A LOOK AT BRANDED CONTENT FROM FOOTBALL CLUBS

By Fi McCrindle, Account Director

Branded content offers an opportunity to drive value for all parties involved. That includes the host of the branded content, the partner brand and the audience who will be served said content.

Why then, is there so much average branded content about?

It comes down to a few factors...

1) Having the right people in the room, early on. No one in your organisation better understands content, the channels it's posted on and the audience who engage with it than your social team. Their insight will be vital, so if you want to ensure your content works for all parties, conversation and good relations between your commercial and social teams are key.

2) Being fan-centric. Again, this is where your social team feed into the process. Using the data points available to you and being across what works and what doesn't on your channels will give you a far better chance at creating strong content made for your audience. Did it work last time? What were people saying in response? How did your engagement rate compare to competitors?

3) Naturally integrating the brand and, if appropriate, their products. A number of football clubs have some of their partner logos on the full-time or line-up graphics. Because these assets break news or mark a result, they will always drive conversation and engagement, guaranteeing a level of reach to the brand partner. It's worth asking, though, the true value of that reach. What's brand recall like? Does the news carried by the asset dominate to a degree that the partner is barely visible to your audience at all?

4) Ensuring partner content doesn't feel too far removed from your wider output. Equipped with the data and insight around content that works on your channels, it's worth asking whether there are ways that the brand can elevate something you know your audience enjoy engaging with even further?

So who's doing it well in the world of football?

A couple of bits I've liked from the past few months...

Liverpool x VistaPrint

I like this mini-series from Liverpool and VistaPrint.

If you think about what you would want from player-led content on the training ground, you'd hope for humour, personalities and stories. To hit these three things with branded content will see you far more likely to have a happy social team, a happy commercial team, a happy brand partner and an engaged audience on the other side of it all.

In terms of content distribution, they've got a longer-form piece on YouTube, three different cut downs living on Instagram Reels, which have been really effective, amassing 7.4m views in total and video content capturing funny moments signposting via X.

Arsenal x Google Pixel

Another nice, natural piece of branded content here from Arsenal and Google Pixel, where their Player of the Match photos are captured on a Pixel phone and shared with a small logo in the top corner. Mobile-shot, timely content off the back of a good result that showcases the functionality of the product fits in seamlessly with the rest of the club's matchday output and sees it perform just as well as any other photography on feed.

Chelsea x EA Sports

This piece of vertical video featuring three Chelsea players was everywhere earlier this year.

The main things that seem to resonate? Humour and personalities.

There's no way that the teams planning this content will have been able to foresee Joao Felix's difficulty in saying 'EA Sports' or how much it might make his teammates laugh, but keeping the cameras rolling makes for fun, engaging, social-first content where the main topic is the brand's name and slogan.

This video has had more than 76m views across YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram, driving huge value for the brand partner and entertaining Chelsea's audience at the same-time: win-win.

Done right, there should be no ceiling for branded content.

Ultimately, it comes down to creative ideation and having the right people in the room at the planning stage.

Fan-first, engaging content that is distributed effectively across your channels and adheres to social best practice will always drive better results. 

Other things to think about:

• Natural ways to integrate the brand and its products into your content

• Ensuring branded content doesn't feel a million miles away from your wider output

• Taking learnings from previous bits of content: branded and not

• What your fans and followers love to engage with - is there a way to take that to the next level or show that in a new light with the help of the brand?