to launch its new 2017-18 Adidas home kit.

Dawdon Welfare Park FC and District Sunday League sported the new look and ran out 7-1 winners over Hall Farm Glasshus FC of the Durham Alliance Combination League at Ashbrooke Cricket Club – the site of one Sunderland AFC’s earliest grounds from 1887-1888.

The match broadcast reached more than 350,000 supporters live on Facebook, and coverage of the launch was seen by around one million fans across all of the club’s social channels.

Paul Welch of Dawdon Welfare Park said: “It was a huge honour for us to be chosen to unveil the new Sunderland home kit. For the club to recognise and celebrate grassroots clubs and players in this way is fantastic and it’s something we will remember for the rest of our lives.”

‘Our future is rooted in our history’ became the official tagline of the campaign as the shirt worn by Dawdon pays tribute to the first ever red and white striped kit worn by Sunderland AFC in the 1880’s.

Tottenham Hotspur FC

The Lane, The Finale

The ‘The Lane, The Finale’ campaign celebrated and commemorated the closure of White Hart Lane, our beloved home ground for 118 years.

Starting in the weeks leading up to the final match to take place at the stadium, we embarked on a wide-ranging campaign to ensure the Lane had a befitting large-scale send-off.

The moniker ‘The Lane, The Finale’ was used throughout the campaign alongside universal branding featuring a drawing of the famous gates outside the stadium’s main entrance. The corresponding hashtag, #TheLaneTheFinale, was used 148,000 times on Twitter prior to, during and after the final match.

The campaign was a collaboration between the marketing and communications teams at the Club to ensure fans felt a sense of ownership and involvement with the occasion. A variety of fan engagement initiatives were activated including special stadium tours, party packs and competitions, plus a special website that contained memories submitted by fans.

The use of content through social, web and video played a leading role in the ongoing engagement with our fans, whilst the Finale ceremony delighted 32,000 fans inside the stadium plus an additional 5.6 million watching at home through the Club’s Facebook Live channel.

Betsafe and Manchester City FC

Betsafe, an online betting company and challenger brand in the UK market, needed to optimise their official betting partnership with Manchester City FC during the 2016/17 season to demonstrate tangible return on their investment.

Objectives focused on:

• Increasing brand awareness and engagement amongst Manchester City fans and wider sporting audiences
• Using content as cost-effective tool to drive direct commercial value and acquisition of new customers
• Delivering activity that represented Betsafe’s brand heritage of experience

With a strategic activation theme of ‘True Players’ designed to differentiate & guide all Betsafe City activation consistently throughout the season – Betsafe used a unique insight led approach to content creation and deployment. The model and approach was a company first for the Betsafe business, addressing the priority objectives of brand and acquisition simultaneously. Activity initially focused on maximising reach and awareness with highly engaging content, followed by a data-driven, strategically-segmented and targeted new customer acquisition campaign offers.
Through a series of content campaigns featuring Man City players, legends, social influencers and creative innovations all aligned to relevant moments in the sporting calendar – Betsafe achieved their aim of generating mass awareness and customer acquisition through compelling and authentic content.

Betstars and Leicester City FC

In August 2016, BetStars became the Official Betting Partner of Premier League champions Leicester City – a deal negotiated, planned and activated by SportQuake. Through the partnership, BetStars wanted to make a mark in the crowded sports betting market, creating content that gains them a foothold both on and offline.

BetStars tasked SportQuake with creating a season-long mini-series with Leicester City where the first team were used in the most effective and creative way possible.

SportPesa and Everton FC

In May 2017, SportPesa were announced as Everton’s new main sponsor in a multi-year sponsorship agreement. SportPesa quickly outlined their commitment to use the partnership to cement their market share in key markets of Africa, while also using it to increase growth in the UK and Europe.

Soon after the deal was struck SportPesa announced ambitious plans to take the Club to East Africa, with the first team squad travelling to Tanzania as part of their preseason preparation. The visit would be the first time a Premier League football club ever played in the region, a market that was known to be crazy about English football.

SportPesa launched #EvertoninTZ to create a centrepiece for this compelling story, driving conversation, engagement and giving them an umbrella campaign with which to achieve multiple objectives.

#EvertoninTZ was a demonstration of SportPesa’s ambition. It created unparalleled levels of exposure and engagement for both SportPesa and Everton, including incredible return on investment figures. The campaign worked so well because it had clearly defined objectives that drew down from one overarching goal, to give East Africa their first taste of Premier League football and tell the story to generate global interest.

Hull City

On the 27th February 2017, Hull City hosted the SportPesa All Stars, a team of footballers from the Kenyan Premier League that travelled to England to compete in an international friendly match as part of SportPesa’s three-year sponsorship of Hull City.

It was the showpiece occasion of a project that spanned four months, with Hull City sending coaches out to Kenya on two occasions. The first visit took place in November 2016 with the objective of scouting all Kenyan talent across their Premier League. After compiling their scouting reports, the coaches selected the best fifty players to go through to a two-week coaching camp, held in Kenya in January. From this project, the All Stars were born.

The All Stars travelled to Hull in February 2017 and spent a week in the city, acclimatising to the wintery conditions. On Monday 27th February, the SportPesa All Stars took on a Hull City XI at the KCOM Stadium, with the hosts narrowly defeating their Kenyan counterparts 2-1 in a closely fought game.

The project was about more than just the result, as the All Stars were able to enjoy a once in a lifetime opportunity whilst putting Kenyan football on the map.

Manning Gottlieb OMD for Virgin Media

Football is now a multi-billion-pound industry. But at the heart of it all, the game is the same. It’s about two teams taking on each other for the enjoyment of the fans.

Yet somewhere along the way, everyday fans have become the ones hit the hardest, facing rapidly rising ticket prices year after year.

Virgin Media are heavily involved in football and position themselves as on the side of fans. They wanted to make a difference, to raise awareness of an initiative that seeks to cap away Premiership ticket prices: ‘£20’s Plenty’. So at the end of April, as the season was reaching its climax, they offered every premiership away fan a refund, to ensure that no-one paid more than £20 for their away ticket. They literally gave money away!

It was a huge success, over 10,000 fans redeemed, enough to fill most away stands twice over. The campaign delivered too: a 1,140% uplift in search volume, 93% positive sentiment, 111 pieces of coverage in print (including national newspapers) and an unprecedented 7-point leap in awareness that Virgin Media has all the football (the key sport brand metric).

But most importantly, Virgin Media championed a cause close to fans’ hearts.

NIVEA MEN and Liverpool FC

In March 2017, NIVEA MEN partnered with the LFC Legends Charity Match against Real Madrid Leyendas at Anfield. The game, which featured an all-star cast including Steven Gerrard, Robbie Fowler, Roberto Carlos and Luis Figo was played in front of a record breaking Anfield crowd. Supporting the LFC Foundation, NIVEA MEN generated a wide range of exclusive innovative content which captured the imagination of fans. As part of their sponsorship NIVEA MEN broadcast the game exclusively to a UK audience via their Facebook page with millions of fans tuning in to watch their heroes play. Following the game, NIVEA MEN released an Anfield first 360 degree highlights package which included behind the scenes Anfield dressing room team talk. The campaign was a huge success for NIVEA MEN, meeting all marketing objectives and helping the LFC Foundation to raise £1 Million pounds from the event, with 100% of the funds going towards charitable causes.

Reflect Digital

Reflect Digital is a digital marketing agency. We pride ourselves on our creativity and have a design team that are football crazy.

The design team came up with an idea to create the world’s hardest football quiz – an image with 50 hidden clubs (some European!) – a quiz that truly ‘separates the armchair fans from the diehard supporters. It was created with the aim of showing that it’s possible to produce engaging, fun and shareable football related content from scratch, launch it on a national scale and successfully build a large, engaged audience.

The quiz was designed with commercial appeal in mind, by considering, social and site engagement, brand exposure, data capture, increased social following, links and media coverage, site traffic and longevity.

We devised an outreach strategy with the aim to get the game to go viral. By forming relationships with leading football editors, we achieved coverage on several major publications such as SportBible, Whoatallthepies.tv, Planetfootball, Buzzfeed, Reddit, Moneysavingexpert, many fan forums and other football related sites.

In two weeks we’ve achieved; 63,172 sessions, 41,804 unique users, 3,890 account sign ups, only 2.9% of users have completed the game it’s been played in over 155 countries.

WallJAM

WallJAM is an interactive challenge rebound wall designed to promote fan engagement It provides an environment for competition, entertainment and skills training As a sporting experience it is fresh, cool, socially inclusive, and seriously addictive WallJAM is one of the first technologies of its kind to allow the “GAMIFICATION” of traditional ball sports for mass use and participation Users can upload, share and compare results on a global leader-board through the primary social media platforms The walls web based technology interacts with an array of LED activated target sensors designed to measure power, speed and accuracy of a ball strike Games are played against the clock The game changer for our customers, be that sponsors rights holders or leisure operators, is the branding opportunity and spin off data that emanates from every activations This, alongside the quality of the overall user experience, is what delivers the WallJAM point of difference As a fan experience, WallJAM has been working with some heavy hitters in the football world including new EFL Cup sponsor Carabao (at Wembley) Gatorade and Puma. It has also featured for the LTA at Wimbledon and for Nissan at Lords demonstrating its appeal across all mainstream sports.

Anfield

The PES League EU Season 2 Regional Final was the first ever Esports event at the home of Liverpool FC, Anfield. Following weeks of intense online qualifying on PES2017, the event brought 15 games from around Europe together to compete for a $20,000 USD grand prize. Anfield’s recently redeveloped Main Stand concourse was transformed to a state of the art Esports arena kitted out with the latest available technology. The event was broadcast live via Konami digital channels to millions of fans around the globe, with a broadcast team providing in-depth commentary and analysis of the 6 hour broadcast. The gamers from around Europe were provided with an all-expense paid three day trip to Liverpool, whilst being treated like football superstars. The PES League Regional Final at Anfield was a resounding success, generating significant reach exposure and engagement for PES League and Konami.

Emirates Stadium

Emirates Stadium was opened in 2006, a pioneering new stadium which was specifically designed to cater for matchdays and then be converted on non-matchdays into a functional event space. What started as a logical decision on how to generate additional revenue has now transformed to include its own on site team, branding and identity. Despite this we still leverage our heritage of being a world renowned football club, with amazing pitch views from every meeting room and chances to play on the pitch, there is something for every client.

Manchester City FC – City Football Academy

A new club badge, a new manager with a global profile, a new website and a new playing kit – what was the most original way we could share this with our fans in Manchester and across the world? Our answer; fans first.

The City Football Academy, never before opened to fans, was transformed into a free two-day football festival with supporters at the heart of the experience and fun, engaging activities for all ages. Fans were at the heart of the CFA for the first time since its opening in 2014.

A unique football experience for Manchester City fans around the world to celebrate together an exciting new chapter in the Club’s history. Cityzens Weekend saw 20,000 fans in Manchester and millions more following online via the new mancity.com and social channels to welcome new manager Pep Guardiola, and witness the launch of the new Club badge and home kit.

Stamford Bridge

Stamford Bridge, home to the Premier League 2016-2017 champions, Chelsea Football Club, is a venue like no other. The stadium contains over 60 multi-functional spaces, accommodating from 2 – 1000+ delegates. The stadium, located on London’s Fulham Road, offers its visitors a range of flexible event spaces, attracting a diverse mix of national and international clients to the stadium and its impressive 11.5 acre site. With an on-site music venue, Under The Bridge, two 4* hotels, two restaurants, a museum, a mega-store and a health club and spa, Stamford Bridge is one of London’s most versatile and comprehensive venues. All of the spaces are available for hire on the approximate 330 non-matchdays a year.

West Ham United FC

The Club was founded over 125 years ago, and have been known as West Ham since 1900. The club has a rich history and a passionate fan base who interact with the club at all levels.

In 2016 West Ham United moved stadium from the Boleyn Ground, which they had played at for well over a century, into the Olympic Stadium, now called the London Stadium. This presented the Club with a great opportunity to connect with younger fans who will be supporting the club during its long and successful tenure in the stadium. Consequently, West Ham launched its ‘Family Fun Day’, a half-term event to thank its loyal and faithful supporters during its maiden season in its new home. The half-term event was the largest of its kind in West Ham history with around 8,500 young fans and their families attending events throughout the day.

All In Translations

All In Translations are a translation and copywriting agency specialised in helping the online gaming and iGaming industries to score fans and players with language. A couple of years back, we started noticing the rise of sport betting, fantasy sport, virtual sport and e-sport and we have helped actors on this segment to develop their international audience from the earliest stages. We’re well aware that e-sport markets represent a tremendous chance for all actors in both sports and gaming (football and the Premier League being key components), and that this calls for new business ventures to be created at the convergence of the gaming and sport sectors. To help building such bridges, we invested this year in the development of the Pentasia All-In Football league, which is the largest non-professional league in Malta, with 24 corporate teams from the gaming and iGaming sectors Now with a dedicated website, a promotional 3D video, 50 new professional footballs from the Dutch Eredivisie, a professional referee on all games and continuous social events, enthusiasm around the league and its sportive level have never been higher! This is our fun way to help developing football by connecting it further to the rise of e-sport.

ESF Events

ESF Events is a specialist event organisation, which stages residential sports festivals for youth teams throughout the UK. Our marquee event, the ESF Festival of Football (ESF 2017), is the UK’s biggest youth football festival.

ESF 2017 is a series of professionally organised residential football festivals that bring boys’ and girls’ grassroots football teams together for an exciting weekend of football and fun, staged at Butlin’s & Haven resorts throughout the UK, and Disneyland Paris.

The challenge for ESF 2017 was to improve accessibility, to enable more youth football teams that ever before to take part. The target was for 1200 youth football teams to participate. Specific challenges related to affordability and increasing participation rates for girls’ teams.

To enhance these benefits of participation and strengthen the memories of ESF for the children, celebrity presentation ceremonies were staged, with Kevin Keegan, Robert Pires, Casey Stoney, Stuart Pearce, Wayne Bridge, Sue Smith and John Barnes appearing.

ESF 2017 culminated with the ESF Grand Finale, our Champion of Champions event, which was staged at St George’s Park.

1,238 youth football teams participated in ESF 2017, a record number of teams. Girls teams participation increased by 12% compared to ESF 2016.

www.footballfestivals.co.uk

Oaks Consultancy

Oaks exists to make the business of sport easy. We are business development specialists, equally adept at working with organisations of all shapes and sizes from across the football industry – from local community football clubs and charities, to Premier League football clubs and their award-winning club community schemes.

Our journey over the past year has included:

• Generating over £5m of revenue and capital funding from grants for a range of Club Community Organisations, including the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation, the Newcastle United Foundation, Millwall Community Trust, Pompey in the Community and Everton in the Community
• Development of a three-year strategy for the award-winning Albion in the Community and Pompey in the Community to meet the Premier League’s Capability Status requirements
• Working with Newcastle United Foundation to package their service offer with the view to approaching corporate partners and identifying a route to market to acquire up to £10m for an exciting new capital project
• Creation of a charitable vehicle for Worthing Football Club’s community activities, followed by development of a three-year fundraising strategy
• Supporting the ongoing fundraising work of Blackpool FC Community Trust, Fulham FC Foundation, Preston North End Community and Education Trust and others

Piglets Pantry

Piglets Pantry are an Award Winning baked goods supplier based in Worthing. We supply hand filled pies, handmade sausage rolls, cakes and biscuits to sports venues up and down the UK. We are proud to supply our high-quality products to the following clients:

• Chelsea Football Club
• Brighton & Hove Albion
• Leicester City FC
• Reading FC
• Swansea City FC
• Principality Stadium – Champions League Final
• MK Dons
• Tottenham Hotspurs @ White Hart Lane (2016/17 Season)
• Cardiff City FC
• West Bromwich Albion

Employing 20 people with dedicated sales and production teams, our business has tripled over the last 6 years as we offer hand finished products, using British ingredients, in unique volumes. Piglets offer our clients bespoke solutions, tailoring products to meet the requirements of clients, sponsors and most importantly fans. From recipe design with your club and local produce in mind, to working your Head Chef to bring their most innovative ideas to life, Piglets are leading the way in bringing fantastic sweet and savoury products to fans across the land.
Over the last 6 years we have grown significantly but have still managed to retain our passion for excellent quality products, hand produced for food lovers everywhere.

Sport Structures

Sport Structures are an established sport consultancy and training provider and it’s that mix that has over the last year provided a high quality, cost effective, innovative and highly successful training and development services to professional football clubs community foundations at little or no cost. Our expertise developed over many years has been applied in a systematic way to enhance the service that foundations provide to their communities. We provide support in this way to fifteen clubs across the Premier and Football League.

Sporting Memories Network

Sporting Memories Network gives people, places and organisations the knowledge, skills, tools and confidence to increase community resilience and improve the mental and physical wellbeing of people over the age of 50 by tapping in to memories of the beautiful game.

Providing opportunities to participate or volunteer, community based, volunteer-led, multi generational weekly sporting memories groups promote healthy ageing by keeping people connected, cognitively stimulated and physically active.

This innovative, participant-led, community driven approach can make a significant contribution to reducing loneliness and social isolation, promoting vascular health and mental health, and supporting older people, including those living with long-term conditions and those in caring roles.

In working with a growing number of universities to measure impact, evaluate projects and research longer term health behaviour changes, the network has grown from its initial team of two founders to a team of over 20 highly skilled staff to work with over 300 partner organisations delivering innovative, financially sustainable solutions that are making a real lasting difference to the lives of participants and their carers.

Winners FDD

Winners operates within the fast-growing sector of CRM and Business Intelligence. Our role is to increase participation, revenue and stakeholder engagement on behalf of our sports rights-owner clients. Our services range from strategic consultancy – helping our clients figure out how to use data to achieve their business objectives – to operational delivery – providing them with an outsourced service in all relevant areas.

In the 4 years we’ve been established we’ve delivered workshops to over 45 football rights-owners, and completed projects with 32 of them, either introducing them to early principles of CRM or progressing them based on their status and goals.

In our work with UEFA we are using CRM and data to increase football participation across Europe. Much focus is given by clubs and leagues to increasing ticket and merchandise sales but through correlation analysis we identified that current players spend 6.3 times more money on tickets than non-players and 2.2 times more than former players. With UEFA now able to quantify the financial value of increasing participation we can use that insight to bring together the participation/development departments within Europe’s football governing bodies with the commercial departments, re-enforcing the role of CRM as a cross-organisational strategy.