2019

Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club

Brighton & Hove Albion wanted to show its unwavering support for women’s football and build on the growing momentum in the sport, by starting a movement for other clubs in England to take women’s football to their Premier League and Championship football grounds.
In hosting the club’s final home FA Women’s Super League match of the 2018/19 season at the American Express Community Stadium, we hoped to attract a new audience, achieve a record top-flight crowd and at the same time encourage other clubs to do the same in future seasons.

Chelsea Football Club

Although Chelsea have developed a base of fans throughout the States scaling regional support can be challenging across the Atlantic.

In 2018/19, we set out to bridge that gap by better celebrating the rituals and behaviours U.S. fans associate with Chelsea through leveraging key cultural moments.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a secular day Americans take to give thanks for the many blessings in their lives. There was no better an opportunity for us to show sincere appreciation to our many Stateside fans and showcase to opportunity fans that we are the only club to support.

Intentionally, we wanted to recognize the diversity of our fan base and promote our message of being a club of inclusivity. We wanted a marketing initiative to engage all, urban and rural cities. Male and female. Old and young. Multi-racial. Die-hards and newcomers.

This was just one campaign across the season to demonstrate our commitment to the market and continue to improve our US fan base.

Everton Football Club

Founded in 1878, Everton Football Club is known as The People’s Club Our motto is ‘Nothing But the Best is Good Enough’ – T this is especially important when it comes our fans, who are at the heart of everything we do. Every fan’s voice is important at Everton. No matter what age, race, background or ability, we want our fans to be heard and their needs to be met.

Our All Together Now campaign, launched in December 2018, brings together players, fans, employees and visitors under the banner ‘a football family for everyone’. It is against this inclusive backdrop that we have undertaken a concerted effort to further improve our engagement with our younger fans, ensuring that they are heard and are fully enveloped in the Club’s history and ethos, with a full understanding of our values – authenticity, determination, ambition and family. As a highly ambitious club, and with exciting plans for a move to a new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, we know that our younger generation of fans are the key to our future, the longevity of our values and our impact in the wider community.

Manchester United Football Club

Manchester United is one of the most recognised football teams in the world, with over 659 Million followers and 150 Million+ social media connections.

We aimed to deliver a bespoke digital platform to connect fans, partners, players and the club whilst enhancing the business impact, plus serve as the foundation for future innovation.

Built in association with our technology partner HCL, we have “Reimagined Business in Digital” for the club. Planning and implementation followed the Agile methodology, including a range of internal and external stakeholders.

A core part of The Club’s official direct to consumer app is “Match Centre” which makes innovative use of Opta live performance data through unique visualisation and graphics. This truly unique feature allows fans to follow the ebb and flow of the game live, providing an unrivalled second-screen matchday experience.

Launched in over 220 global territories, it became the most downloaded football club app in the last 12 months, reaching no.1 in the UK, no.1 in Sports categories in 89 territories and top ten in a further 58. So far it has exceeded all KPI expectations.

The innovations made and results achieved have convinced the business that it is the cornerstone of our future success.

Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club

Wolves have taken an innovative approach to the world of esports. A deep review of the market and collaboration with a specialist esports agency has resulted in the recruitment of two Brazilian FIFA starlets, who have both qualified for the FIFA eWorld Cup Grand Final.

With the opportunity to reach over 260 million players, the club has successfully been able to find a new source of media exposure and revenue, which sits outside of the traditional football P&L.

CSM Live

With some of the biggest football events of the 2018/19 season on the CSM Live calendar, we were responsible for delivering the look and feel and creating extraordinary experiences for millions of people around the world.

Working with the major global football federations we helped heighten the fan experience both in person and for those viewing across all the different viewing platforms.

Our work has ensured that some of the most well-known stadiums looked world-class and that brands working in and around football have delivered experiences that truly engage with their customers.
At CSM Live we are also fully aware of the environmental impact of the events industry and are continually looking to challenge ourselves to create more sustainable solutions for our clients.
Our results and longevity with our clients speak volumes and is testament to the incredible work our teams deliver all across the globe.

Imagineear

Imagineear is the leading producer of multimedia content and technology for self-guided and group guided tours at major football clubs, stadia, related museums and sports heritage attractions worldwide. We turn empty stadia into leading visitor attractions, using our content and technology to create visitor experiences that bring venues to life and take fans behind the scenes on non-match days.

Our work helps manage visitor flow, optimise visitor spend and provide real-time data insights. We provide our football clients with everything they need from the technology, including the operational planning, to the interactive, immersive and multilingual experiences that deepen the football club’s connection with their fans and visitors from all over the world.

With our ground-breaking, industry-first Multimedia GroupGuide™ technology, group leaders can now intersperse live commentary with dynamic multimedia content, including 360º videos and VR/AR image recognition, all personalised in the visitor’s own language.

Football clients we are proud to work in close partnership with include Arsenal Emirates Stadium Experience, the London Stadium and West Ham United FC, Chelsea FC, Wembley Stadium, Liverpool FC, Manchester United FC and Manchester City FC, plus new projects currently in development with Tottenham Hotspur FC.

Nielsen Sports

With fundamental changes occurring in how people consume media and audience habits evolving, rights holders, brands and other stakeholders across the global sports industry are grappling with new challenges. The right data and insights are, more than ever, a critical part of the commercial decision-making process. Nielsen Sports has met these challenges head-on: through months of development and drawing on years of experience as a trusted, credible and independent source, we have developed a unified measurement offering – Sports Connect – that brings together TV, social, and online insights like never before.

Portview

Portview is a leading fit-out specialist with over forty years of experience in transforming ambitious design concepts into exceptional interiors for the world’s top brands in sport, retail, business and hospitality.

With projects spanning across the UK and Europe, Portview has carved a niche in setting a series of new benchmarks in stadia hospitality for many of the UK’s landmark venues.
Clients include:

• Tottenham Hotspur FC
• Wembley Stadium
• Arsenal FC
• London Stadium/ West Ham FC
• Croke Park
• All England Lawn Tennis Club
• Twickenham
• Royal Ascot

Portview has successfully built long-term relationships with these clients and has reaped the rewards with a 75% repeat business rate and surge in demand from the sports sector for their specialist skills in world-class fit-out.

With a workforce of 105 skilled professionals, Portview prides itself in being the big thinkers who see things differently. They are a team of dynamic problem solvers who set new standards in unrivalled quality and client experience by getting things right, first time, every time.

St George’s Park

At St George’s Park (SGP), innovative technology solutions underpin elite and non-elite training services. The site combines world-leading facilities with the latest technologies to enhance learning, training and performance across national and international sport.

Set in 330 acres of Staffordshire countryside, SGP is best known as the UK’s national football centre and home to England’s 28 national teams. Yet SGP is much more than this: a centre of excellence for sporting talent and innovation, community facility, hub for global businesses and a place for sporting education and training. In recent years, it’s hosted more than 271 elite teams – including Manchester City, Barcelona, Manchester United and Chelsea as well as sides from sports including Ultimate Frisbee, UK Floorball, and British Basketball. SGP has also hosted 3,464 community groups and 421 grassroots experiences.

SGP’s Performance Centre is a training and rehabilitation hub for a number of elite athletes, including Andy Murray, making the park his base for two residential camps, Team Sky who used SGP as their medical camp and England Cricket following the team’s Cricket World Cup win. Priding itself on service delivery and customer satisfaction, SGP continues to deliver high customer satisfaction scores as it enters its seventh year.

StatsBomb

StatsBomb are the top performing analytics and data provider in football. We created our proprietary data operation as existing data was not sufficiently granular to answer the questions that we, and our customers had. With twice the data, our club partners are winning more and mastering the transfer market.

From October 2017, we designed our data spec, custom-built collection and validation software, and hired and trained data collection and quality teams. We integrated StatsBomb Data into our statistical algorithms and analytics software and launched May, 2018. In May, 2019 we fully acquired Arqam FC for further quality and now collect 40 leagues across Europe and the Americas. We have secured customers in the big 5 European leagues and US (MLS). In football but also media and gaming, StatsBomb analytics are widely applied across the industry in performance analysis, opposition analysis, recruitment, fan engagement and customer retention. We are also educating the analyst and data science community of the future by providing Women’s data for free and running training courses in Analytics for Professional Football Our unique data facilitates R&D that enables StatsBomb to stand out from the herd in Football Analytics and helps teams win on and off the field.

WePlay

WePlay was founded with a single mission in mind – to disrupt an archaic sports marketing landscape and to help our partners to effectively engage sports fans and generate measured, incremental revenues from their marketing activity.

After winning Agency of the Year at the Football Business Awards in both 2017 and 2018, WePlay has continued to establish itself as the digital marketing leader for the sports industry.

In the past season, WePlay has grown its revenue by 270% and client base by 75%, meaning that WePlay now serves over 50 clients across the industry. We have also doubled the size of our team from 18 to 35 people. To align with our brand positioning as a premium service provider to the sports industry and accommodate our growth needs, we moved our headquarters from Shoreditch in East London to Central London.

Finally, in the past season, WePlay retained 96% of all 2018 clients, and increased average revenue per customer by 60%.

New client appointments include Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Olympique de Marseille, Premier Sports, Eleven Sports, Wasps Rugby, and UFC.

Accrington Stanley Football Club

Accrington Stanley’s Operations Team have delivered an initiative into the community where 1200 eight year old (year 3) school children have each received a home Stanley shirt handed out by the players at The Wham Stadium. The 32 schools were individually bused in by local bus and coach companies and received their shirt and class photograph. Support from club sponsors, the local Borough Council and various local companies to ensure the children were given a day to remember and an introduction and opportunity at a young age to support their local community football club. The 5 year initiative (now in its third year) will engage with around 6000 local school children who are the next generation of Accrington Stanley fans as the club builds its fan base yearly.

Arsenal’s Travel, Events, Supporter Liaison team

Ashton Gate Stadium

Ashton Gate is a 27,000-seater stadium and home to Bristol City FC; Bristol Bears Rugby; Bristol Sport; Bristol Robins Community Foundation; Bristol Bears Community Foundation and the Bristol Sport Foundation. It is part of a unique proposition, a sporting group of companies all owned by British businessman Stephen Lansdown CBE.

In 2016 Ashton Gate Stadium completed a £45m rebuild to transform it into a modern 365-day-a-year multi-purpose venue and the largest conference and events space in the South West of England. As home to both football and rugby teams our Operations Team continually transitions the stadium from one sport to another. Seamlessly ensuring that whichever sport is featured everything is geared to it being ‘their’ stadium – the colours, the branding, the store, the music – every piece of artwork and flag is interchanged sometimes in under 24-hours.

This year the Operations Team faced their biggest challenge to date – successfully delivering our first ever Summer Series of Concerts. Four international acts (Rod Stewart, Take That, Muse & Spice Girls), more than a hundred thousand visitors to the stadium in less than four weeks. Rave reviews and a swell of social media praising specifically our Operations Team for their work!

English Football League

The EFL is the world’s original league football competition. With 72 member Clubs, it is the largest single body of professional Clubs in European football and regulates the EFL, the Carabao Cup and the EFL Trophy, as well as reserve and youth football.

The League oversees 1,656 League games per season as well as 93 Carabao Cup matches and 127 in the EFL Trophy. These competitions culminate in five Finals at Wembley Stadium, which take place from February to May.
During the 2018/19 season, over 18.3 million people attended EFL matches – the highest figure since 1959. This included a record 85,021 fans at Wembley Stadium to watch Portsmouth’s EFL Trophy triumph against Sunderland.

Fixtures across the Sky Bet Championship, League One and League Two, as well as Carabao Cup and EFL Trophy matches and their respective finals would not take place without the hard work of the EFL and its employees.

Everton Football Club

The last 12-months have heralded one of the most exciting periods in Everton Football Club’s recent history. As the Blues look towards a move to a new stadium, over £10 million has been invested into a number of projects to help drive the Club forward, whilst respecting the heritage of its current home at Goodison Park. These include the creation of a new accessible viewing platform at Goodison Park for disabled supporters, relocation of staff into a new state-of-the-art Head Office in Liverpool city centre and redevelopment of matchday hospitality lounges.

The Stadium Operations Team have been crucial in the successful completion of these mass-scale projects, while ensuring the Club meets the commitments required of a Premier League club, both on and off the pitch.

Ashton Gate Stadium

Ashton Gate is a 27,000-seater stadium and home to Bristol City FC; Bristol Bears Rugby; Bristol Sport; Bristol Robins Community Foundation; Bristol Bears Community Foundation and the Bristol Sport Foundation.

Ashton Gate Stadium completed a £45m rebuild in September 2016 to transform it into a modern 365-day-a-year multi-purpose venue and the largest conference and events venue in the South West of England. This was Phase 1 of Stephen Lansdown’s vision to provide the city of Bristol with a stadium fit for the top-flight and economic regeneration to an area of the city that has been traditionally overlooked. In the last two years the rebuild of Ashton Gate has injected an additional £9m into the local economy.

From the moment the £45m rebuild began there was the ambition to bring an incredible concert line-up to the city and in 2019 that ambition was realised.
Four concerts in less than four weeks with four very different demographics, from Rod Stewart on May 22nd to the ultimate boy / girl bands in Take That and Spice Girls to West Country band Muse in the middle…

Carrow Road

Carrow Road, the home of Norwich City FC, is a self-sustainable venue with big aspirations. With in house catering delivered by the incredible Delia’s Canary Catering, the Club’s non-matchday business is ever growing and always looking for the next unique stadium event.

Mid 2018/19, Club Legend Grant Holt took a leap of faith.. training to become a Professional Wrestler. Training with the stars of the 2019 Summer blockbuster movie ‘Fighting With My Family’, staring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Global WWE Superstar and Norwich City local fan, Paige.

The Club partnered with the WaW (the Knight’s wrestling promotion) in hosting FIGHTMARE at Carrow Road.

FIGHTMARE took center stage at Carrow Road on June 2nd 2019, attracting 4,000 spectators, breaking the U.K attendance record for an independent stadium Pro Wrestling event. Grant Holt came out on top wrestling in the evening’s main event, alongside WWE Legend and Hall of Famer – Billy Gunn. Fans were also treated to seeing WWE Legend Mick Foley,.

The event celebrated cultures, characters and personalities from around the world – including featuring the world’s only LGBT tag-team, Queer World Order.

Emirates Stadium

The Emirates Stadium offers versatile and unique event solutions for an array of clients from all industries. The team works closely alongside clients with confidence of capturing every detail and requirement to ensure a truly memorable experience is created for guests. To provide a first-class facility, the Club continually undertakes renovations to maintain its sense of style and class. This has been evident with the renovations in Dial Square, Highbury and the new Avenell Club. Whilst delivering a great match day experience for our fans, the new refurbishments have presented a number of challenges as we move away from conventional corporate meetings. This meant the team had to look at ways to reposition our product and proactively sell the space. The vision was to utilise the spaces in new ways by expanding out of the corporate world into experience led events.

These new events solutions have enticed new and existing clients to try an alternative style of event with creative packages. This has been a huge financial success and subsequently our occupancy levels have flourished. We are very proud of our team’s achievement this year and winning this award would be the most amazing recognition for our work.

Etihad Stadium

The Premier League season goes to the final game of the season and Manchester City are playing away at Brighton – what was the most original way we could ensure our fans in Manchester and across the world could feel connected and potentially celebrate together. Our answer, fans first.

With the Etihad Stadium out of use, we transformed the external concourse of the stadium into two unique and separate event spaces on what was a historic day A 10,000-capacity fan zone with supporters at the heart of the experiences and fun, engaging activities for all ages to screen the final match of the season with a carnival style atmosphere.

Using the Colin Bell Stand glass atrium as a projection canvas we built a full stage with festival level production to host a winner’s party.

We flew the team back directly from Brighton to celebrate with our fans in Manchester The live broadcast connected our global fans who were intrinsically linked to the celebrations through the day.

A unique football experience for Manchester City fans around the world to celebrate together which saw approximately 20,000 fans in Manchester and hundreds of thousands around the world following online via the website

Stamford Bridge

Stamford Bridge has been delivering first class hospitality to fans for over 40 years. Steeped in history and with a longstanding sporting legacy, the stadium, located on London’s Fulham Road, offers its visitors a range of flexible event spaces with 25 function rooms, 60 syndicate rooms and the Great Hall, it is ideal for large exhibitions and conferences, attracting a diverse mix of national and international clients to the stadium and its impressive 11.5 acre site.

Flexibility, speed and service are key to Chelsea’s event operation. The team works tirelessly to ensure that the stadium and its leisure outlets are available to everyone, including local residents, businesses and visiting guests. With sales and marketing campaigns implemented throughout the year, to ensure the stadium is generating business and revenue across all of its outlets. The stadium and its expansive site, one of London’s most versatile venues and premier destinations for business and leisure, is often described as London’s only ‘under one roof’ venue.

Tynecastle Park

Tynecastle Park, the home of Heart of Midlothian, played host to the spectacular opening event of the 2019 Edinburgh International Festival. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, under Gustavo Dudamel, performed movie music from the golden age of Hollywood on a specially constructed Hollywood Bowl stage to an audience of 15,000 in the biggest free event of its kind in the International Festival’s history. With support from sponsors, Aberdeen Standard Investments and working with over 35 community organisations, Hearts ensured that over 3,000 people from who would not otherwise been able to attend, could enjoy the spectacle, providing free travel and family picnics. The Club used its significant outreach to ensure that this was the first ever orchestral concert for over 70% of attendees.

Hearts’ objective in redeveloping its famous stadium in 2017 was to strengthen its position as a hub for socio and economic good in one of Edinburgh’s most deprived areas. As an an established force for good in the heart of Edinburgh, Hearts uses the power of sport and the draw of the Club to provide meaningful education, employability, mental and physical health, social inclusion, environmental and sport-related programmes. The success of the concert in including some of the capital’s most marginalised communities is a particular highlight in the Club’s expansive programme of work in 2019.

Villa Park

Villa Park home of Aston Villa Football was challenged with yearly budget growth for meetings & events following an uncertain position within the events industry with the club being relegated and the sale of shares in the club to two new owners.

Villa Park & catering partner Levy UK challenged the traditional style of meetings & events by a £1 million investment in the Trinity Stand, with a newly designed premium Directors Club. The team launched an innovate Mindful meetings package to be mindful to their guests and planet. It was also imperative to design new creative ways to utilise existing space to successfully over achieve the budget growth.

Albion in the Community & American Express

Albion in the Community (AITC) and American Express are working together to help build essential skills and confidence amongst young people in Sussex.

As the largest private sector employer in Brighton, the shirt sponsors of Brighton & Hove Albion FC and holding the official naming rights to the club’s stadium and training ground, Amex invests funding and colleague time into a creative CSR partnership with AITC. This is a natural extension of the company’s involvement with the Albion and a significant way they give back to the local community.

With an increasingly- challenging economy, it has never been more important to leave school armed with qualifications. However, many young people are still struggling to engage with core subjects at school, leaving them at risk of entering the job market with a significant skills deficit.

Albion in the Community (AITC) and American Express are tackling this problem together through a unique CSR programme which includes a range of creative educational projects – each supported by a hugely-committed and skilled team of volunteers from Amex.
Colleagues from Amex work alongside AITC to provide numeracy, literacy, enterprise and work ready activities to help prevent long-term unemployment in Brighton and Hove.

Everton in the Community

Almost the entire ward of Everton falls into the deprived five per cent of neighbourhoods nationally, and mental illness and suicide are more common in more significantly deprived inner-city areas such as Liverpool 4 where Goodison Park resides.

Mental health is an increasing and challenging issue within our society; suicide kills 150 people across Merseyside each year. Everton in the Community has a responsibility to effect change and in August 2018, the charity launched its most ambitious fundraising campaign yet, The People’s Place, to build a permanent mental health facility in the shadows of Goodison Park.

With a fundraising target of one-million-pounds, the charity will build and develop a purpose built facility that will become a delivery site for the charity’s existing mental health programmes and enable signposting to other services such as suicide awareness and prevention.

The People’s Place will provide an overarching service to anyone, regardless of age, gender or location, to promote positive mental health alongside support related to suicide awareness and prevention.

Football club “Riteriai” (FK Riteriai)

The video of #MakeItLouder – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNFg4YpEmTQ

#MakeItLouder is a social initiative aimed at raising awareness of people with hearing disabilities who face information inaccessibility.

The main idea was to adapt UEFA Europe League QR match for the deaf and hard hearing people and it was the first time in the history of Lithuanian football and sports.

What have we done?

First of all players and coach using sign language recorded video invitations in which they invited fans to the match.

All UEFA Europe League communication has been adapted for the deaf people (with the translation)

The highlight was on the day of the match, when we translated the live streaming football commentator into sign language and after the match we translated the press conference as well.

Match live streaming events were organized in 3 cities.

More than 100 deaf people, along with their relatives, watched the live broadcast at the mentioned events.

The idea has reached over 1000 online shares and 1 5M impressions.

Some deaf people watched football for the first time and asked if there would be any such broadcasts with translation.

And I guess, we made it louder ?

#MakeItLouder – #MadeItLouder

Huddersfield Town Football Club

Huddersfield Town’s ‘Keep It Up’ campaign is a unique and innovative CSR partnership between the football club and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance which aims to raise funds for the lifesaving charity as well as for other deserving local causes.

The campaign has just celebrated its 10th year and has just broken the £2million barrier with the completion of the Club’s tenth annual fundraising ‘Pedal for Pounds’ bike ride, and the hugely successful ‘Wilson Walk’ events in the 2018/19 season.

In addition to raising funds, the campaign and its events have engaged hundreds of Town supporters of all different ages, abilities and backgrounds to get on their bikes, get walking, get fit, raise money and make friends. Moreover, it has successfully engaged our local business community to undertake their own CSR activities.
At Huddersfield Town Football Club we have never lost sight of the important role we play in our community and being able to impact so many lives through this campaign is something we are incredibly proud of.

Leicester City Football Club & De Montfort University

In 2018, Leicester City signed a new agreement with De Montfort University, making DMU the Foxes’ Official Higher Education Partner for the next four years.

In light of the extended agreement, the Club wanted to demonstrate the strong relationship that exists between the organisations.

While the strengthening of Leicester City’s partnership with DMU was an indicator of the Club’s desire to be at the forefront of positive work for both the people and businesses of Leicester, it needed to be showing this materially through worthwhile initiatives alongside the university.

Leicester City, therefore, offered to assist the university with their Clearing process through the help of some of its players.

The ‘feel good’ initiative involved Foxes stars Wilfred Ndidi, Ricardo Pereira and Layton Ndukwu surprising new students with a call to welcome them to Leicester after they had attained their place at DMU.

New students were offered tickets to games by the players as a means of welcoming them to the city, reinforcing the Club’s positive role within the community to the watching press.

Following the initiative, the university offered academic ‘sampler’ courses to City personnel, plus the option of intensive English Language sessions for the Club’s overseas players.

QPR in the Community Trust, with West London Health Partnership, Hammersmith & Fulham CCG and CommaGB

QPR in the Community Trust and West London Health Partnership teamed up to deliver a CSR campaign with a difference – using the power of the iconic football team to help tackle local NHS pressures.

Working with Hammersmith and Fulham CCG and the sports and health marketing agency CommaGB, the team devised a two-month campaign that saw the stars of the club creatively raise awareness of the correct NHS choices. With 12 unique videos, extensive matchday promotion, and a showcase across all local club and NHS channels, it offered the NHS an unprecedented platform to engage the public.

Generating more than 100,000 views, important new community partnerships and new methods for NHS marketing, it made a profound impact.

Dr Paul Skinner, of Hammersmith and Fulham CCG, said: “For a project to achieve 100,000 video views is very special and shows the unique reach of the Club. By raising awareness of the services provided in the community, we were able to help people to understand that A&E isn’t always the answer.

Eleven Sports Media – Statzone

Eleven Sports Media always believed that we could expand the horizons of fan engagement for clubs and in 2014, we took a huge step forward with the launch of StatZone – a channel which delivers live matchday and club related statistics into the heart of the stadium bowl and beyond onto official social media channels and microsites.

In the five years that StatZone has been live, Eleven have developed the channel so that it can target content wherever fans are congregating, in the stadium, at home or on the move.

Continual development of the StatZone portfolio of content now sees Eleven producing StatZone 3.0, which showcases video action, alongside the most deeply engaging and interactive matchday statistics, looking at every single element of the game. If it happens on the pitch, StatZone has it covered.

Elite Skills Arena

Elite Skills Arena is a sports technology company, formed to penetrate the underdeveloped market of professional football training equipment. All of our products use revolutionary LED light and vibration software, to create targets for players to hit. Different light sequences are programmed as training modes to work on different attributes. They provide a competitive environment for users to challenge themselves, incorporating a scoring system and statistical feedback to keep players enthused.

All ESA products are based around the mantra of ‘repetition’, maximising training intensity for faster and more pronounced improvement. ESA has 3 underlying objectives:

• Continually advance and progress our products, to create and build value for professional football clubs and players using our technology.
• Bridge the gap between grass roots and professional football by providing a more affordable platform for improvement using the same technology endorsed by the professionals.
• Generate value for ESA through the sale, rental and provision of our products to various markets across the sport.

Seven League & FIFA 2.0.

In 2016, the new President of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, unveiled a roadmap for the future of football: FIFA 2.0. FIFA’s vision is to promote the game of football, protect its integrity and bring the game to all.

This was an opportunity to build a new image of FIFA along with the aim of becoming the #1 digital destination for the global football fan community by 2022. FIFA tasked 7L with masterminding an innovative campaign aligned to its core strategic mission: bring football closer to the fans and fans closer to the football.

From this, Fan Movement was born, and we have established an authentic community from the bottom up.

We carefully selected, recruited and trained 660 genuine football fans from 50 countries to join.

This diverse network celebrates the game, shares stories and promotes football in their communities. The interactions of these fans are also brought to light through FIFA’s digital channels, demonstrating football’s force for good.

Fan Movement isn’t just a content-creator network but serves as a tool to empower fans to have a voice inside FIFA; influencing everything from content to policy decisions.

Backed by FIFA, we’ve helped change the organisation’s relationship with fans.

Snack Media / Stream Football

The modern way of delivering and consuming content online has never been higher. The rise of OTT has seen Sky Sports, DAZN, Bleacher Report and Eleven Sports distribute sports rights online at a more competitive price than linear TV.

It is growing at a huge rate but is disorganised and fragmented. There are too many players, all with exclusive rights restricted by competitions and geography.

Fans are confused on what to watch and where.

Stream Football was launched in November 2018 as a football discovery platform to allow fans to ‘find your football’.

We aggregate the entire marketplace and deliver content through personal discovery and scheduling tools.

Fans can watch their favourite games from wherever they are worldwide and set their interests and preferences to be delivered content they want when they want it.

Since launching, we’ve reached over 31M people, gained over 170M impressions, integrated over 600 rights holders and broadcasters, covering over 200 clubs and leagues and distributing over 200,000 broadcasts.

Pirated content has never been higher. We aim to be a solution to help reduce the illegal streaming market. We host no pirated content on the platform and promote the official licensed streaming industry.

Soccer Aid for Unicef

Soccer Aid for Unicef is the world’s biggest charity football match, raising over £37m since 2006 for children around the world. This year’s match saw several new innovations, including a half-time concert with Unicef UK Ambassador Rita Ora, an on-pitch TV studio, an in-stadium celebrity donation station, pre-match urban poetry and a brand-new venue in the form of Chelsea FC’s Stamford Bridge. But it was on the pitch itself where the biggest visible change was evident; female footballers were playing in Soccer Aid for Unicef for the first time ever – the highest profile football match in history to feature men and women on the same pitch.

Rachel Yankey, Katie Chapman, Rosana Dos Santos Augusto and Francielle Manelo were the first ever female Soccer Aid for Unicef players. The match was backed by The Football Association who conducted research at the game, alongside Brunel University, to understand the feasibility of mixed-gender participation in recreation football – which means that the impact of the match could change aspects of the game forever. The historic match was watched by a peak-ITV audience of nearly 5 million, 40,000 spectators at Stamford Bridge and raised over £6.7m for Unicef on the night.

StatsBomb

StatsBomb are the top performing analytics and data provider in football. We created our proprietary data operation as existing data was not sufficiently granular to answer the questions that we, and our customers had. With twice the data, our club partners are winning more and mastering the transfer market.

From October 2017, we designed our data spec, custom-built collection and validation software, and hired and trained data collection and quality teams. We integrated StatsBomb Data into our statistical algorithms and analytics software and launched May, 2018. In May, 2019 we fully acquired Arqam FC for further quality and now collect 40 leagues across Europe and the Americas. We have secured customers in the big 5 European leagues and US (MLS). In football but also media and gaming, StatsBomb analytics are widely applied across the industry in performance analysis, opposition analysis, recruitment, fan engagement and customer retention. We are also educating the analyst and data science community of the future by providing Women’s data for free and running training courses in Analytics for Professional Football Our unique data facilitates R&D that enables StatsBomb to stand out from the herd in Football Analytics and helps teams win on and off the field.

The Carling Call-In by Cake & Copa 90

The “Carling Call-In” is a forward-thinking activation that reached and engaged the 18-25 male target audience in a way like never before – adding custom animations to Premier League footage. The 20-part content series, created alongside leading football media brand COPA90, allowed fans to ‘call-in’ via Carling’s Tap App each week to express their views on their team’s latest performance. Using their recording as a voiceover, we took Premier League footage from relevant matches and added visually engaging animations to create social media-friendly content. This was a genuine Premier League first – no other brand partner had ever been allowed to alter footage in any way. So not only did we change the way the Premier League allowed its footage to be published, and push the boundaries of how to maximize it, we published it in a culturally relevant way to new audiences for Carling, via COPA90’s ultra-engaged following. The campaign over-delivered with 29.87m impressions, 15.1m views, 146k engagements and 49% VTR. It also drove community growth for Carling-owned channels – 5.3% across the campaign period, matching the previous two years combined, with 40% of organic reach representing a new audience for Carling.

Birmingham City Football Club and Tappit

Birmingham City Football Club partners with Tappit to deliver Blues Fastpay, the cashless experience for Blues fans. BCFC endeavours to deliver a top-quality experience for their fans at each match. The Club wanted to reduce queues around the stadium – particularly at food and beverage kiosks – and tap into data to better understand customer behaviour and increase engagement.

With this implementation, season ticket holders can enter the stadium and make purchases at kiosks and at the Blues Store all with one card As a result, queues move more quickly and BCFC has a deeper understanding of what their fans want from their matchday experience.

Chelsea Football Club

Chelsea FC is one of the world’s top football clubs. With on-pitch success, it is important to provide our global fan base with equally successful cutting-edge digital solutions. When conceiving an app for Chelsea FC’s global audience, our rationale was to extend the fan experience beyond the immediate 41,000 fans who are able to join us on match days at Stamford Bridge and to better engage and communicate with the vast number of fans that we have around the world.

The purpose of The 5th Stand, Chelsea FC’s official app, was to give fans who couldn’t attend the match in person the opportunity to be part of the action, excitement and conversation even though they were not physically present at live games. That is, there are four stands at the stadium, and The 5th Stand was envisioned as an extension of this experience, both virtually and digitally.

The 5th Stand app successfully launched and has hit all Club targets through the season. At close of season we achieved 2.3M downloads and have engaged returning monthly users from all corners of the globe.

Manchester United Football Club

Manchester United is one of the most recognised football teams in the world, with over 659 Million followers and 150 Million+ social media connections.

We aimed to deliver a bespoke digital platform to connect fans, partners, players and the club whilst enhancing the business impact, plus serve as the foundation for future innovation.

Built in association with our technology partner HCL, we have “Reimagined Business in Digital” for the club. Planning and implementation followed the Agile methodology, including a range of internal and external stakeholders.

A core part of The Club’s official direct to consumer app is “Match Centre” which makes innovative use of Opta live performance data through unique visualisation and graphics. This truly unique feature allows fans to follow the ebb and flow of the game live, providing an unrivalled second-screen matchday experience.

Launched in over 220 global territories, it became the most downloaded football club app in the last 12 months, reaching no.1 in the UK, no.1 in Sports categories in 89 territories and top ten in a further 58. So far it has exceeded all KPI expectations.

The innovations made and results achieved have convinced the business that it is the cornerstone of our future success.

Norwich City Football Club

In October 2018, Norwich City Football Club became the first UK football club to launch an official and completely free-to-use private WhatsApp messaging service for supporters to enjoy.

The service allows our fans to get all the latest news from the Club sent directly to their phones, along with behind-the-scenes videos, team updates, press conference news, exclusive subscriber offers and ticket updates.

In a title-winning season where unity and togetherness were a key part of the whole campaign, the WhatsApp channel helped bring the Club closer to the fans, whilst being able to communicate important news and contribute towards driving commercial revenue.

Portsmouth Football Club

Portsmouth Football Club installed a 59.9 square ft screen to help engage with supporters inside the stadium and to improve supporters matchday experience.

Upon installation the following key project goals were identified:
– Identifying opportunities for fans to engage
– Improve supporters matchday experience
– Creating avenues for sponsors to gain brand exposure
– Build commercial packages for new sponsors

To deliver the project the club reached out to main club sponsors – The University of Portsmouth – to link up with lecturers and students on courses relevant to the project.

Fans were able to get closer to the action during the match with new activations brought in to allow supporters to engage with the screen including Fratton Live, pitchside presentations and instant replays.

New packages were created including corner and replay sponsors while existing sponsorships were enhanced such as our official goal sponsor.

The matchday media team of students and staff continue to deliver a pre-match, in-game, half-time and full-time production that has vastly improved our supporter’s matchday experience at Fratton Park.

Portsmouth FC, we have created all this and more by maximising the skill sets of students to give the fans another reason to flock to Fratton Park.

Swansea City Football Club and Other Media

Swansea City AFC is a digitally progressive football club currently competing in the English Football League Championship.
For the start of the 2017/18 season, the club launched an app that made them the first in the UK to enable their fans to hold matchday tickets and season tickets on their phones and that substantially increased ticket and retail sales.
The 2018/19 season saw the club relegated to the Championship, meaning money had to be very carefully and cleverly spent. Rather than cutting back on spending on their digital touchpoints, the club chose to continue to invest in how they engage their fans.
Personalisation of content in the app has tailored content to the audience, further increasing revenue.
The club have now also invested in a new, fully-responsive website to cater for the 80%+ of fans accessing the website on mobile devices.
Rather than try to run 2 disparate sources of content and functionality for fans, Swansea City chose to take advantage of Other Media’s Clubcast platform. This means they have one CMS through which they can publish content (including live video and audio) to both the website and app.

Eleven Sports Media

Formed in 2009, Eleven Sports Media are now in their 10th year of facilitating partnerships between brands and football audiences. In that time, Eleven’s work with football clubs from the Premier League to League Two has developed from small beginnings, to being the most widely used sports technology and partner programme services agency in the UK – our work has helped clubs generate millions in additional commercial revenue.

Whilst Eleven’s award-winning and highly engaging fan engagement channels, StadiumTV and StatTV can now be found at more than 50 sports venues, and our StatTracker social media content is engaging millions of fans at some of the biggest clubs in the Premier League, Scottish Premier League and Championship – it is the use of these digital platforms in wider partner programmes which has transformed Eleven’s offering, and in turn allowed clubs to transform their own commercial proposition.

MATTA

MATTA is a strategic and creative marketing agency, helping sports, fitness and lifestyle brands grow their audiences and consumer markets.

With backgrounds in FMCG marketing, MATTA’s three founders’ vision in 2015 was to challenge strategic thinking in sport and lifestyle, and to treat sports fans as brand consumers.

Four years on, MATTA continues to apply its unique four-stage strategic approach, incorporating psychological tools and behavioural decision science to every creative challenge.

We began with The FA, helping to change attitudes in football. We now work with a range of clients both from within football and in wider sport, from consumer products such as Umbro, global event brands such as ATP Tour, to major broadcasters such as ESPN.

Their position as FMCG marketeers and understanding of consumer behaviour in relation to brands equips them to focus on achieving specific growth results for their clients, ultimately inspiring more people to engage with health, fitness, lifestyle and sport.

Other Media

Other Media is a digital agency working with clients in retail, culture, education, not-for-profit and sport from consultancy to delivery of digital solutions for over 20 years.

Our recent focus on sport was driven by a need for the services we have so far provided disparately to be offered as a joined up solution.

We want to make our clients’ lives easier through digital. For fans, this means receiving all the information they could need, instantly and wherever they are. For the clubs this means enabling them to provide this to their fans as efficiently as possible, cost effectively, maximising revenue and keeping fans proudly engaged.
We set about consolidating our knowledge and expertise into a solution that would work hard for fans and smart for clubs.

Clubcast provides clubs with an efficient method of publishing content to their digital touchpoints.
Clubs are delivered a responsive website and native app, both built by us with a customised front end. One CMS powers the content to both. There is also the opportunity to publish to customised wearable and internet TV apps. Integrations such a single sign on, video and audio streaming and stats are all available.

Seven League

Seven League is Europe’s leading digital sport consultancy/agency. Our mission is to help federations, clubs and sponsors understand and grow audiences on digital, increase commercial value, engage fans and help innovate and future-proof themselves in an ever-changing digital landscape.

We have the privilege of working across the world of football with big names like UEFA, FIFA, FC Barcelona and Tottenham Hotspur as well as less well-resourced organisations like the governing bodies of countries like San Marino and the Faroe Islands.

We understand the business of football at every level and offer support from top level strategy to on-the-ground execution.

We help with the procurement, specification and delivery of digital products and we conceive and execute ground-breaking creative campaigns.

WePlay

WePlay was founded with a single mission in mind – to disrupt an archaic sports marketing landscape and to help our partners to effectively engage sports fans and generate measured, incremental revenues from their marketing activity.

After winning Agency of the Year at the Football Business Awards in both 2017 and 2018, WePlay has continued to establish itself as the digital marketing leader for the sports industry.

In the past season, WePlay has grown its revenue by 270% and client base by 75%, meaning that WePlay now serves over 50 clients across the industry. We have also doubled the size of our team from 18 to 35 people. To align with our brand positioning as a premium service provider to the sports industry and accommodate our growth needs, we moved our headquarters from Shoreditch in East London to Central London.

Finally, in the past season, WePlay retained 96% of all 2018 clients, and increased average revenue per customer by 60%.

New client appointments include Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Olympique de Marseille, Premier Sports, Eleven Sports, Wasps Rugby, and UFC.

Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club

With one of the highest stadium occupancy rates in the Premier League, this huge growth has been mirrored by the club’s much-acclaimed hospitality offering, selling out week after week.

Maintaining the excellent level of service and building on a very successful 2018/19 season would prove challenging, as well as achieving further growth across all areas of the hospitality business.

Continued double-digit growth year on year for four consecutive years, and innovation and consistent delivery of the highest standards has ensured the American Express Community Stadium is fast becoming known as one of the best hospitality venues in the UK.

Everton Football Club

Goodison Park, the home of Everton Football Club, is steeped in 127 years of footballing history while being one of the most iconic sporting stadiums in the world. It offers some of the country’s best football hospitality at a highly competitive time for the industry.

Everton’s motto and driving factor behind the Club’s hospitality strategy is: ‘Nil Satis Nisi Optimum’ – nothing but the best is good enough. The Club has managed to deliver on this promise by offering diversity and a tailored service to customers across a number of executive lounges and boxes that provide the perfect setting to dine, entertain, network and celebrate special occasions with family and friends while taking into consideration every taste and budget.

Fulham Football Club

As London’s original, Fulham FC is a football club bursting with pride. The Club’s home, Craven Cottage, is one of football’s last-remaining traditional grounds, filled with soul and steeped in a wealth of history, situated in a truly unique location on the banks of the River Thames.

Matchday Hospitality at Fulham FC has always prioritised the authenticity which comes with Craven Cottage, instilling core values into its service and offerings that ensure delivery of service excellence and a closer, more personal experience for guests.

With the Club’s new riverside development on the horizon, the final few full seasons at Craven Cottage presented an opportunity to develop and trial new Matchday Hospitality options.

This saw the introduction of a Wine Lounge, and football’s one and only, Gin Bar – providing innovative and exciting spaces and packages that would enhance and balance the package offering, deliver a first-class and truly memorable matchday experience as well as grow the Club’s appeal to new target markets, while retaining Fulham’s important values.

Experts in the fields of both wine and gin were consulted as part of the process, and the success of the pioneering spaces resulted in producing an experience of football served with flair.

Walsall Football Club

As well as improving the facility, refreshments and re training of staff , we pride ourselves on offering the fresh local produce to support local businesses.

Our aim is for the community to become more aware of not only the services and experiences we provide but also the job and career opportunities we offer.

Coutts

For over 320 years we have looked after the financial affairs of wealthy individuals from a variety of backgrounds and occupations. Our clients include entrepreneurs, leaders of industry, city professionals, talent from the fields of media, creative arts and entertainment industries and, of course, sports. Our clients appreciate dealing with experts in their field who understand them and the challenges they face.

We have a reputation for being innovative and in 1999 we established our Sports & Entertainment team to cater for an industry that was growing in terms of wealth generation, media interest and TV rights. The need for specialist and experienced advisers was clear to guide sports stars from across the world of sport with the many unique challenges they face. Wealth can be accumulated quickly and at an early age, income can be irregular and can be disrupted by injury. Our ambition is to help guide our clients throughout their careers and beyond.

KPMG Football Benchmark

The KPMG Football Benchmark team is part KPMG’s global Sport Advisory Practice, which delivers value to stakeholders who make critical decisions in the sports sector all over the world.

The KPMG Football Benchmark is a unique business intelligence tool providing in-depth and interactive analysis of financial and performance data of football clubs and players. Running on the dynamic KPMG Football Benchmark platform, it enables analyses and comparisons in three areas: club finance & operations – providing a consolidated database of the financial and operational performance of over 200 football clubs; player valuation – estimating the market value of over 4,700 football players; social media analytics – tracking the social media activity of 500+ football clubs and 2,000+ footballers in Europe and South-America. By accessing the platform on a subscription basis, industry stakeholders can benefit directly from the database while making insightful decisions. In addition, the tool provides unique intelligence that support KPMG’s Football Benchmark team in delivering professional services to a global clientele – these services include:

• Club valuation & transaction support
• Strategy & business planning
• Venue feasibility & conceptualization
• Operating review and cost optimization
• Event bidding and planning
• Organizational and governance development

KSS

KSS are the largest UK architectural practice specialising in sport in the top 40 of the Architects Journals AJ100, with 100+ staff in London and Sevenoaks.

They are recognised as a leading professional service in football and focus on stadia and elite training centres.

KSS work with clients to create venues of high quality and intense sporting and spectator experiences. They assist clients in growing their business, driving increased revenue and developing their brand. KSS provide a full range of sports design consultancy services in master planning, architecture, interior design, graphic design, branding and wayfinding.

KSS’ sports team leaders have over 28 years of experience in stadium and training centre design and are proud to have worked globally in this field.

Key highlights are Coimbra Stadium in Portugal, Stade Océane in France, Sammy Ofer Stadium in Israel, The Amex Community Stadium for Brighton & Hove Albion FC, Anfield Stadium and new Training Facilities for Liverpool FC, Selhurst Park redevelopment for Crystal Palace FC and a new Training Centre for Leicester City FC.

Mishcon de Reya (Sports Group)

Mishcon de Reya’s multi-disciplinary Sports Group comprises a dedicated team of 14 contentious and non-contentious lawyers who are passionate about sport. The Group is supported by experts across the wider firm who have significant sports experience in areas such as immigration, employment, intellectual property, brand protection, reputation management and tax. The team is diverse and international in make-up and outlook. We act for clients from around the world and are fluent in a number of foreign languages including: Mandarin, French, Spanish and Italian.

We feel we make a strong contribution to the football industry from a professional services perspective, providing excellent legal support to our clients, but also recognising our ability to provide wider support to the areas of the football industry that benefit from pro bono advice and charitable backing.

Oaks Consultancy

Here at Oaks, we help sports organisations raise their game. Formed back in 2008 – with roots in the business of sport – our journey over the last twelve months has seen us work with organisations of all shapes and sizes in and around football. We are income generation specialists, supporting organisations in football and the wider sports sector to run more profitable and sustainable businesses using our strategy, business planning and fundraising tools: ultimately empowering socially-minded football organisations to expand their work, support more vulnerable people, and ultimately change lives across the UK.

Onside Law

Onside Law is a niche law firm specialising in sport and football in particular. Despite being a boutique firm, it continues to advise on the biggest deals in football acting for many of the game’s iconic names. Highlights during the last 12 months include advising Eden Hazard on his transfer to Real Madrid, advising AC Milan on its kit deal with PUMA, BT and EE on their partnership with England and Wembley, acting on UEFA’s appointment of Visa as its first-ever sponsor dedicated to women’s football (covering Women’s EURO 2021 and the UEFA Women’s Champions League), advising Leeds United on “Spygate”, and winning the likes of FIFA, Crystal Palace and Jadon Sancho as new clients

Pro-Football Academy

Pro-Football Academy are the fastest growing and No 1 private football academy in the UK.

Having already expanded the business from 1 venue in the North-West of England to over 32 now throughout the UK, we have further plans to expand to 53 by the end of 2019, at 75 by the end of 2020 and 150 venues by end of the new 3yr business plan in 2021.
PFA have a strong community and social ethic, focusing hard on getting children out of the house, creating a fun community environment and ensuring health and diet is a key focus.
No other professional coaching & training business is growing as rapidly as we are and our plans to provide the ultimate football coaching experience means we are the one to watch in 2019/2020!

Verisona Law

Verisona Law continues to be sought after by both Football Clubs and Fan Supporter Groups across the UK for the expertise and experience it has gained since its saving of Portsmouth Football Club from liquidation six years ago. In the past year, the firm has worked on a variety of cases ranging from consultancy for a high-profile ownership bid for Bolton Wanderers FC to representation for individual players on matters of liability.

Verisona Law’s specialist knowledge of Football Club structure, it’s relationships within the industry and proven ability to work with the various stakeholders, including regulatory bodies, has proved a valuable combination which achieves successful outcomes in complex, challenging an often unique situations.

Led by Director Mike Dyer, Head of Verisona Law’s Corporate and Commercial department, the firm’s ‘Football & Sports Team’ regularly undertakes advisory work in cases of insolvency and employment across the full spectrum of leagues.