Creative pivots in the sports industry during the COVID-19 shutdown

Whilst COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the industry with a majority of sports organizations around the world either postponing or cancelling their seasons/events and the flow on effect that it’s had for revenue across the board and unfortunately employment for people who work for leagues, teams, broadcasters, stadiums etc… it’s been interesting to see how some organizations have used this time to find creative pivots to navigate their way through the pandemic and continue to engage their audiences.

1) Social Media: Trae Young’s #InHouseChallenge has taken the world by storm and it’s already fueling creators’ juices on both TikTok and Instagram. As usual, House Of Highlights and other big social media outlets are all over this and it’s just a matter of time before we start to see brands get involved.

2) Studio Shows: Yesterday was an interesting day in talking-head land… Whilst ESPN (amazingly) managed to squeeze what seemed like eight straight hours out of Tom Brady’s news, bringing in a wide variety of guests via conferencing software… FS1 were trying to find solutions to skim down their studio shows to continue broadcasting and as of today, The Herd with Colin Cowherd is back on the air with a smaller radio studio set-up and a new distribution platform — live streaming on Facebook and Twitter.

3) Remote Production: Sports producers and commentators can also ‘Work From Home’ and a number of sports rights owners and broadcasters have been investigating alternative technologies to pursue during this period. Organizations such as Spalk (remote commentary), Atrium Sports/Keemotion and PlaySight (remote cameras and production) and LIGR (graphics) all have ready made “plug and play” solutions for sports wanting to have productions with zero staff on-ground.

4) Esports and Gaming: Esports streamers are really filling the void for a lot of sports fans wanting to get their entertainment fix. Furthermore, many leagues and teams who have their IP in officially licensed games have turned to these to give their fans the content that they want — Most notably the Phoenix Suns and other NBA teams are playing out their season in NBA 2K20 on Twitch, making sure that their fans can still watch their team play for as long as the lockout lasts.

5) Archival rights: In a time where there’s limited live sport being played in the world, broadcasters and rights owners are turning to their archives to fill the content void. We’ve had a number of our partners reach out to us about repurposing old archival footage with new commentary — either highlights or full matches and hopefully we can share some of these with you soon. Examples of how Spalk could be used by broadcasters in this capacity are:

• Former and current athletes commentate over historical games in their careers. Give the fans unique insight into some of the greatest moments in sport
• See how how a current day commentator would have called a historic event
• Multilingual voiceovers on highlights packages
• Having fans share their voice commentate over some key moments, even to potentially get them to share those highlights/moments onto their social media accounts (where rights permit)

Keen to keep the discussion going so if there’s any other creative executions or pivots you’ve seen drop them below in the comments and if you want any more information about anything above, drop me a message.

Thanks and stay safe.