2021

Ball Street Network

Ball Street is a Football Fan Engagement agency. We work with our clients to help them organically engage with football fans via social media, in a way which builds long term brand affinity.
We work with our clients to move them from the ‘ad space’ into the ‘culture space’.

Our role in the campaign was to activate the sponsorship on social. Paddy Power had partnered with a handful of traditional media outlets to promote the campaign, however in order to fully embed this in fan culture we knew we needed to play where fan attention is. Ball Street Network’s heritage in building and growing online football communities meant that we were perfectly placed to send the campaign viral.

Budweiser – FootballCo

Budweiser partnered with FootballCo. to develop and distribute their first ever original content series for the UK; ‘Side Hustles’.  
 
Today’s football fans regularly get to see players doing what they are famous for but have limited exposure to their lives off the pitch. ‘Side Hustles’ gives rarely-seen access to players lives, shining a light on three football stars and the businesses they have created in tandem to leading successful footballing careers. 
 
Tyrone Mings, Wilfried Zaha, and Eni Aluko have all reached the pinnacle of their respective footballing careers, but all three are also showing that there is much more to them than just their chosen profession.  
 
Through telling their unique stories we were able to ensure the Budweiser’s brand ethos and messaging was at the forefront of the content - showing that being a ‘king’ isn’t just about making it as a pro footballer, it’s about having the self-belief and ambition to forge a unique path. The films, designed to inspire our audience that they too can follow their dreams.

Eastleigh FC

Rebranding a football club is hard, it is an emotionally charged subject, in which fans and the footballing community will undoubtedly take to social media and have their say on any rebrand. Many clubs have been through the process, and many clubs have got it wrong and felt the fan’s backlash and disapproval of the new brand.

In 2020, Eastleigh Football Club, in collaboration with Christopher Payne, rebranded their entire club by launching a striking new logo design, a custom typeface that is unique to the club, and a modern brand system that is scalable, practical and highly relevant to the club’s nickname and local history.

Adding to this, the club launched this new brand in a way like no other, producing a short film – Chapters – that told the story of the club through its various identities and key moments in history. The new brand made an emotional connection with the fans, with many taking to social media to declaring their love and approval of the new look and feel, with some stating that it is one of the best football club rebrands in recent years.

Chapters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiM2lx84HW8&feature=youtu.be

FC Barcelona & Rakuten Inc

Football wins when fans wins. ‘The Big Picture’ initiative is a 100% fan-centric tribute that gave FC Barcelona fans a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have their pictures embedded in a larger-than-life mosaic in iconic Camp Nou. This marked the rare precedence of using Camp Nou for a dedicated tribute to fans and reinvigorating them during these unprecedented times with much-needed optimism, which is what the Rakuten brand is all about.

The mosaic, 47.7 meters long and 9.6 meters wide features photos of FC Barcelona fans from 150+ countries and is prominent on Camp Nou’s façade. The campaign achieved its main KPI of acquiring new Rakuten members with 120%.

Contemporary technology including Augmented Reality was integrated to make the entire experience seamless for fans. While fans visiting the stadium can point their devices on the mosaic to spot their pictures, fans from worldwide can easily find their photos via a dedicated microsite. Rakuten’s ‘The Big Picture’ campaign reminded football fans that they are the heart and soul of sports and kept them connected even in the absence of live games.

Kia Charge Up campaign – FootballCo

During the heart of the global pandemic, Kia challenged us to create a content series around their UEFA Europa League partnership that put a spotlight on their electric vehicle range.

In the space of 6 weeks, we delivered the Kia Charge Up campaign, a 5-episode content series that was delivered over the course of 6 UEFA Europa League group stage matchweeks.

Using 3 UEFA Europa League legends (Xabi Alonso, Patrice Evra, Pierre Van Hooijdonk), and 5 local market influencers, the Charge Up campaign shone a light on ‘Electrification’, delivering a reach of over 28M, with 10M video views and over 620k engagements, at a time where climate change issues are more important than ever.

With varying restrictions and lockdowns, and tight deadlines to hit each matchday, we navigated a complex shooting schedule with 9 individual shoots, filming in 6 different markets, delivering a total of 214 pieces of content in 6 languages… all in the midst of a global pandemic!
Kia were thrilled with the outcome, and the series was received particularly well on a local level with a number of Kia’s local markets picking up the content and publishing across their channels.

Norwich City FC & War Paint for Men

In 2020, Norwich City partnered with male makeup brand War Paint for Men to deliver an incredibly important in-depth content series we’ve titled ‘Challenging Stereotypes’.

Episode 1 focused on recognising and tackling the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’, challenging the stigmas and offering hope to those struggling, all in the company of global star Stephen Fry. Stephen joined Darren Eadie and Danny Gray for the honest in-depth chat about all things mental health where he spoke candidly about his experiences, current attitudes in society to mental health and also how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the thoughts and emotions of people around the world.

Stephen Fry: “But brave is saying I have weaknesses, I have fears, I have a secret…That’s courage.”

Episode 2 focused on homophobia within football, in the company of the inspiring Amal Fashanu. Amal is the niece of Justin Fashanu, the first openly gay footballer who was driven to suicide by the backlash he received for his sexuality. Amal spoke emotionally with Darren and Danny about her mission to help footballers struggling to accept their sexuality, and her work in founding the Justin Fashanu Foundation. Episode 2 will be released in February to coincide with LGBT history month.

Rangers FC

In 2020, Rangers set out to implement an industry-leading and dynamic digital brand transformation to support the club’s continued growth. The challenge was to modernise the visual style of the brand for a global digital audience, whilst remaining true to the Club’s rich heritage.

Rangers held extensive consultations and fan focus groups to shape the new vision, and values. The brand was redesigned incorporating a new visual language for use in the digital age, custom typeface, and re-energised colour palette. The new crest echoes the original Ready crest introduced in 1959, with the name ‘Rangers’ centered boldly at the top, while a revitalised lion rampant and ball sit larger, and more proudly within the design. It brings renewed vigour and precision to the logo, while staying true to the courage and history conveyed by the original club emblem.

The campaign rollout plan included a projection of the new crest across Glasgow landmarks and video of the crest morphing to the new design with a voiceover from Rangers’ legend John Greig.
The campaign was picked up by media such as the Daily Record, Scottish Sun and Design Week and was voted 2nd best in the world for 2020 by Under Consideration.

SAP Interactive Data Space & TSG Hoffenheim – vStream Health

The SAP Interactive Data Space at the headquarters of the German Bundesliga football club TSG Hoffenheim is a lighthouse technology showcase for SAP. SAP is TSG Hoffenheim’s main sponsor and long-time technology partner. The room gives SAP an opportunity to demonstrate how TSG Hoffenheim takes advantage of SAP solutions throughout the entire club. As Matthias Weber, Innovation Manager in SAP Global Sponsorships has said, “The purpose of the room is two-fold, first, TSG Hoffenheim can use this room in their day-to-day operations by analysing all of the club’s data on the fly. And secondly for us, SAP, it is a perfect room to bring in customers, partners and visitors.”

The SAP Interactive Data Space accomplishes several goals in one, its very existence acts as a demonstration of SAP’s partnership with TSG, it gives SAP somewhere to meet with their clients and prospective clients and demonstrate the capabilities of SAP’s software. It also gives TSG the ideal environment for interactive team meetings and data-based strategy planning supported by SAP’s software.

Arsenal FC

Established in 1985, Arsenal in the Community is one of the longest-running football community departments in the UK. In normal circumstances the department provides social, physical and mental support to more than 5,000 people a week in Camden, Islington and Hackney.

The COVID-19 pandemic quickly brought a halt to the usual face-to-face delivery, but Arsenal in the Community adapted quickly to maintain support for the local community.
Working with local councils and community partners, Arsenal in the Community responded at speed and at scale to tackle the urgent issue of food poverty in Camden, Islington and Hackney – eventually surpassing the significant milestone of 500,000 meals delivered.

As a result of this COVID-19 community response, Arsenal in the Community have been invited to join the Islington Food Poverty Network and are now exploring the possibility of setting up local food cooperatives as a sustainable solution.

Designed on a not-for-profit basis, the cooperatives will pool buying power and purchase directly from suppliers to provide the community with food at more affordable prices. The hope is that the cooperatives will become the long-lasting legacy of Arsenal in the Community’s response to COVID-19.

Brighton & Hove Albion FC

The club immediately looked at supporting its fans and local community at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. New and recurring initiatives have been created and delivered throughout the past year and continue to be needed in this latest phase of the pandemic.

During this pandemic, our players and fans raised nearly £400,000 for local charitable Covid-relief causes. Our staff have made more than 6000 calls to elderly and vulnerable supporters. We converted the Amex stadium as testing centre and vaccination training location and the club were at the forefront of government safe return of fans model in the summer.
We are proud that we were the first football club to undertake such an outbound calling campaign and that we far exceed our own original goals in the type and scale of the support we provided.
Our bond with our supporters and the wider community is stronger than ever – we have faced the challenges of this pandemic together.

Chelsea FC

Both Chelsea Football Club and the Club’s Foundation worked tirelessly to try and alleviate some of the difficulties faced by our communities, particularly vulnerable groups and families who were adversely affected by the Covid pandemic.

With the support of Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich the Club and Foundation worked together to develop a wide-ranging response to alleviate some of the pressures faced by groups and individuals most affected by the pandemic. We adapted our programmes according to the needs of those people and communities.

Within one week of the initial lockdown the first activities were rolled out with face to face delivery replaced by online coaching and education programmes. We launched a series of innovative virtual sessions and established online community groups to remain engaged with participants of all ages. The Foundation also developed new programmes for wider public benefit.

The Covid-19 response has engaged all areas of the Football Club from the owner and board to the sponsors, players, staff and importantly the fans who have shown amazing generosity through their donations to Refuge and other charitable activities. We continue to be committed to supporting our community through this time of difficulty.

Everton FC and Everton in the Community

Launched in March 2020, Blue Family is a coordinated engagement campaign that maintains contact with fans and participants and provides vital support and assistance to some of the most vulnerable, socially isolated and at-risk members of the community during the ongoing pandemic.

The last 10 months has seen the initiative directly support more than 27,750 individuals and families, make more than 25,000 check-in and welfare calls and delivered more than 14,450 emergency food parcels in addition to delivering bespoke online content consumed by millions across the world, aimed at keeping people connected.

Following the return to a full lockdown in early January 2021, the Club and EitC further stepped up the Blue Family efforts with the expansion of activity including increased outbound calls to fans, additional support to deal with an increase in referrals and expanded content output.

This increased support is in addition to the charity’s ongoing support for the participants of its 40+ programmes which continue to operate remotely delivering online education, fitness and coaching sessions, tailored mental health support, regular welfare calls and bespoke wrap-around support to our vulnerable, elderly and/or at-risk participants.

Leicester City FC

When COVID-19’s societal impact became increasingly apparent in March 2020, Leicester City had to quickly adapt to continue to engage with its communities. Such is the Club’s capacity as a pillar of the community, they were required to take a central role in leading these communities through one of the most socially challenging periods in recent memory.

This required a layered, strategic programme of activity designed to engage, inform, involve, and entertain their audiences, while mobilising LCFC supporters’ sense of community to support those sections of the Club’s locale most affected by the pandemic.

Efforts resulted in undisclosed sums being donated to Leicester Hospitals NHS Trust, Leicestershire Partnerships NHS Trust and Age UK Leicestershire and Rutland, and £162,000 donated from supporters to open a new mental health facility in the city.

The Club also sought to engage with charities and community organisations of more modest means, inviting causes of all sizes throughout Leicestershire to apply for financial, logistical and volunteer support through its 2020 Gift of a Wish programme. In doing so, the Club, through its charitable foundation, was able to provide much-needed support to causes whose very existence was threatened, at a time when their communities needed them most.

Manchester City FC

From the beginning of the pandemic, Manchester City recognised the important role it had to play in supporting communities locally and globally, so developed a series of initiatives to respond to immediate need and help communities recover from the pandemic.

As the Premier League restarted, the Club launched Cityzens Giving for Recovery, a year-long programme bringing together all ten City Football Group clubs, staff, fans and players, to make a positive difference – mobilising donations, expertise, facilities, resources, and voice to support recovery-linked projects in each of the ten cities where CFG has clubs.

The programme adopted a multi-phased approach, comprising a global crowd-fund to raise £1m for recovery efforts in ten CFG Club cities, sustainable project delivery across those cities for 12+ months, delivering measurable improvements in mental wellbeing, physical health and educational attainment for thousands of young people, and a new employee volunteer programme, blending digital and physical volunteering to support recovery efforts around the globe.

Manchester United FC and Manchester United Foundation

The objective of our Covid-19 response was to continue to support those we work with on a day-to-day basis, whilst also extending our provision to others in society who have found themselves, through no fault of their own, struggling.

Our plan was to:
– Offer support and resources to the NHS and other organisations involved in the frontline fight.
– Maintain our programmes of support for partner schools, whilst developing new initiatives and funding streams to support schools and their pupils.
– Provide financial and practical assistance to foodbanks locally.
– Extend our support to communities near and far through financial donations, wellbeing initiatives and food delivery.
– Financially support our fans and non-salaried staff through refunds and the ongoing payment of wages respectively.

After months of concentrated effort there is no letup in the fight against Covid-19. John Shiels, chief executive of Manchester United Foundation reflected: “When you’re a leading organisation in a city and it gets to this, you need to stand and be counted. I’m so proud that the club and Foundation have stood up and we’ve gone out to communities, looked after our own staff, looked after our partners and looked after our people.”

Tottenham Hotspur FC

Tottenham Hotspur has always taken pride in its role within the community – never was that going to be more important than when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Having offered use of its facilities to the NHS, April saw the transformation of its stadium to assist North Middlesex University Hospital in its fight against COVID-19. The stadium became one of the first in the country to be used to conduct drive-through COVID-19 testing and swabbing, utilising a huge basement car park. The transferral of the hospital’s Women’s Outpatient Services, meanwhile, was designed to free up much-needed capacity at the hospital itself to treat patients facing COVID symptoms whilst supporting the redirection of pregnant women away from the hospital during the pandemic. Between April and July, more than 42,000 Women’s Outpatient Services appointments were delivered at the stadium – accommodated even after football restarted in June. The Club has once again offered its stadium as a potential hub for the COVID-19 vaccination programme. In addition, the Club also established a food distribution hub for local people, helped produce face shields for the frontline and stayed connected to its fans via a range of activities.

Wolves Foundation

On 28th February, Wolves Foundation launched Feed Our Pack, an initial £500,000 project that aims to help reduce the effects of food poverty and support residents of Wolverhampton who have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic The project, which will run for an initial three-years, has been made possible by a £250,000 grant from the Premier League PFA Community Fund and a generous personal donation of £250,000 from Wolves head coach Nuno Espirito Santo Feed Our Pack will be supporting selected foodbanks in the city, with the aim of increasing the volume of food being distributed to meet increased demand caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, along with combatting ‘holiday hunger’ by providing a programme of food, sport and education to local children during school holidays Like most cities, Wolverhampton has suffered as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic People have suffered both physically from the virus itself, mentally from losing loved ones or issues surrounding lockdown and isolation and economically, from the pandemic’s effects on the normal operations of society.

Ashton Gate Stadium – Bristol City FC

We are a unique proposition as the football club is part of a larger sporting group model all owned by the Lansdown family (referred to as Bristol Sport). Steve Lansdown, CBE has often been quoted as saying “We support the community and the community supports us” – never has that been more important than through this crisis. When the pandemic struck, we were able to harness the power of the sporting group to ensure our community response was co-ordinated, strategic and sustainable for the long-term.

This submission will focus on the work that the football club and stadium have done to combat food poverty during the pandemic. It’s also worth noting the enormous work done by our sporting group’s charities (Bristol Sport Foundation, Robins Foundation and Bristol Bears Foundation) to adapt to virtual training sessions, educational learning and contact time with our community to help people of all ages and ability to remain active and healthy.

At the time of submission more than 1000 tonnes of food (the equivalent of 2.3 million meals) has been distributed directly from Ashton Gate Stadium. Our charities have delivered more than 50,000 meals to those most in need in our immediate community.

Brentford FC

The 2019/20 season was set up to be an historic one for Brentford Football Club – The Bees bid farewell to their beloved Griffin Park and looked ahead to life at Brentford Community Stadium.
The pandemic put the Club’s celebration plans on hold though and instead they focused their off-field efforts on supporting fans and the local community during this difficult time. Together with Brentford FC Community Sports Trust, Brentford reached out with their #BeeAtHome and #BeeWell campaigns to encourage children and adults to stay active at home and look after their mental wellbeing and delivered pizzas to local families in need of a Christmas treat. They also supported the NHS and South Western Railway with their campaigns on how to stay safe and worked with Directors, players, staff and fans to raise money and increase donations for Hounslow Community FoodBox. The Bees supported their fans by calling to check in on them and found innovative ways to allow them to say their goodbyes to Griffin Park and ‘be there’ for those special last moments even when games were behind closed doors. At their new stadium, new fan engagement ideas continue with Virtual Mascots, Buzz at Your Door and more.

Bristol Rovers FC

Bristol Rovers and our Community Trust united to work hard during this pandemic to attempt to ensure that our community and those in need got through the various challenges that arose due to the pandemic together. From delivering tablets to the elderly and in need to providing food to the most vulnerable, the club has attempted to provide the required support to everyone that needed it.

Derby County FC Community Trust

Derby County Football Club and its Community Trust serve communities across Derbyshire. Elderly With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, every member of staff, from Community Coach to first team manager, was united in a desire to help our communities.

Ideas were collated under the Stay Safe. Stay Fit. Stay Connected. initiative which has been running since April 2020 in order to combat the pandemic’s devastating effects.

Key elements of the project include the running of a food donation hub and supporting the wider food bank network, the development of a virtual activity calendar to keep fans and participants active and a number of projects aimed at keeping communities connected.

Projects have been wide-ranging: supporting isolated, elderly members of the community to access technology, delivering food relief parcels, supporting the council to provide almost 1,000 Christmas meals, upcycling bikes, continuing to support school staff and pupils’ wellbeing and even launching a kit!

The initiative has adapted to bridge city-wide gaps in provision and as a result, individual projects have varied hugely, but have all worked together for the common purpose of keeping fans and participants safe, fit and connected.

Dons Local Action Group with AFC Wimbledon Foundation

Dons Local Action Group (DLAG), part of the AFC Wimbledon Foundation, was started in March 2020 by a small group of long-time AFC Wimbledon fans who strongly felt that as a community club, there was a responsibility to help local people affected by Covid-19.

Since then, an army of over 2,000 registered volunteers has worked tirelessly in the London boroughs of Merton, Wandsworth and Kingston to help people most in need – those falling through the gaps and without access to the basics such as food and education.

In just ten months we have delivered over 140,000 food boxes to individuals, families, food banks, community kitchens and shelters for victims of domestic abuse and the homeless. Our Keep Kids Connected campaign through which we collect, refurbish and distribute donated laptops has ensured that over 1,200 under-privileged children can continue their education from home. We have sourced and delivered more than 175 items of furniture and appliances.

Having worked collaboratively with over 135 aid organisations, charities, schools, local councils, MPs and businesses, we are recognised as a nimble, effective and approachable organisation and have now become a permanent operation tackling food, digital and furniture poverty in the community.

Notts County FC

Notts County made more than 350 phone calls to elderly, vulnerable and key-worker supporters to bring them some cheer in the first lockdown before launching a fundraising campaign for their local Age UK branch. Over the course of the pandemic, the relationship between the club and charity blossomed into an official partnership, which paved the way for the club to raise more vital funds at such a crucial and pressurised time.

The club’s magnificent community spirit has been transferred into their commercial operations this season, too, as they entered into a unique partnership with Cadbury which saw the world-famous chocolate company become the club’s home shirt sponsors before donating the inventory to Notts’ travel partners, Sharpes of Nottingham, whose business had been decimated by the pandemic.

Port Vale Foundation Trust

Port Vale Football Club through the Port Vale Foundation have provided a staggering 300,000 meals since March 2020, supporting those who need it most in their community to have access to weekly food, essential items and support.

The Foundation have provided a wrap around offer of support to its community during the pandemic. In addition to food and essential items, the club have provided loneliness phone calls for the over 70’s, garden gate visits and zoom calls and quizzes.
As the pandemic continued to affect the community the club redoubled its efforts, running a Christmas appeal, which saw an amazing 1000 families supported with toys, gifts and food that they would not have otherwise had. Carol Shanahan, club owner was out with the team on Christmas Day providing a hot Christmas dinner for people and families who would have otherwise gone without.

If ever there was a time for a football club to step up for its community, it is in a global pandemic and Port Vale FC have done this in an unbelievably passionate way that has had a true impact on the lives of people in Stoke-on-Trent.

Rangers Charity Foundation

The Rangers Charity Foundation exists to be a force for good on behalf of the Rangers Family, showing compassion to those in need, tackling inequalities and creating opportunities for people of all ages to change their lives for the better.

For many young people and adults, the Foundation provides a vital link and opportunity to improve their health, wellbeing, alleviate isolation and help them on a pathway towards employment.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we were determined to continue this support and therefore developed #AFoundationFromHome.

We believed that it was vital for us to offer a range of resources to help alleviate isolation, the risk of deterioration in mental health and physical wellbeing and to maintain links with those for whom the Rangers Charity Foundation has been a catalyst for improving their lives.

Our #AFoundationFromHome resources were delivered mainly by just two members of staff and reached thousands of people in need of support right across the UK. All activities were free and included:
– Fun and educational worksheets for children
– Football challenges for young people with disabilities
– Online fitness sessions for adults
– Football Memories videos for older people with dementia
– Key sources of support and advice

SD Huesca – La Colmena

LaLiga allows teams to travel along the geography visiting cities, so we thought that SD Huesca could have a gesture of respect towards its rivals in an original way. On the pitch the teams are rivals, but SD Huesca believes that football and its capacity for dissemination and social mobilization also have to be used to establish a union between cities, culture, heritage and sport.

Aligned with club values, we proposed an initiative never seen in football: our captain would play with a different armband in each away game, designed for the occasion. It would serve as a tribute to the rivals and showing respect to them. The campaign consists of 19 armband designs with references to the nature, culture or tradition of our opponents.

The illustrations of every armband are the result of careful research, through respect and with special attention to detail, to value culture and art in the world of sports.
It has had a great impact on social media and press, going viral on Twitter and gaining international visibility. Also many online media appreciated the initiative. Definitely, it’s a hallmark of the club that differentiates it from its rivals, while bringing it closer to them.

LaLiga – Vizrt and EA Sports

Through partnering with VIZRT and EA SPORTS, LaLiga became the first league in the world to create virtual fans with crowd audio for live matches, creating the impression of full, lively stadiums while fans could not physically attend.

With an aim of maintaining the high-quality of its match broadcasts and not losing international audience, LaLiga created an ambitious project that involved creating images of groups of fans of each team from LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank. These were then adapted to the specific structure and shape of each stadium in the competition to create a digital image that could be placed over the empty stands. It added fan audio to this, which is based on recordings previously made by LaLiga inside Spanish stadiums.

The virtualised broadcasts were an immediate success with global audiences jumping by 48% when LaLiga returned on 11th June 2020. These innovations have continued to prove exceedingly popular with viewers, as 9 out of 10 spectators choosing to view the matches with the virtualised fans and audio option.

LiveScore

In under six months, LiveScore successfully revolutionised their popular app by launching and integrating a free-to-air football live streaming service that is already forcing the sports industry to sit up and take notice.

Capitalising on its standing as one of the world’s leading real-time sports updates and results providers, LiveScore identified a gap in the market to provide accessible, safe, trusted, reliable and legal live streaming for football fans in the UK and Ireland.

Within two months of launching in June 2020, over 600,000 unique users (60% of LiveScore’s UK and Ireland mobile app users) visited the LiveScore app to view a match, with individual audiences peaking at 147,000 unique viewers. Six months on, 1.4m unique users have watched a match.

LiveScore is streaming over 1,000 matches throughout the 2020-21 season, underpinned by 306 matches from Italy’s Serie A campaign. For the first time, LiveScore is now carrying live streams from the English Premier League, after acquiring rights to simulcast 31 Saturday 3pm kick off fixtures exclusively for LiveScore app users in Nigeria.

The next step of development will see LiveScore acquire new rights and deliver content globally, unlocking their global active monthly audience of 56 million users.

Playermaker

Our flagship soccer wearable and motion tracking connected footwear technology, is now available to individual players across the globe through the launch of the UNO by Playermaker. Until now, this technology has only been available through a club or University program as a team solution. The only smart motion sensor technology that attaches directly to your cleat, allowing you to monitor soccer-specific performance metrics including technical, and physical data. Using the paired iOS app, parents, coaches and players can monitor trends in performance and set benchmarks at the club, age group, team and position levels. Easily share training and performance metrics with parents, teammates, coaches, and scouts using the paired iOS app . The UNO is trusted by top soccer leagues and prestigious college programs across the U.S., Playermaker was awarded the Best Sports Equipment or Wearable Technology prize at the Sports Technology Awards 2020.

Stadion

Stadion is a digital products company creating bespoke digital experiences for global sports rights holders such as Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and TeamGB, ranging from websites and apps, to OTT platforms and digital activations.

In our various experiences working in the digital sports industry over the last 15 years, there’s always been a fundamental problem with the whole online shopping and retail experience. From tickets to merchandise and OTT to membership, they are all provided by multiple different providers and live on separate 3rd party platforms.

As a result the user must make multiple journeys to buy different products and services, generally having to leave the rights holders digital estate each time they want to make a purchase. Not only is that incredibly time consuming and frustrating for them, it’s also far more likely for them to drop out of the purchase journey before completion, costing rights holders vital revenue.

By aggregating products and services into one seamless purchase journey and native checkout experience, clubs can now upsell and cross-sell throughout the user journey and retain the fan on their own platforms. This hugely simplifies the whole process for the user, and streamlines the clubs processes and drives more.

Standard Chartered & Octagon

Standard Chartered united the past and present to inspire and educate the next generation of Liverpool FC fans by showcasing LFC’s most successful manager, Bob Paisley, in what would have been his 100th Birthday year (2019/20 Season).

The beauty of technology is to provide human connections. Through the use of smart technology, both voice technology and CGI, we were able to allow Bob Paisley to once again walk on the Anfield pitch, tell unheard stories alongside Ian Rush and interact with today’s players and Manager, Jürgen Klopp.
Working extremely closely the Paisley Family and LFC, ‘Project Stand Red’ became a campaign that preserves a tremendous legacy that will continue to inspire the next generation of football and demonstrate the Bank’s commitment to bringing global fans closer to the Club they love using innovation and technology.

Project Stand Red is a campaign that built human connections, inspired the next generation of football fans and demonstrated the Bank’s commitment to bringing fans in all corners of the globe closer to the Club they love – using the same type of innovative technology that made the brand a fintech leader.

The DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga and Vodafone

DFL and its partner Vodafone have developed a 5G stadium application that allows spectators at the stadium to receive, among other things, match statistics and the players’ individual values directly on the display of their smartphones.

The application makes use of the official match data collected by the DFL’s subsidiary Sportec Solutions and thus allows fans to access over 3.6 million data points per match.

Using an intuitive interface, fans are now able to receive data like the current speed of a player, the success rates of his passes, team stats, the lineup and will in future be able to access even further insights.

The application was premiered in a first showcase in September 2019 during a live Bundesliga match in Wolfsburg and is a first use case of how 5G will impact the world of sports and media.

TOCA Football

TOCA Football, Inc. is a soccer-focused, technology-enabled experience company that aims to transform the sports experience and build communities that inspire everybody to play. TOCA provides an authentic football experience on demand, making players better and getting fans playing through its training centers, innovative programming, and social experience venues. We want to create a world where we can all come together and play, motivating individuals to improve and connect through the game of football.

At TOCA, we provide the resources and cutting-edge technology that helps players reach their full potential at an affordable cost to level the playing field and lower barriers of entry. The TOCA Touch Trainer, which provides data and real time feedback for soccer training, is transforming the playing experience by using smart targets that allow players to analyze their training and gamification.

TOCA is spearheading innovation and disruption within the football community by using our cutting-edge technology to enhance player development and the training experience. With our unique resources and emphasis on community engagement and inclusion, TOCA is introducing the next chapter in the game of football.

Bristol City FC

We are a unique proposition as the Bristol City Football Club is part of a larger sporting group model all owned by the Lansdown family (referred to as Bristol Sport). Our digital media strategy is part of the overall group’s strategy promoted by Jon Lansdown, Chairman of Bristol City FC.

Our tone of voice aims to be playful and engaging. It is guided by the following statement by Jon Lansdown: “We take what we do very seriously, but we must never take ourselves too seriously.”

As part of the larger sporting group, we work as a shared media resource which collaborates across Bristol Sport, Bristol Bears (rugby) men and women, Bristol Flyers (basketball), Bristol City men & women, Ashton Gate Stadium and each of our clubs’ respective community foundations. This enables us to amplify our coverage across multiple channels and engaged supporters.

Whilst impressions and unique views form part of the litmus tests for success, engagement is a key area that we consistently focus on. As the digital media team who first invented the Goal Gifs we have always had a deliberate focus on driving engagement with our fans and our sponsors.

Engage Digital Partners

Engage Digital Partners has continued to build a reputation for delivering fan engagement strategy and execution across content production, distribution and audience development and influencer marketing. We work in football with Australia’s A-League and W-League helping to re-write their digital strategy in 2019/20; with Real Madrid for whom we have created a fan engagement strategy and executed this on all social channels. We also work with Arsenal (now in their fourth season with EDP) to engage fans and fan clubs in India.
Our most ambitious work, also in India, has been with Chelsea FC who are striving to become the leading club in digital in India. We have brought them together with a Bollywood superstar who is also a genuine Chelsea fan. He is directly involved in content through a regular show, Out of the Blue and we have harnessed his social channels to enable CFC to appeal to the valuable entertainment audience. The results have been exceptional and Arjun Kapoor is becoming part of the Chelsea furniture and a real figurehead for the Indian market.

Everton FC

In a challenging period for football – and all industries – Everton brought its fanbase and community together through relevant and engaging content that aligned with the Club’s values of Family, Determination, Authenticity and Ambition.

Digital and Social played a vital part in the delivery of the Blue Family campaign, as Everton engaged with both existing and new audiences to provide health and wellbeing advice and connect fans around the world with their club – and one another.

This included collaborating with footballers, musicians, local authorities and staff across the Club to create content that was relevant, entertaining and informative.

Digital and Social played a significant part in raising thousands of pounds for the Blue Family campaign, which is supporting the most vulnerable people in our community during the pandemic.

Additionally, the teams had to react quickly to the major signing of Colombian superstar James Rodriguez from Real Madrid, developing a plan to capitalise on the global splash it would inevitably make, and turn it into an opportunity for international growth and engagement, particularly in the Club’s target markets of North and South America. This included the launch of a new Spanish-language Club website and Spanish-language social media accounts.

Leicester City FC

We launched our official TikTok channel in November 2019, and it has since gone on to become one of the most engaged social media accounts in world sport.

It has seen us interact with a new audience; a much younger generation of supporters that consume fast-paced, and most importantly, humorous content.

Ensuring that fan engagement is at the heart of our strategy, our approach on TikTok is much more contemporary than our other channels, and with it has produced viral content, and even created platform trends.

Our audience is not restricted to Leicester fans, and we regularly reply to opposition supporters, who we would previously never engage with, allowing us to further expand our reach.

A key age range of TikTok users is the mid-to-late teens, and this has helped us to connect with younger supporters all over the world who may not yet have chosen a club to support, ultimately providing us with the potential of gaining fans for life.

In late 2020, we analysed our current digital strategy, and have since developed a plan for the next three years that will focus on engaging with a younger demographic, with TikTok now at the very centre of that strategy.

Manchester United FC

In 2020 Manchester United’s social channels finished as most engaged across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and remain the biggest Premier League club with 190M followers. United remain #1 in China, having launched on Douyin and became the first sports club to pass 10M followers on Weibo in June. We launched on TikTok, and quickly became the most engaged club in the Premier League. We launched a new lifestyle channel ‘We Are United’, as we innovated on Social commerce, which sparked record Ecommerce results.

But beyond the big numbers, we’re most proud of how we tackled the pandemic head on, pivoting our social channels to CSR, charity and good will content, whilst football paused. Whilst other clubs went ‘dark’ and furloughed workers, we doubled down, donating prime Social Media real estate to our Foundation, and pushing good causes like Marcus Rashford’s School meals and the NHS. We used time with players to reach out to the most vulnerable, like the elderly and frontline key worker families, and created educational and wellbeing challenges and worksheets for kids in lockdown. Sure, the big numbers stand out, but the big smiles we brought to fan’s faces were our highlight of 2020.

Motherwell FC

Motherwell FC traditionally sits in the position of being one of Scotland’s “provincial” clubs. A £4m turnover business, it lies in the regional shadow of Celtic and Rangers, based 12 and 15 miles away respectively.

With 4,500 season ticket holders and engaged social media following of 120,000, the club communicates its mission statement – To improve people’s lives – through strong emotional storytelling of its values. In having a bigger purpose other than winning matches, it stands out as a club with an authentic and differentiated identity.

With just three staff members, the club has crafted a content strategy that enjoys some of the highest engagement per head in world football. Through innovations such as access to the dressing room, interviews on the pitch at full-time and the monthly Inside Motherwell documentary series, together with important work in the areas of suicide prevention and child poverty, the club stands out with a strong identity.

Surpassing its engagement and follower targets in 2020, the digital team also won acclaim for their documentary charting the recovery from injury of David Turnbull, showcasing his physical and mental rehabilitation before eventually winning back his move to Celtic for a club-record fee.

Arsenal FC

It’s been a turbulent time for everyone in the midst of a pandemic and football isn’t immune to this. We’ve been fortunate to play matches, but we’ve been missing the essential ingredient that makes our game so special: the fans.

So when our club captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was poised to sign a new three-year contract, we wanted to mark the moment with our fans in a special way.
On 15 September 2020, Auba personally shared the news of his new contract on Arsenal’s social media channels from Emirates Stadium to a live audience of more than quarter of a million fans across Instagram Live, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, the Arsenal app and Arsenal.com.

It was crucial to Auba that his vibrant personality and his social media habits were captured authentically. Thanks to his commitment to making this happen, the hard work and creativity from some brilliant people and the support of Instagram, we created a memorable moment of excitement for our fans that we could all share together.

In total, more than 3.2 million people have watched the announcement across live and on-demand platforms.

Borussia Dortmund & SPORTFIVE U.S.

To announce the signing of 17-year-old English talent, Jude Bellingham, Borussia Dortmund’s English Language Twitter account (managed by SPORTFIVE U.S) executed a unique teaser campaign incorporating references to the Beatles.

Given Bellingham’s British nationality and the natural connection between his first name, Jude, and hit Beatles song “Hey Jude”, the team built the campaign around these themes.

Starting with three teaser tweets referencing other iconic Beatles songs, “Yesterday”, “Here Comes the Sun”, and “A Day in the Life” in the caption of the content, a thematic storyline was built that would ultimately conclude with the main “Hey Jude” content piece, a video where team players performed an acoustic rendition of the song to welcome Bellingham.

The campaign achieved its goal of subtlety, with fans coming back to the three previous tweets only then realizing that the scene had been set in advance to culminate with the Beatles-inspired announcement video.

Chelsea FC

Chelsea Women have become one of the biggest teams in the women’s game with stellar talent from across the world joining the club. Each announcement campaign for these players saw the creative concepts elevated every time with a vivid and unique style for each. But for us, contract extensions for our current stars are also as important as new signings. Captain Magda Eriksson has played an integral role in our recent success. For her contract extension video, we tailored the visual style around her Swedish heritage opting for stark, open, Nordic landscapes mixed with sharp punches of yellow to contrast the monochromatic backgrounds. This is an example of how we can tell a story from a football world, without relying wholly on football imagery.

Complimenting our hero piece was an exclusive interview breaking away from a traditional broadcast style interview and using a relaxed, personal lifestyle look and feel while a motion graphics timeline brought Magda’s key archive moments to life. The final product is a bold, visually engaging, personal and unique take on a contract announcement.

Everton FC

Everton’s signing of James Rodriguez in September 2020 – the 8th biggest social media sports star on earth – presented the Club with an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate its growth across the Americas and worldwide – but it needed to act quickly and decisively across three continents.

Due to the pandemic, the Club led with digital and social, supported by inspiring on-the- ground, headline-grabbing visual activations in New York, Miami, Bogota and Rodriguez’s new home town of Liverpool, linking the territories and telling the story of the Club’s ambition and wider international strategy.

The activity went viral on social media, galvanising Evertonians – old and new – and the wider footballing community to participate in meaningful, memorable and authentic engagement with the Club and each other, illustrating Everton’s identity as The People’s Club. New Spanish-language social media channels were launched and have seen significant growth built on the effective merging of local nuances and Everton values.

The announcement and subsequent ‘blue wave’ on the ground and social media activity resonated on an international scale, surpassing all targets. Just 48 hours after the announcement, the coordinated physical, digital and social media activity had reached more than 500 million people globally.

Manchester United FC

New player signings present us with one of our most powerful and exciting opportunities to build fan engagement. At Manchester United, our new player announcements are bold and enhanced to reach our global audiences. Our objective was clear: announce new players in the most compelling and engaging way possible to a worldwide audience, for both our men’s and women’s teams.

Motherwell FC

With supporters locked out of grounds heading into the 2020/21 season, clubs were challenged with maintaining the connection between players and fans.
A key pillar of Motherwell FC’s brand strategy is in building those connections between the supporters and the team.

To highlight the intertwined nature of the club and where it resides, every new Motherwell FC signing in the summer of 2020 was announced through taking them out into the town for their announcement photographs.

Placing the new member of our tribe together with local iconography at locations all over Motherwell, we truly took the club out into its community.
Motherwell itself is a town of contrasting socioeconomic profiles, and we made sure we represented every area – no matter the perceptions of them.

To further emphasise the point, we also got our new signings to post their own pictures from being unveiled in the town – but also wearing our iconic blue change kit which is inspired by the original colours of our club.

Tottenham Hotspur FC

In a summer of exciting announcements during Jose Mourinho’s first pre-season transfer window in charge, the Club’s digital team overhauled it’s existing strategy to execute a range of innovative transfer campaigns across our social media channels. We were lead by fan sentiment to take ownership of some contentious topics of discussion and push the boundaries in terms of access to shape our style and tone of voice.

A tongue-in-cheek approach for the signings of Matt Doherty, Carlos Vinicius and Joe Rodon was followed by our cross-platform #BaleIsBack campaign to document the much anticipated return of club legend, Gareth Bale.

West Ham United FC

A new player arriving at a club is more than just a new set of skills, it’s the arrival of a new personality, a new culture, and in the case of Said Benrahma and entirely new audience.

The signing of Said Benrahma prompted West Ham United to look deeper into the player’s fanbase abroad, building the digital launch strategy around his heritage to attract a new audience to the Club’s social media platforms.

This approach saw unprecedented growth of the Club’s social footprint – the fastest growth experienced since the club first joined social media, culminating in an acquisition of almost 300k fans across West Ham’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts and almost 7 million users reached online.

BT Sport and Singula Decisions

BT SPORT CREATE ‘MATCH PASS’ DURING COVID CRISIS, SUPPORTED BY SINGULA DECISIONS

The first global COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020 had a devastating impact on the Sports industry – with sporting events cancelled and millions of people forced to stay home.
While the entire football ecosystem had to adjust to new protocol that ensured games could be played safely, another major challenge emerged. With football games being played either behind closed doors or with limited capacity crowds; how would fans, whom had already purchased Premier League Season Tickets, watch their favourite football team play…at home?!

BT Sport, the home of sports entertainment from the UKs leading telecommunication provider BT Group, designed and launched a solution quickly – defining, building and deploying the new BT Sport Match Pass in only 16 days! Singula Decisions, specialists in Subscriber Intelligence, collaborated to play a major role.

BT Sport Match Pass was created as a one-off pass offered free-of-charge to qualifying Season Ticket holders allowing them the chance to watch a Premier League game, streamed via the BT Sport App.

The solution was successfully launched in May 2020 and helped football fans to watch 19 Premier League games during the 2019/2020 season.

Bundesliga – DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH

Taking shifting sport media consumption habits (esp. among young audiences) into consideration, BL’s media product is supposed to cater these needs to enable more than 60 broadcasters worldwide to target their customers as tailored as possible. As authenticity, closeness and immediacy have been identified as main drivers for that, DFL’s objective was to create a product that not only reflects this but also directly involves all Bundesliga clubs in the content production to leverage clubs’ uniqueness.

By owning the entire media value chain, the Bundesliga was able to vertically enhance the value chain and incorporate all clubs into the production set-up. The club produced content serves as a basis for social media coverage (complement to the linear broadcasting) with authentic storytelling around the matches. This format enables broadcasters to achieve diverse business objectives.

The Social Media Matchday Feed initiative lead to major enhancement of social media coverage on matchdays on the various channels of all stakeholders: media partners, clubs and the league’s own and operated platforms. The intuitive accessibility and straightforward handling enable our partners, not explicitly anticipated in the conceptualization phase but proves tremendously helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic to work remotely on the editorial coverage of the Bundesliga!

English Football League – iFollow

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, overnight the EFL became a full-scale streaming provider with iFollow proving a critical lifeline to both Clubs and Supporters.

Since the start of the pandemic the EFL has streamed over 850 matches, over double the amount it would usually stream, to over 3.5million people. In a short space of time the League has had to upscale its operation, with responsibility for infrastructure, ticketing and marketing resource – in turn protecting Clubs’ Season Ticket revenue, commercial deals and generating much-needed income at financially precarious time.

Without iFollow (or Club equivalent service) there simply would have been no other way to watch every EFL match and supporters would have been left with no access to their Club.

LiveScore

In under six months, LiveScore successfully revolutionised their popular app by launching and integrating a free-to-air football live streaming service that is already forcing the sports industry to sit up and take notice.

Capitalising on its standing as one of the world’s leading real-time sports updates and results providers, LiveScore identified a gap in the market to provide accessible, safe, trusted, reliable and legal live streaming for football fans in the UK and Ireland.

Within two months of launching in June 2020, over 600,000 unique users (60% of LiveScore’s UK and Ireland mobile app users) visited the LiveScore app to view a match, with individual audiences peaking at 147,000 unique viewers. Six months on, 1.4m unique users have watched a match.

LiveScore is streaming over 1,000 matches throughout the 2020-21 season, underpinned by 306 matches from Italy’s Serie A campaign. For the first time, LiveScore is now carrying live streams from the English Premier League, after acquiring rights to simulcast 31 Saturday 3pm kick off fixtures exclusively for LiveScore app users in Nigeria.

The next step of development will see LiveScore acquire new rights and deliver content globally, unlocking their global active monthly audience of 56 million users.

On The Ball Global

On The Ball is a cutting edge, all-in-one training app that allows users to master their football game regardless your ability level. The App brings expert guidance and instruction from world-class athletes into an easy-to-follow app format.

Users can select their fitness level and football skill level before beginning with On The Ball, and OTB customises progressive training programs accordingly. Users have access to a wealth of video training from professional athletes and coaches to improve football techniques, sharpen specific strengths, maximise their football instincts and track their development and stats for tackling weaknesses and areas to improve.

Other Media – Clubcast

Other Media are a long-established digital agency working with sports clients for over 20 years. Stoically following clubs spanning the English leagues, we know and love sport.

We have developed Clubcast, a fan engagement platform, to enable sports clubs to better manage their content workflows and power their websites, apps and smart speaker skills, vastly improving the efficiency of the media teams, especially on match days. Coordinating all the digital touch points that Clubcast powers ensures that clubs can keep fans engaged with up-to-the minute content and engaging functionality delivered through digital products that reflect and enhance their club’s identity.

Clubs are able to boost revenue through unified digital assets enabling sponsorship, advertising, and partnership agreements; boosting retail sales; and enabling a healthy bounceback of matchday and season ticket sales when gates re-open as well as hospitality sales. All while benefiting from improved workflows.

Clubcast enables clubs to benefit from a scalable and economic system (which most clubs opt to pay for on a monthly basis, avoiding hefty upfront costs).

Clubcast brings together the best in technology, produced by the best in the business, to bring clubs the best in class solution for digital fan engagement with plentiful revenue opportunities.

Pixellot

Pixellot pioneered automated Sports production Our Solutions are comprised of multi-array cameras AI-driven software and multi-platform Cloud streaming Our products are used by the leading sports organizations, federations, and clubs in the world and serve two main purposes: production and broadcast of live games as well as data analytics and other tools for coaches
150 employees work at Pixellot worldwide with one goal – to democratize sports coverage. Our customers are just about every type of Sports organization that exists, from leagues and federations to individual sports clubs and grassroots organizations, youth clubs, sports venues, etc The past season was brutally interrupted by the covid-19 and with sporting events and even entire seasons being canceled, our solutions were exactly what the doctor ordered – an easy inexpensive way to broadcast games at a time when crowds were banned from stadiums Leagues and teams that did not have live coverage of their matches could now stay connected to their fans by inexpensively producing and broadcasting games live and on-demand. This also opened up various means of generating income for the clubs at a time when other sources like gate receipts, parking and concessions were not a factor.

Urban Zoo – Gamechanger

Urban Zoo’s unique Gamechanger platform for professional sports clubs is revolutionising the performance of clubs’ digital assets, optimising fan engagement and commercialisation by dramatically increasing user numbers and fans’ discretionary spend Clients include Everton, Stoke City, Fulham, Celtic, Wigan Athletic, Aston Villa, Sheffield United, Spurs, Middlesbrough and AFC Fylde, with Nottingham Forest and Blackburn Rovers currently in the build phase Gamechanger encompasses a website, native app and e-commerce platform, with continuous investment in new features and functionality Clients view us as a technology partner, rather than a supplier We’re footy fans who happen to be very, very good at technology Gamechanger’s success is, in part, because it helps resolve the following challenges: • It’s easy to use and time efficient for client content teams • It understands fan behaviour and enables activity tracking • It’s robust and secure, with infinite scale-up on tap to cope with surges in demand • Innovative and constantly evolving • Commercial certainty via one fixed monthly licence fee • Vastly improved fan user experience Such is the impact of Gamechanger in areas such as user experience, personalisation, design, content presentation and much more, that our clients have found it utterly transformative Across all key metrics