That certainly remains the case, but it’s not just any content – whether it’s long or short-form – that wins the day. It’s the content – video sports content in this case – that ticks a few important boxes, according to those in the space.
The sports world seemingly lost its mind when ‘The Last Dance’ hit screens in 2020 and many a fan’s ‘Covid conversations’ were dominated by whether or not they felt Scottie Pippen had got a raw deal, whether Michael Jordan was actually a nice guy, and whether anyone had ever seen a sportsman or women as competitive as Jordan.
The 10-episode series chronicling Jordan’s career with the Chicago Bulls, with a focus on the 1997/98 NBA season, proved a major hit for ESPN, with Netflix going on to reveal that The Last Dance was watched by 23.8 million users outside of the US in its first four weeks.
Sports fans – including those with little or no knowledge of Jordan, basketball or the NBA – just loved it, but when those curious about delving into the reasons for its success started to unpack those reasons, there seemed to be universal surprise that a ‘long-form’ piece of content could engage – and keep engaged across 10 hour-long episodes – such large numbers of sports fans, both young and old.
It was heralded as the ‘return of the sports documentary’ and that ‘surprise’ element related to the notion that younger fans had found it compelling, at a time when it was accepted that attention spans were shorter, in the wake of the popularity of platforms such as Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, and the short-form video content dominating them.
This point was driven home back in South Africa, when just months later ‘Chasing the Sun’ – the story behind the Springboks’ 2019 World Cup success – hit screens here and also proved a major success, and whilst SuperSport says it doesn’t typically “divulge ratings”, it’s widely accepted that hundreds of thousands of South Africans consumed the five-part documentary series.
So, why did it work? Beyond the obvious, of course, that it’s just a great story and was wonderfully-produced? What were some of the key elements in ensuring this piece of long-form sports content effectively ‘hit it out the park’, beyond just great storytelling?
“We said: ‘So what are the principles that we want to uphold in telling this story?’ And the driving one was authenticity. Another principle was drama,” said Gareth Whittaker, Executive Producer of Chasing the Sun and CEO of T&W, speaking to Channel24 in 2020. “Some of the responses are really raw and personable and emotional at times. You’ll even see in the language of it, it’s raw, and it’s human, and it’s real, and the team did an amazing job to get the people to open up.”
That’s drilling down into the essence of the content, how it’s produced, and what some of the guiding principles driving the production were.
It’s something also achieved by the producers of ‘Drive to Survive’ – the series that goes behind the scenes of Formula 1 motor racing and another major long-form success during the initial Covid months.
“Effective content must entertain – look at what ‘Drive to Survive’ has done for F1,” says Simon Hill, Head of Marketing at The Courier Guy. “Yes, it’s about motor racing, but first and foremost, it’s captivating and great to watch. Effective content is content made with the end user in mind. It’s knowing your audience and giving them what they want – consistently – rather than what you, personally, might find appealing.”
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Hill cites Red Bull and golf’s DP World Tour as other examples of companies creating consistently good content that they know will appeal to their audience, but also points out that it’s important to keep the delivery platform in mind, particularly as we segue from long to short-form.
Do the principles of effective video sports content remain the same, regardless of whether you’re making a documentary series or a short-form piece of branded content?
“It’s equal parts relevance and universal,” says Mike Sharman, the founder of Retroviral Digital Communications and the man behind pieces of content such as ‘The Sixty60 Swindler’, ‘My Kreepy Teacher’, and Nando’s ‘Last Dictator Standing’. “For me, stand-up comedy and marketing are cousins, and the key to successful stand-up comedy is adding a layer of humour to observational truths. Your favourite stand-up comedians merely show you a mirror of fact, with a twist. The best marketing campaigns do exactly this.”
More recently, Sharman and Retroviral launched a ‘Pool Coach’ campaign for HTH, involving Sharman’s business partner and old school mate Bryan Habana, the former Springbok wing. It’s Habana like you’ve never seen him, rocking a South African flag-inspired speedo, with humour the priority – very different from ‘Chasing the Sun’ and the Boks in that piece of content, but effective.
“The hard part is trying to create something that people want to watch, and get paid to make it,” says Matchstick’s Andy Croly, who has produced video pieces for the likes of New Balance, Discovery, H&M and Interbet. “To do that you need a brand or rights-holder to believe that there is fair value in creating content and they can see some sort of ROI in it. Trying to understand that measurable is difficult and often confusing, particularly from the creative side.”
In this area of the video content space, Croly believes that content is only one link in a chain that is put together to create a successful marketing campaign.
“I think brands should be looking to create content that completes the circle of their marketing objectives,” he says. “Content creation can generate leads, it can build brand awareness, it can create action, it can sell product. As mentioned before, it’s up to the brief to clearly define where this sits amongst the overall strategy, and then it’s the content creator’s job to make sure it answers that need.”
Video content is definitely the flavour of the month/year/decade and many agencies are now changing their set-ups to take up a bigger presence in this space, with those who previously focused on short-form now wading into the long-form space and vice versa.
T&W, for example, built its reputation, initially, on churning out world-class promos for SuperSport, before expanding its offering – including producing the more recent ‘Two Sides’ series, detailing the 2021 British & Irish Lions visit – whilst Retroviral doesn’t only focus on producing short-form pieces that could potentially go viral – they were part of the teams behind the ‘Map1mp1’ documentary and motorcyclist Kirsten Landman’s ‘Road to Dakar’.
It’s become pretty competitive.
The good news for the sports fan is that quality video content – whether it’s long or short-form – is here to stay.
Quite simply, it remains king, and whilst each of those forms might speak to you in a different way or touch things in you that differ from form to form, the ultimate end result is the same.
Dylan Rogers
