50 Sport Co-founders On The Agency’s Rebrand, Objectives For 2024, And More
Inside the engine room of one of the world’s largest sports properties, a new agency was forged.
Back in 2015, when James Campbell and Nick Jackman worked at the Mercedes Formula 1 team, the duo conceived the idea of founding their own agency, then named Fifty Digital.
At that time, Campbell served as Head of Digital, with Jackman on-board in Partner Services, when the two noticed a shift among team partners from hospitality and event-driven activations towards more social and digital-led campaigns.
Having identified a “gap in the market”, they subsequently decided to leave Mercedes to establish their own agency that would speclialise in social and digital content and would be able to collaborate with both sponsors and rightsholders, sitting “perfectly between the two”.
Since its launch, 50 Sport has gone on to work with the likes of FIFA, Ferrari, the FA, NBA, England Football, EPCR and a host of brand accounts such as DHL, Celsius and Qatar Airways. In recent years, the company has led social and content production for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, and the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup in Qatar.
Last July, the social and digital content specialists underwent a rebrand to 50 Sport, and moved into a brand new, custom-built central London office in Blackfriars.
Both Co-Founders hail Mercedes’ “high performance element” as the bedrock of 50 Sport. The team’s high standards, fixation on marginal gains and competitive spirit are all deeply embedded in the agency’s culture and identity.
Testament to the quality of work 50 Sport has been delivering, the London-based company has made the shortlist for this year’s Agency of the Year at the FEVO Sport Industry Awards, which returns on Thursday 25th April.
But despite making significant progress over the last year – the agency’s foot continues to press down on the throttle, as it eyes further expansion – both across the UK and internationally.
To get a better sense of 50 Sport’s journey so far, the positive impact of its rebrand, and strategy going forward, Sport Industry Group caught up with both Campbell and Jackman at the company’s new office in Blackfriars.
Back in July, your company rebranded from Fifty Digital to 50 Sport, and moved into your new office space, in which we are sitting today. How have the first nine months been since then?
Campbell:
When we first set up in early 2016, ‘digital’ was the buzzword of the day. It encompassed everything from social through to web and app.
When we were called Fifty Digital, there was confusion [over what sort of agency it was] and what our ‘services’ were as the definition of ‘digital’ is broad.
We wanted to change to incorporate more services and be defined by our sector. So we said – ‘We’re a sport agency, so let’s define ourselves like that.’
So, in that aspect it’s worked really well. It actually helps clarify what we do, so the response has been great. The branding has added clarity, promotes our bolder ambition and empowers our purpose which went down extremely well.
The office move has been great, the facilities here, as you can see, are a step ahead of where we were before. Moving into this space, we knew the exact model that we wanted to create, and everybody has responded brilliantly to that. And just having things like tiered seating where you can do big presentations, collaboration areas, on-site gym/showers, editing suites, dedicated client areas – bits and pieces like that take everything to the next level, and just make everything easier with collaborating.
What are some of your favourite projects that you have been working on since starting the agency?
Jackman:
I think the big one was leading the FIFA Women’s World Cup content and social media channels. We had a team go out there to Australia and New Zealand and being at all the games, producing all the content and editorial work for FIFA across social, which was amazing. It was the most successful women’s sporting event ever in terms of social and digital reach, so we were very happy to play a part in that both on the ground and back at base.
Another big partner of ours is England Football, so we always champion football from the grassroots to the elite. We created a campaign called ‘Ella – a Modern Day Fairytale’, which was a very exciting piece of content about a modern re-telling of Disney’s Cinderella story, narrated by Alex Scott and featuring Leah Williamson. It tells the story of Ella, a primary school girl who follows her passion to play football, overcoming barriers along the way including a lost boot. This ended up being on TV, printed and distributed in Disney stores, talked about in schools etc. So, they were two of the biggest highlights that we were excited about.
Campbell:
Our work in Formula 1 is always a proud moment for us, because we used to work in the sport. As an agency we’re now working across the most followed account in F1 and continue to expand into other areas of interest in the space such as gaming, which is increasingly becoming a huge part of our portfolio across a number of clients.
We feel really lucky that a lot of the work that we do is public facing. We produce output for social and native channels, and therefore you get eyeballs on it straight away, and you get instant feedback on it, so you often know from that feedback, in some form of engagement metrics, as to whether it’s good or not.
That’s hugely rewarding, and we feel really privileged to have the keys to these social accounts that are reaching hundreds of millions of people.
As an agency, how do you try to set yourselves apart from your competitors?
Jackman:
One of our key strengths is that we work on both the brand side – the sponsors of rightsholders - and the rightsholder’s and governing body side.
We sit in a sweet spot where we can activate brands like our Qatar Airways sponsorship, with all of their various properties that they sponsor – FIFA, Formula 1, Inter Milan.
We activate their properties on social and create content for them, but we can also work with the rightsholder, and run their social media channels and create amazing content.
The agency is split into two halves. On the rightsholder side, we have a large editorial team, who will create content, run social media channels and manage native platforms such as web and app for governing bodies or rightsholders in sport.
On the brand side we have the conceptual, creative and content ideation side, where they create amazing ideas and activate sponsorships through social and content for the likes of Qatar Airways, DHL and Celsius.
Campbell:
I think that’s what’s unique about us. Some of our competitors work in the rightsholder and governing body space only, and then we have some competitors that work on the brand side only. We sit perfectly between the two and the fact we’re working across both has benefits all round in an era increasingly focussed on ROI.
The other thing I would say is that we are a people-based business. We don’t sell tickets, merchandise or a particular product. We sell people’s time, people’s quality, people’s work. That is ultimately our differentiator is versus the others is the quality of our people. We’re very proud to have some of the best people in the industry at 50 Sport.
Our involvement in women’s sport is also a massive focus and passion for us. We want to be one of the drivers of that both in terms of women’s sport in general, but also women in sport. We pride ourselves on having an even gender split in the agency, and we want that to continue, alongside our senior management team.
You’ve been shortlisted for this year’s Agency of the Year at this year’s FEVO Sport Industry Awards. How does it feel to receive that recognition?
Jackman:
We’ve been going to the Sport Industry Awards for a long time, and I think it reaffirms all the great work we do as a business and as an agency across sport.
It’s a fantastic event, all your peers are there, all your clients are there. Sport Industry Group do a really great job in putting it together.
Campbell:
This is for the team more than ever before. We’ve won Young Agency of the Year before and placed on the podium for Agency of the Year but in terms of how everyone at the agency pulled together last year, coped with changes (agency rebrand and office move mentioned here), grew the client base, took on more new business than ever before, it’s a testament to them to get the recognition.
2023 was a challenging year for most agencies, we know that. It’s competitive in the industry, there’s talent everywhere in every sector, in every agency these days. The opportunities for growth are shared between lots of competitors, so there’s a huge amount of respect for everyone that was shortlisted, and whoever wins it will absolutely deserve it.
What are your main objectives for 2024 and beyond?
Jackman:
We want to continue working with governing bodies, rightsholders and brands. Working with like-minded partners that share our ambitions to grow the sport they’re working in and create fantastic work.
We’re well embedded within football, rugby and Formula One and we only see that expanding. Most of our team are huge fans of one, if not all of those sports.
We’d also love to get into other sports. We’re just entering into golf, which has been great so far with three new golf clients already in 2024. We’d love to delve deeper into tennis, and getting into different sports would be brilliant as well.
Campbell:
Continuing to develop our on-the-ground content production and activation capabilities. Every day, every week now, we’ve got producers, full-stack camera teams, social editors, and journalists at various events and activities, helping to produce world class content for our clients. We only see that growing.
We’re also increasingly expanding internationally. There’s a lot of world-wide coverage with our client base, and the way those clients are growing and developing, it won’t be long before we have more satellite offices based around the world. So that’s a big focus for us in 2024.
There are lots of big international events coming up this year. We’ve got the Euros, the Olympics, lots of big men’s and women’s events that we’ve already planning for, and cyclical events that are already happening in Football, Rugby and Formula One.
Stay up to date with the world of sports business by subscribing to the Sport Industry Daily.
