The Big Interview: The Football Republic

Neil Smythe, head of sport at Shotglass Media, talks to sportindustry.biz about live broadcasting at The Football Republic and the ever-changing world of digital…

It’s been a busy few months for The Football Republic, what have you been up to?

In short…a lot! Digital projects like ours can’t stand still or they risk getting swept away by the tide of progress. The landscape is constantly shifting and evolving, with new players, platforms and tools joining the scene almost weekly and we need to remain agile enough to react.  

What started off less than three years ago as a single-club YouTube channel (FullTimeDEVILS) is now a multi-channel, multi-platform network; seven channels totaling almost 30 staff provide a daily conversation with our audience via YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Periscope, Snapchat and more. The last few months have seen us focus on the development of The Football Republic channel itself; it’s our flagship, club-agnostic channel, which is growing very quickly.

You recently did a live five hour broadcast for Transfer Deadline Day, what was that like?

We were 90% sure that Deadline Day would be anti-climactic in terms of key transfers so we thought we’d have some fun with it! All of our club channels provided key updates for their fans during the day but the centrepiece for us was The Football Republic’s live show, which we streamed on YouTube throughout the evening from our in-house studio.

Hosted by key talent from across our network and other friends from YouTube, the show invited fans from across the globe to join the conversation via Skype and we partnered with Squawka and Blurrt to offer relevant stats and social media analysis on the day’s big stories. During the evening we released a fun spoof where a supposed Italian sports journalist was jokingly attacked by an inflatable banana, which proved to be the hit of the day; it trended and went viral whilst we were on air. When we last checked, it has over 4 million views and has picked up over 27 million impressions on Twitter, which was incredible.  

In the UK there are a number of different footballing influencers, how are you working with them?

Since creating FullTimeDEVILS, we have worked closely with influencers, mainly on YouTube, not only because they help drive growth but also because we want to work with talented and interesting people in the space. When we identify people that we would like to work with, we look at both their talent and their audience; if they have both that’s perfect but we’re also happy to work with individuals whose work we like who may not yet have the scale. The likes of True Geordie and Spencer FC have regular strands on The Football Republic’s channel because they’re engaging voices with significant audiences, but we also work with the Cheeky Sport boys because they’re fresh, talented and have a big future.  

As The Football Republic grows itself as an influencer, we have begun working with more established content publishers and producers, recently collaborating with Squawka, The Sun, Soccer AM and ESPN. Aside from talent-based collaborations, we have developed good relationships with other key influencers across Facebook and Twitter, with whom we occasionally work with to amplify our content. Whether you’re a publisher or a brand, it’s vital to identify key influencers and to know their ability to drive traffic on specific platforms; 1 million Twitter followers does not guarantee a YouTube success. At The Football Republic, we’re building audiences across multiple platforms; where we can offer brands multiple touch points where we can engage our and their audiences.

What would you say is the biggest challenge working in this newly created digital environment?

The need to keep on top of a very fast-moving landscape. We know that young football fans are now consuming content in different ways, across multiple platforms and we must remain agile to serve them, but in an ideal world we would be producing content which is perfectly optimised, native to each platform, every day. We’ll get there, but it takes time to find the sweet spot on each platform, especially when they’re constantly evolving. 

How are you going to be working with brands during the upcoming UEFA European Championships?

We know how we want to tackle the tournament and we will obviously cover it pretty thoroughly irrespective of commercial partners; it’s the first big tournament we’ve covered since building the network so it’s exciting for us.  

We are looking to work with key partners who share our passion for engaging the modern football fan, and we’re having some very interesting conversations, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Where do you see your network going in the future?

In 2015 we focused on launching new channels and growing the network; 2016 should see us consolidating the channels we have and working with key partners to grow our influence in the community. In terms of editorial, we are currently developing an exciting broadcast format and also new strands targeting specific platforms in addition to developing our owned and operated platform, which will give us more flexibility in terms of content we can produce. 

What makes The Football Republic different?

We differ from traditional sports broadcasters in obvious ways; I’ve always said to our team that if we try to replicate them we will struggle to make an impact; they cover the live game exceptionally well and they have incredible assets and talent at their disposal. At The Football Republic, we cover the conversation around the game from the fans’ point of view because we don’t have regular access to rights or players and because our talent haven’t played the game professionally, they can’t compete with the likes of Gary Neville or Jamie Carragher’s analysis. We talk from the heart – we call it fanalysis – which I believe results in very authentic content. We say that we don’t break the news, we react to it.

In terms of how we differ from our more direct competitors in the original digital content space (some of whom do an excellent job in my opinion and we do work with some of them), I think that we are more focused on this idea of daily conversation across multiple platforms than others. We are also keen to develop a breadth of video content strands across each channel, the aim being to create strong IP and talent combinations which are the hallmark of some of Fremantle’s biggest success stories.