The Premier League's Blueprint for College Sports Teams
The English Premier League's teams are years ahead of all other clubs on YouTube
A lot of emphasis has been put on college athletes when it comes to the NIL ruling that allows them to make money off their name, image and likeness, but almost no one is talking about what it means for teams.
While athletes & leagues have dominated digital by turning into influencers & highlight factories, teams have struggled to find their place in the ecosystem. They don’t have unfettered rights to game highlights or round the clock access to their star players, so where exactly do they fit in?
Over the past 10 years, the English Premier League has answered this question by building something special on YouTube. Almost every team has fully committed to the platform and is reaping the benefits of their hard work.
Here’s a look at the performance of EPL teams vs. teams from other leagues over the past two years…
They are whooping the competition’s ass and have generated 700M+ more views than these other leagues combined with just 15% of the total videos.
Obviously the teams in England are doing something the rest of the world can learn from. Having analyzed their video content against other leagues, my belief is that the Premier League does two things much better than any other league.
1. Teams are given access to upload premium league content, including Game Highlights and Best of (Player) mashups.
At nearly half of 3.3B views, the game highlights uploaded by EPL teams have amassed more views than all content from any other league.
While the Premier League retains the rights to these highlights and generates revenue on the ads placed on them, they allow the teams to use them to grow their audience with the type of content their fans love most.
Other leagues limit access to this content. Game highlights uploaded by teams in the other leagues make up, at most, 28% of the total views.
2. Teams create Fun & Games content that takes advantage of popular YouTube formats.
Fun & Games content is lighthearted with a humorous twist, like having current players react to their FIFA ratings, provide color commentary on their performances, or quiz each other with a “who’s most likely to” format.
Here’s a look at the most popular sub-categories that fall within the Fun & Games format, along with some examples…
*Note: in past years, F&G content and Challenge videos have made up a more significant portion of the views. The decrease is likely due to COVID and many of these videos being difficult to film under last year’s restrictions.
The unifying theme of all of these videos is that they show the fun side of players. Premier League fans get to know their favorite footballers in a way that makes them infinitely more relatable than pitch perfect performances and buttoned up media appearances.
While the Premier League teams have led the way with Fun & Games content, more teams from other professional leagues are starting to get in on the mix and are beginning to see similar success.
The key for college sports teams who choose to play in this space is to create Fun & Games content consistently and lean into shows and formats that work. For professional teams, this often means filming a lot of the Fun & Games content in a single sitting and releasing the videos throughout the year.
But colleges have a unique advantage.
Because most of their fans support the school and not any individual team, they have the opportunity to create a channel that combines sports and pairs athletes from different disciplines to create even more engaging content.
Imagine a women’s basketball player challenging the star of the football team in a game of one on one, a revival of The Dating Game where single athletes look to find their perfect match, or a cross-sport Call of Duty tournament to crown the University’s greatest gamer.
Many of these things are already happening on YouTube in some format…
Conclusion
Colleges have certain unique advantages that will allow their athletic channels to thrive if they focus on building out two key video categories: Game Highlights and Fun & Games content.
Channels looking to benefit from posting highlights should reference the Premier League’s strategy when negotiating with the NCAA and their conference for access to game footage.
Fun & Games content should be a focus of the channel and Universities should consider integrating their respective teams in the videos they’re creating.