Summary
- Breaking Down FIFA and YouTube’s Creator Cup: On 12 July, YouTube staged the first-ever FIFA Creator Cup at Wollman Rink in Central Park, captained by iShowSpeed. 6.2 million live viewers. Dove Men+Care and Lay’s as sponsors. A creator roster of 270M combined subscribers. Sits inside YouTube’s push for the 2030/2034 US World Cup rights.
- Is Netflix Trying to Become Instagram?: Netflix has signed a video-licensing deal with Variety, Penske Media, BuzzFeed Studios, Condé Nast, Hearst, People Inc. and Tastemade. Short-form lifestyle and culture video from 3 August, clips ranging 2 to 20+ minutes. Follows The Rest Is Football’s £14M World Cup success. The platform famous for dropping licensed content is now licensing web-native video it didn’t make.
- Como’s AI Hackathon With Google DeepMind: Como 1907, Como Ventures and Google DeepMind announced “Data on the Lake” on 6 July. Two-day AI hackathon in Como (24-25 July), invitation-only. Como is opening proprietary match data to tech and AI builders. Judging panel includes Como’s data science, football, commercial and technology teams alongside DeepMind. Positions Como as a platform, not just a club.
- How MLB Just Cracked India via Cricket: MLB signed Indian cricket star Suryakumar Yadav (SKY) as league ambassador, alongside a completed JioStar rights renewal to air MLB in India. Activation started at the All-Star Game in Philadelphia. Follows a decade of failed India strategies. This time the play flipped: borrow cricket’s biggest star to sell baseball as it already is.
- Chelsea Copies PSG’s Run Club Playbook: Chelsea has become the first Premier League and Women’s Super League club to launch an official Strava presence — running challenges, training content, community events, tied to both men’s and women’s teams. Follows PSG Running (Mo Farah ambassador, We Run Paris 10K, London run clubs, Nike partnership). Andy called this trend on The Athlete’s Voice.
- Every Story This Week Is a Partnership: Como opened its data to Google DeepMind, FIFA and YouTube activated iShowSpeed for the Creator Cup, MLB borrowed cricket’s biggest star to reach India, Netflix licensed short-form video from publishers, and Chelsea copied PSG’s Strava playbook.
Shownotes
Transcription
Ed (00:12.121)
Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of the Attention Shift podcast. As ever, I’m joined by Andy Marston. Andy, good to see you again.
Andy Marston (00:18.872)
Yeah, good to see you. It was lovely to have you down in Dagenham on Friday.
Ed (00:23.523)
No, it was great. It was great to be there as well. Really good mix of people. It was great to see obviously what’s going on in the non league world, which I’m not always exposed to. So it’s to hear from John what Dagenham and Redbridge are doing, also what Farnham Town are doing as well. And you can see some real innovation going in there. And obviously they are mind to try and move up the pyramid, but it just goes to show what’s going on at grassroots level as well.
Andy Marston (00:43.822)
Yeah, it was fun to hear the different perspectives because people generally only hear from the top of the top. So yeah, getting a perspective of clubs that maybe don’t have the resource to do everything and have to be more selective in the way that they approach things was definitely a good perspective to get.
Ed (01:03.383)
Absolutely. Which is a nice segue, actually. So our first story, let’s get straight into it. So, Como, who obviously you’re aware of, Como Ventures and Google Neatmound have announced data on the lake on the 6th of July, a two day invitation. Sorry, it was announced on the 6th of July. It’s on the 24th, 25th of July. So you get that right. I knew you were looking at me then. An invitation only AI hackathon. Obviously, you know quite a bit about this. And this is building directly on Como Ventures, a startup and investment platform.
that Como launched with the Players Fund, represented by yourself, back in September 2025. It’s giving early stage companies a route to pilot and scale. Tell me a bit more about this, Andy, and what’s the mindset behind this? Obviously, you’ve been working on this for a little while now, and obviously people will have been seeing various bits, but it’s interesting how obviously Google DeepMind getting involved with this well now.
Andy Marston (01:53.708)
Yeah, so I think the broader context is like, Como see themselves as a much wider platform than just a football club. So Ryan Shelton, who just moved from, I think, Chief Revenue Officer of Como 1907 to be Chief Commercial Officer of Scent Entertainment, which is the ownership entity. He shared a really good graphic, which maybe I can share with you and you can put in the show notes, which basically showed all of the different business interests of Scent Entertainment.
So they’ve got like scent tourism, scent travel. They’ve also got Como Ventures, which we launched together in September. But essentially they want to be seen as like this broader entity and like Merwan, the president has talked about trying to create like Disneyland for adults and like using football as kind of like the flywheel that keeps people kind of engaged. then how do you kind of own and operate a lot of the other areas to the business? And I think.
You know, obviously, Como Ventures is the domain that we’re most focused in, but then where we can help support the club in a more broad capacity. and particularly when it helps then kind of like broaden the appeal of the club to potential founders, given that we’re, we’re focused on helping them get equity in companies that aren’t necessarily just sports tech. I think like being able to bring a partner like Google DeepMind to the table for this event kind of emphasizes the
the impact and the reach that Como can create and the connections that we can, that we can develop together and kind of like add value. So a lot of the portfolio companies that are either already in or that we’re hoping to bring in to Como Ventures in the future were like the first people that got, they got the invite. So it’s just kind of like another way to kind of add additional value for those companies.
Ed (03:45.008)
Yeah, it’s interesting what I get, just look, if we’re looking at Como in general, at what Como’s done in Syria. And look, Syria, the reality is, I think it’s fair to say that Syria in general is not on an upward curve, obviously. It feels like they’re a little bit like, how do they stand out in a world, obviously, where the Premier League’s up here, and then they’re in sort of a similar level to the Bundesliga’s and Liga. And so for Como to do what they’ve done, they’ve created…
in a relatively short space of time really almost this aspirational brand, not just for the Hollywood film stars who want to be there in and around the Como experience, but ultimately how people are looking at Como. I I love a lot of the drops of merch that they do and they’ve been delving back into their history and some of the stuff they’re doing is truly beautiful. They are ticking all the boxes in all the right areas to be more than a football club.
Andy Marston (04:37.558)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I guess they kind of are almost benefiting from the fact that they don’t have a legacy fan base and they don’t have and they don’t have kind of like and they don’t have a history of being in Serie A, right? They came up from Serie A like not that long ago. This is only their second full season in Serie A and they just qualify for the Champions League. So they’ve essentially like rewritten everything from from scratch and
Ed (04:49.453)
No one can complain, essentially.
Ed (04:54.893)
Yes.
Andy Marston (05:06.68)
They’ve also not got used to big media broadcast payments. So like when you speak to them, they’re constantly looking at how do we diversify revenue streams? How do we find new ways to kind of add revenue? And so like, I think there’s a lot to learn for clubs that maybe don’t have.
broadcast rights or don’t have like traditional revenues in the same capacity to look at what Como have done and say like, okay, could we develop a corporate venture program? Could we develop a travel business that attaches to our main business? Could we incorporate these other areas, right? Like they have a joint venture with an agency in Saudi that…
that then serves the commercial interests of a lot of the Saudi Pro League teams. So they’re doing all these different things and I think there’s a lot to definitely learn from them. And I think the work that Mo and Ryan and Mo in particular, as the three that we kind of have, that I at least have the most visibility into, I’m sure it applies across the board to the rest of the team too, but they’re super innovative and yeah, it’s really exciting that we’re kind of branching out where we’re able to add value.
Ed (06:14.415)
And it feels like with Como Ventures, well, and we’ve had Joe Dawkins on before from Burnley Football Club, who has a similar mindset that doesn’t want these kind of innovation hubs or ventures to be just isolated stunts, which is, know, there’s so many of these, these accelerators, they’ve got lots of names, right, that end up, you do it, you go through the process and you come at the end of it and you think to yourself, what did I actually get out of this? And it feels like, like, obviously the work that you’re doing and they’re doing is…
about actually, no, it needs to be things that are complementary and that there’s a value exchange, right, that everyone has to feel like they’re getting true value out of it.
Andy Marston (06:48.588)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s definitely the challenge, right? So like we’ll often pitch ourselves as kind of like a translator between sports rights holders and founders of startups, because they’re not necessarily great at identifying or communicating with each other or identifying kind of where they can add the most value to each other. Because sports organizations just aren’t used to having to provide value to an early stage business. They’re not used to the, maybe the pace of change and the iteration of product development that maybe happens within a startup that doesn’t happen within like a
maybe a bigger, more established enterprise that they might be working with. So I think having us in the middle kind of allows for that communication to make sure that value creation is happening both ways. And yeah, I think the other part to it is like just having someone that’s like always on and always thinking about innovation and kind of like integration of the venture partners allows for kind of.
that to happen because if you like a lot of programs that happen with an accelerator, it’s like a 10 week sprint, right? It’s announced that we’re going to be an innovation program, then get loads of companies to apply. Then you as the host of the accelerator, then pick a winner. Then you just hand off this startup to a sports organization that doesn’t really know how to use it and go, congratulations. This was the winner. Like now go integrate this into your tech stack. Like there’s an example.
Ed (07:49.497)
Yes.
Ed (08:07.503)
And then no one in the organisation has any clue what to do with it because they were never part of the process. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I’ve been there. I’ve been there.
Andy Marston (08:10.102)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like you need to be embedded. You need to be embedded like directly inside the rights holder. it, we have weekly meetings with, with commos execs to understand what their challenges are, where we can integrate stuff. So you’re not bringing stuff in that’s just going to sit on a shelf, or not get used.
Ed (08:17.123)
Absolutely.
Ed (08:31.629)
No, it’s fascinating. I’m looking forward to seeing more. I seem to just keep seeing things regularly pop up from a comode perspective and it’s a fascinating story. So I’m certainly going to keep an eye it as well because obviously I am detached from it, but it’s just fascinating to see them doing that in Syria. Anyway, on to the next story. So YouTube did a football match in Central Park this week and it obviously wasn’t related to any rights. So iShowSpeed, who’s been very much one of the faces of YouTube’s activation of the World Cup in FIFA.
They played a game in the Woolman Rink, which obviously it’s this time of year that it’s not ice in Central Park. And you’re lucky it an exhibition match, captured by iShow Speed with some other creators as well. Dove Mencare and Lays were live stream partners, so it was very much commercialised. And it featured a roster of a combined 270 million subscribers across all the different creators’ channels. So early evidence suggests that six million people watched it live.
on Saturday itself, so it was getting serious numbers. And I think it just goes to show that how you can link the physical activation around a major sporting event to the digital audience, which is already switched on to what’s going on in the World Cup and ultimately constantly looking for content and then coming across things like this.
Andy Marston (09:49.677)
Yeah, it’s interesting, right? I think, like, if you have an attachment, I guess, to the creators, then this is just like another way to kind of see their personalities or associate. But I guess from a FIFA perspective, your concern would be that he’s able to capture so much attention without having to do anything directly with you. Yeah.
Ed (10:13.103)
with no rights, absolutely, yeah. No, and I think that’s, we’ve seen that, we covered this a little bit on the pods over last couple of weeks, that, you know, and I wrote a post about this as well, like this has been the, you know, the World Cup of watch-alongs. It’s not just watch-alongs, right, it’s, but the point is conversational, personality, lifestyle-led, live streaming of videos where you literally don’t need any rights to be able to do it. It feels like a lot of…
A lot of content creators, podcasters, whatever you want to call them, have realized that actually with an opinion around what’s going on, they can actually attract this audience. Because the audience is there, I’m just looking for content all the time.
Andy Marston (10:52.096)
Yeah, I guess it’s just like a insatiable appetite for content, right? So you can just, if there’s stuff on, like people just want to be able to constantly consume. And then I’m sure he’ll be able to clip a lot of the content as well and highlights will be getting shared. And I guess it’s a good time in the kind of calendar of the World Cup to do an exhibition match because…
you’re at like a low enough quantity of matches now that people have maybe got the capacity to also consume a creator stream. Whereas if you tried to do this during the group stages, maybe there’s like too much football.
Ed (11:24.249)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re in the, yeah, you’re right. You’re in that window now where, cause I don’t know about you, but I’m the same, well, no games now till whatever day. Like what do you do to fill the time in between? It’s always when you, yes, you get into the real business end of the tournament, but actually you find yourself then with days where there’s not a lot going on and you are looking for other content. So to then to slot these things in, in those kind of windows does make sense.
Andy Marston (11:31.532)
Yeah.
Andy Marston (11:47.01)
Yeah, because I guess was yesterday. Yesterday there was no game on, right?
Ed (11:51.721)
Yes, there was no game on that’s right. Yeah
Andy Marston (11:53.719)
So he’s basically picked a day just after two of the quarterfinals where people are like, well, it’s a weekend and I still want to watch football, but there’s nothing to watch.
Ed (12:02.061)
Yeah, yeah. And also a great, great place to do it as well, like, you know, Central Park as well. Wimbledon have done something similar there as well. Yeah.
Andy Marston (12:08.43)
Yeah, yeah. Same location, like a couple of weeks ago. it’s, yeah, it’s interesting programming from them, like from that perspective as well. But, but I would be curious how you could maybe like as a rights holder, how you could learn from it in terms of like, could you create a creator world cup and have it running kind of like simultaneously to
Ed (12:26.447)
Yeah, in parallel, in the windows where there’s no games going on, but there’s other stuff going on. And link it back. Yeah, look, there’s ways and means. I can get some kind of crossover where you potentially you’re bringing some people, you know, who are professionals into the creator stuff, whether that’s as pundits or involved. I mean, look, it’s in a lot of ways, it’s what’s been going on with Baller League and that way you’re bringing a few people in. But having it going on, like you say, to capitalise on what’s going on at that time, there’s definitely then…
Andy Marston (12:30.552)
Yeah.
Ed (12:50.659)
I mean, my mind’s worried on that now, more inventory, there’s more stuff you can do from a commercial perspective just to expand and reach an audience that you might not be reaching through your normal means.
Andy Marston (12:55.265)
Yeah.
Andy Marston (13:00.246)
Yeah, he’s the president of Baller League USA, right? But this wasn’t a Baller League event. This was just a content creator event. Because that feels like an opportunity, right? Like if, if FIFA aren’t going to do it, like as Baller League, like could you create or put your programming in kind of like interlinked with the World Cup? Like do your own, I know like Kings League did a World Cup, didn’t they? I think.
Ed (13:03.405)
Yes.
Ed (13:07.609)
Don’t think so, yeah, yeah, don’t think so.
Ed (13:21.923)
Yes, yeah they do, yeah.
Andy Marston (13:23.926)
almost like timing at the same time. I don’t know, it kind of goes, I guess, one or two ways. One way is like no one cares because they’re too busy focused on the main thing, or there’s just like an insatiable appetite for football content. So actually it’s the perfect time to do it.
Ed (13:37.444)
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s interesting. Right, next story. So MLB, and you know way more about this than I do, so I’m glad we had a pre-chat. MLB just signed a cricket superstar as a league ambassador because baseball’s trying to crack India, right? But they clearly think that cricket is a way to be able to do this. So they announced on Wednesday they signed an Indian cricket star. I’m going to say Sky’s his nickname because I can’t actually pronounce his real name, but you might be able to get that one right.
and he’s become the league ambassador and this is alongside a completed right when you’re with Indian broadcasters. So Geostar are going to select regular season games, the All-Star game, post-season and World Series in India. He started doing activations this weekend around the All-Star game in Philadelphia and there’s going to be various fan engagement initiatives and original content event appearances. But we were saying off camera earlier, it’s interesting that MLB are clearly leaning into cricket as a way to expand their…
reach certainly in India, right? If not more.
Andy Marston (14:35.658)
Yeah, yeah. It’s a, there’s a similar strategy also happening in Europe as well. or in like the cricket playing countries at least. So the UK, for example, Harry Brook, who’s the England captain in 2020 and one day and potentially test. We’ll see, I guess who gets appointed as the test captain, but he has, he’s had a partnership in the past with MLB where the MLB logo was on his bat. he’s done like some content kind of overlap.
overlapping content where he’s done like baseball challenges with the MLB when they’ve played their MLB Europe games in London. I think Josh Butler as well has been involved in some of those kind of like content collabs where they do like essentially like hitting challenges, right? Like it’s a cricketer trying to hit a baseball with a baseball bat, and then it’s a baseball player trying to hit a cricket ball with a cricket bat. Cause it’s quite a different…
Well, there’s obviously a lot of similarities, but also it’s quite a different mechanism in terms of like the way that you maybe set yourself up like the stance wise.
Ed (15:35.391)
Some would argue some of cricket’s gone down that road now and becoming more like baseball anyway the way they’re taking some of the shots on. Yeah.
Andy Marston (15:38.785)
Yeah, well someone like a Harry Brook who plays a lot of like T20 and one day cricket is probably more suited to that. But I think he’s a big baseball fan as well. But it cuts both ways, right? Like I think it’s kind of interesting because obviously MLB is doing all this work to try and reach the cricket audience. But at the same time, it’s probably working the other way as well. So like it’s probably then helping cricket to become more popular in the US.
So like cricket’s kind of winning from this as well in terms of like just getting exposure to the North America market, which is a really important market to them. So it’s quite an interesting trade-off because it’s not, it’s not like a completely one-way dynamic. If, if you grow the game of baseball in India, you probably also grow in the game of cricket in the U S.
Ed (16:19.791)
Yeah, and a lot of MLB, know, Major League Cricket is going on at the moment and I must admit I’ve not seen any of it yet myself. But it’s clearly getting some kind of traction and you’d imagine there’s going to be some kind of halo effect that comes from doing this as well. And look, like I said, it’s interesting that, and I mentioned this off camera and know, John Boy Media are not involved as far as we’re aware, but MLB did take an investment in John Boy Media and John Boy Media have been doing lots of cricket orientated watch alongs.
even just US specific using some of their baseball creators to do it as well. So you can see that there’s a theme running through a lot of this. So and it does make sense because like I guess our sports both are very stats heavy. I’ve obviously have similarities in terms of how the games played. So you can see obvious crossovers.
Andy Marston (17:07.458)
Yeah, yeah, both summer sports, very statistic heavy, both basically individual sports played as a team. There’s a lot of overlapping. There’s definitely a lot of overlapping interests. So I can completely understand the strategy and having someone like Surya Kumoyarov, there you go, or Sky, if you want to call him that, involved, I think will definitely help raise the profile. Another interesting like…
One that I remember from a while back doing research on sponsorship back when I was at CSM was Rohit Sharma, think, had a sponsorship deal with La Liga to where he had La Liga on his back as a way to kind of like promote it. So you have seen a couple of like sports leagues doing crossovers just cause India just drives such massive numbers. And if you get involved with any of the cricketers, like they’re able to just drive so much interest and attention.
Ed (17:59.536)
Yeah, you’re right, everyone’s always trying to sort of crack that nut as it were in terms of how do we get the Indian audience to cross over. I’m not sure anyone has massively done it as yet, but it’d be interesting to see, watch how more of these things manifest themselves over the coming years as well. Okay, next story. So Netflix, the socialization of Netflix continues even more. Obviously we know that they have been doing the rest is football all summer, but they’ve just started licensing Variety’s clip content.
Clearly the Rest is Football model has worked for them to have that kind of podcast content essentially sitting on Netflix throughout the summer. So they signed a video lighting deal with a group of top publishers, including Variety, Pence, Comedia, Buzzfeed Studios, Condona, Hearst. The list is endless to carry short form lifestyle and culture video from the 3rd of August with clips ranging from two to 20 plus minutes.
So it’s interesting that they feels like, and we talked about this again a little bit earlier, it feels like they’re trying to get to that point of almost like the doom scrolling, I’m gonna watch a video and then another one or two plays, another one or two plays. They’ve seen the value of having this regular shorter form content appear on the platform. So I from chatting to Tony from Netflix as well, they feel like they have been part of the, certainly in the UK, the…
World Cup conversation by having that every day in a way that they wouldn’t have been if they’d not done it
Andy Marston (19:24.716)
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s really interesting to see like, but Netflix basically trying to become Instagram and Instagram trying to become Netflix. Cause Instagram have announced that they’re launching an Instagram TV app basically to kind of show longer form stuff. So everyone’s trying to be everything. I guess where, I guess where this kind of has maybe slight distinction is sounds like Netflix are limiting it to like specific publishers. So maybe there’s a bit more curation around what
appears on the platform versus Instagram or YouTube shorts where it’s a bit of a free for all.
Ed (19:58.064)
Feels a little bit almost like hosting fast channels on their own channel though, doesn’t it? Like the way they’re doing that. I’d be interested to how they put that together. I mean, then they’re gonna have a, you know, like I said, a variety channel within Netflix, so ultimately like you would do if you go on your set top box and you you press on the channel that you wanna watch. Is it gonna be like that or is it gonna be more linked to other types of content that it knows that, you’re interested in this, you must be interested in this.
Andy Marston (20:15.726)
Yeah.
Andy Marston (20:21.59)
Yeah, because I’d be curious what the consumer behavior looks like, because obviously like doing scrolling is a thing, but it’s like a thing on a phone. I don’t know whether people do that also on their TVs. Maybe they do. Maybe people have YouTube on and just like, we’ll just let it play next video, next video, next video. Maybe they do. And Netflix kind of does do that. Like think if you end a series, it will just like basically just be like loading now and then it will…
Ed (20:34.211)
I must admit, well I must, yeah I don’t. Yeah, yeah.
Ed (20:45.113)
Yes, well, yeah.
Andy Marston (20:47.468)
give you 10 seconds to exit, but it will just try and basically get you to keep watching something. So it’s not completely like, it’s not completely like unnatural for them to try it, but, but I do wonder, like, I can’t imagine myself sitting there with a remote clicking on two minute videos and then clicking off and then clicking on another two minute video.
Ed (21:07.247)
I think it’s a different leaning experience, Netflix. But hey, look, could be totally wrong. But you can see what they’re trying to They’re trying to bring an audience that’s more used to those short form clips into that environment. And I guess they’re imagining if they can get them in for that, they can get them over to some of the longer form stuff. And I think that’s what they viewed Rest is Football as well, is it’s brought people in to watch that. But then when they’re in there, they’ve then, it’s not that people forget about Netflix. But it’s reminding, yeah, we’re still here too. I know the World Cup’s going on, but you know, don’t forget about us.
Andy Marston (21:32.249)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, quite a of those, those publishers are media focused, right? So you can imagine like, if there were clips from variety where it’s like someone chatting on a podcast about how much they love the new game of Thrones, or maybe that’s not a good example, it’s not a Netflix show, but like the new squid game or whatever it is. and then it’s like, almost like suggesting to you, like you can now go, now go watch squid game or go watch this other thing that relates to it, right? Like you’re listening to
rest is football, now go watch the Vardy documentary that they just mentioned, like kind of thing. Maybe there’s a way to link it in and kind of promote the shows and like have like short form content that’s like almost like promoting what to watch.
Ed (22:15.939)
Yeah, yeah, it could be, could be. Right then, where are we for time? Right, last story then. So Chelsea, I’m going to say this, I’ve just copied PSG’s running club playbook. So interestingly, a couple of months ago, we covered the fact that PSG had started to run clubbing Mo Farah. Look, I personally loved it. I think you covered it as well, didn’t you, Andy? I love the idea of bringing people together through shared interests, whether that is your football club or running.
So now Chelsea have become the first Premier League and Women’s League club to launch an official Strava presence. So they’re giving supporters running challenges, training content, community events, tied to both the men’s and the women’s teams. So good that they thought about both. They’re looking still for a shirt sponsor, but they’re looking at other innovative ways to try and do commercial partnerships. I hadn’t imagined there’s a commercial partnership if they’re doing this with Strava. So it’s interesting that they’ve lent into this. And I think I said this when I looked at their PSG thing.
I’m amazed that more sports clubs have not been doing things like this as well, because running is the easiest thing ever, and the reality is you’re probably going to want to go for a run with people with shared interests and not.
Andy Marston (23:20.738)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, where it’s different, I guess, is it’s a bit less structured than the PSG example. Like the PSG one, I think they’re like, maybe setting up slightly more of a physical presence and there’s slightly more of like an events strategy to it. versus this, which I guess if you’re creating Strava challenges can kind of be an always on presence where it’s like, if you’re a fan of Chelsea, you basically just joined the Strava club.
Ed (23:26.329)
Yeah.
Ed (23:41.251)
Whenever you want. Yeah.
Andy Marston (23:46.927)
or the Strava Chelsea club or whatever, and suddenly you’re like on leaderboards or you’re, you know, looking at the challenges and stuff. So I’m curious whether there is a, like an official kind of commercial partnership or whether they’re almost viewing it like joining a social platform the same way that joining, you know, Twitter or Instagram, you don’t necessarily have a commercial agreement. You’re just seeing it as like a new way to, to amplify yourself on that platform. So yeah, I would, I would love to, if anyone.
Ed (24:03.737)
Yeah, true.
Andy Marston (24:12.77)
has further details, I’d love to know if there is a commercial element to it. But I would imagine that there’s a lot of commercial upside to be had, even if there isn’t, just on the basis that you’re driving a new way for fans to interact with you. You’re promoting physical activity, obviously there’s a lot of running involved in football. There’s ways to get the players involved in challenges. I remember chatting about this, I think, on the pitch with Drew before. Imagine if you set a 5K challenge and…
you could basically compare yourself to the players. like, okay, Cole Palmer can run 5K in, I don’t know, 15 minutes. Like, can you beat that? Probably not, but you you can give it a try and you can kind of see where you rank against certain players. Could be kind of fun as a way to kind of make the players a bit more relatable and the fact that they’ve got the women’s players as well, like kind of allows that narrative as well.
Ed (25:05.903)
Yeah, it is a good way to do it. Interestingly, PSA, squash, they have something similar called squash levels where if you play squash, you basically have a world ranking. You compare yourself to the pro players where they sit in the world ranking. Now, that’s difficult to do a ranking in football in a similar kind of way. But if you do a leveler of running within football, like I said, you can create this almost like this league system where you can compare your fitness levels to…
I guess your heroes at a club and from a club perspective. So yeah, I think that’d be a nice way of doing that. And like I say, it then connects it a little bit. If you can get the players in there from time to time as well, where they are engaged and in commons on some people, know, the outliers, people are doing well for whatever reason have improved massively. There’s lots of little ways that you can look at the data and you know what these people are worth engaged with for these reasons, you know, like I know is the fastest, but best improvements, things like that. There’s a nice way of linking it to engagement, which is not as.
football specific which can often then be very argumentative.
Andy Marston (26:06.284)
Yeah, I think it can, I think it can drive fan engagement from that perspective. I think it also, it helps the brand kind of appear as more of just a lifestyle and sports brand rather than like a pure football brand, which I think particularly on the kind of like new fandom and female fandom side will allow maybe the club to kind of access a broader demographic than maybe the core, the core football fans, right? Cause I would be surprised if the
If the apparel partners, which I think for both PSG and Chelsea as Nike, aren’t leveraging this as a way to kind of push maybe more running style apparel with a Chelsea logo or with like Chelsea style aesthetic or PSG style aesthetic to consumers where like actually maybe you don’t even care about the football club necessarily, but like you still want to buy the Chelsea run club top because you just think it looks cool.
Ed (26:41.231)
Knock you.
Andy Marston (27:05.422)
you just want to wear it when you’re running around London doing a park run or whatever it is.
Ed (27:11.343)
You’re right, it does feel like an untapped area that they could definitely lean into. Like I said, the fact that Nike are doing plenty in that space anyway, it doesn’t feel even like a stretch for them to start doing ranges around this as well.
Andy Marston (27:22.318)
Yeah, I know Adidas have launched a running collection with Aston Villa, so I’m sure we will see other clubs leaning into this.
Ed (27:32.217)
category extensions, there you go. Easy. Perfect. Thanks Andy. Enjoyed the chat. So that’s this week’s episode. So thank you for joining us on the Attention Shift podcast. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and if you want to feature as a guest, give us a question via our email to helloattentionshift.media. I’ve been Ed Abis and this has been Andy Marston. Thank you.
- Tags: Brands & Agencies, Creators, Media Networks, Sports
