Premiere League Season Finale
Season Finale, a show which brought together fans from all Premier League teams to discuss what they thought would happen in the 23/24 season
We wanted to reflect on the numerous talking points of what had been a memorable season whilst generating content that worked across the final weekend and cup finals that followed, all done from the fan’s perspective. This isn’t the glossy high-end Sky Sports approach but something that feels more authentic and reel. So we invited one fan from each of the Premier League teams to come face to face in a show which was hosted by William Hill regular Nicole Holliday and directed by David Lieb who we’d worked with for Cafe Roar.
There’s a huge amount of competing social media content around football so the key for us was to create relatable and authentic content. The recruitment of suitable fans with a decent following on social media, whom we knew would be articulate, passionate, genuine fans and importantly, over 25, was a key part of the setup process.
We also needed an appropriate venue and high-quality production values in a convenient location.
But perhaps the biggest challenge was that with so many fixtures re-arranged, we didn’t yet know all the results and therefore some of the issues might already have been settled by the time the content went live. So we had to plan very carefully and have a contingency for different outcomes of the mid-week games. We also had very fast turnaround times to get the content live so it gained the biggest possible traction in the build-up to the final weekend.
Working with the Vectar Project in Manchester, we created a beautiful, branded yet functional set that could accommodate the fans and presenter. We built terraced bench seating reminiscent of a stadium and then had sofas where the fans could rotate to talk about content relevant to their teams.
The set was made entirely from recyclable materials and being located in Manchester it was as convenient as could be for most fans to get to, which was particularly important for those who had games to get to that evening.
The filming generated content for both a longer form YouTube show, as well as shorter clips to be distributed across other platforms (Instagram and Twitter). This included each fan giving the lowdown on how their team had fared and what they felt was needed to improve next season.
We also filmed some evergreen content for future use around discussion points that were bound to be topical over the summer (ie will Harry Kane finally leave Tottenham?!)
The quality and authenticity of the content were very high. Despite some challenges around the distribution and speed of delivery, overall the films performed well and were popular with fans. What we hadn’t foreseen was that Sky would release a very similar format just prior to us doing it. But as a pilot episode, we learnt a great deal which we hope to be able to translate into more content opportunities in the future.
