FOOTBALL BUSINESS INNOVATION AWARD 2019
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.
