Sam Bunce
Arsenal vs Manchester City on the first Sunday of February was when we saw Thierry Henry, Jamie Carragher, and Micah Richards join presenter David Jones on the panel for the Sky Sports coverage of the showdown between the reigning champions and the Premier League’s title chasers Arsenal.
This was all too familiar for much of the audience to the typical trio on the coverage of CBS, the channel that broadcasts the Champions League in the USA with Kate Scott as the presenter. It seemed a bold and revealing choice from those at Sky Sports.
Even though CBS Sports Golazo show is broadcasted in the United States, their emergence into virality and their takeover of social media on most Tuesday and Wednesday European football nights has positioned them into the spotlight of football media, and they have even engaged UK audiences.
Kate Scott confronted Sky Sports for not having “ideas of their own” in a joking manner earlier this week on Tuesday, but it really did seem that way. CBS is leading the way with what is now popular.
The mainstream for football broadcasting isn’t likely to make way any time soon as live sport is one of the key things keeping television afloat at the moment.
Sport is no doubt one of the surviving assets of traditional TV with its live nature and the exclusivity each broadcaster has when a football game is aired.
Yet, the competition for attention has never been so high between Sky Sports, TNT Sports, Amazon Prime, among others in the UK. To watch a football game you have to check and navigate to one of these many channels since football has been split across several competing organisations, also affecting the demanding schedules of various leagues.
These companies are fighting one another to keep themselves relevant, but more importantly mainstream intentions are being disrupted and supplanted by new types of football media.
CBS are the dark horses and they have recognised what they need to do. Their international appeal is awakening, and it hasn’t been achieved to this extent before.
There is a shift taking place towards authenticity, incorporating entertainment as something the audience begins to anticipate, and the importance of social media output.
The stress is placed on engaging the younger generations who will be the catalysts to how football media is configured, though the middle to older age groups still watch live sports in good numbers.
Football fans globally know what this football show from America is all about and the majority of professional football players seem to know what happens on each show when they are interviewed, despite not even tuning into the channel itself, but rather through viewing the clips online.
These clips aren’t always necessarily consistent to achieving virality, and they do have the advantage of having recognisable faces to rake in views, coincidentally two of them as Sky Sports regulars in Carragher and Richards.
But, they are most effective in ensuring the four main faces on the show are real and relatable rather than restricted and regimented.
CBS’ approach is not one of completely professionalised television. Even when Kate Scott chooses to read off the teleprompter for the opening of the show, the opening is something the audience is familiar with and looking forward to straight away, as she often ends by telling a teasing joke directed towards Micah Richards.
With Kate Scott’s multilingual and impressive presenting and interviewing skills, what she also does is ensure she follows the conversation and the playfulness often shown by the trio that sit to her left rather than distancing herself from it. She almost substitutes herself into one of their seats momentarily, multiple times throughout a show.
Speaking to The Athletic last year she highlighted, “The freedom to be off-script [is why it works], the freedom to be our authentic selves. We’re all very different personalities and bring different assets to the table. But I think as a whole, we all complete each other in some way.”
Crucially, it is the relationships that they have built working alongside each other whereby they can decode when a more serious outlook on something is required and when something more entertaining and different is about to happen. They all make sure equally to get on board with it in each segment, and compliment one another in a unique way.
She added, “Working in television, it’s such a source of frustration to me because so often you go into a show and have every single minute accounted for, knowing exactly what’s going to happen over the next hour.
In her work with CBS she said, “We go into segments knowing that we have an overall vision for each segment, but if we go totally off that vision, that’s OK.”
There always needs to be an element of structure to the conversations so that the show has stability and credibility, but allowing originality, spontaneity, and authenticity is where CBS differs, and ultimately stands out from the crowd.
Micah Richards also commented in the same series of interviews saying that the producers “allow us to do things that other companies probably wouldn’t allow.”
To some extent with all traditional channels, the presenter and pundits are restricted in terms of what they can and can’t say or do. This goes for the producers as well, whose decisions for how the show should be structured and presented should align with a set of rules.
Yet, CBS rarely makes this something to consider for the viewer and it feels like there are no restrictions. There are segments of informative analysis of players, teams and the football itself, but there is a freedom to say what they want whenever they want.
When Everton equalised against Liverpool on Wednesday night, one of the producers, who was an Everton fan, rushed onto the set to irritate Jamie Carragher. They then included this clip as part of the show and you could also hear the reactions of the producers to the answers of Henry, Carragher, and Richards when they were playing a game in another segment.
Watching this show, you know what you are going to get. There are elements that are part of every show like Scott’s introduction, player interviews which often alternate between asking serious and humorous questions, and recently ‘table time’, where they review the Champions League table with music and dancing.
But at the same time, you really don’t know what you are going to get each time you tune in or click on their YouTube videos, and this is where they have hit the jackpot.
There is familiarity combined with real authenticity, but like football itself, it is always changing. Something different happens every time and it keeps that flow of content on social media consistently successful.
All they need to do is continue with that formula, as the audience no longer sees it as a typical broadcaster, and that’s a good thing.
We are waiting for everyone else to catch up, the UK audiences are envious, and the UK media are capable. Sky Sports have shown glimpses, but can they overcome CBS and understand the revolution that is taking place and truly detach themselves from the mainstream dimensions of television?
The alternative football media is prevailing with AFTV (Arsenal Fan TV) and Mark Goldbridge’s That’s Football being the forerunners online in shaping football discourse and inducing more football engagement than ever before.
They have taken into account their specific audience and the overall behaviour of online audiences, and also allowed them to simply shape the content.
This podcasting and unregulated online content revolution from fan channels has caught the eye of the mainstream. Gary Neville’s The Overlap (Stick To Football podcast) and Gary Lineker’s The Rest Is Football podcast are just two examples.
It emphasises how the mainstream pundits see the opportunity and see that being authentic is the new way forward, where it is not only football that is talked about, but it is so much more.
If you simply stick to the nitty-gritty football analysis and opinion, you may have a dedicated audience. However, it’s the authenticity, general jokes, conversation, and audience participation that allow these channels to reach a broader audience.
AFTV and That’s Football, despite their occasional nonsensical or hyperbolic remarks, started from scratch with no money behind them and have become so successful through their strategies.
The framework of CBS’ Champions League coverage is what big broadcasters will likely adopt. Sky Sports’ parody of their American rival at the start of the month was an attempt to make another important step towards that, and it feels like they need to fully follow suit.
Alternative media is winning and it has the better formula for the modern football audience who want to participate and want so much more than serious football talk, they want entertainment. They also want authenticity from the content they are consuming.
These channels give the impression of a group of friends casually talking to one another, blended into informative football analysis and comments. Audiences are now craving this duality in football media, and, more importantly, it works.
Sam Bunce
Featured image courtesy of @framesforyourheart via Unsplash. Image use license found here (Unsplash). No changes were made to this image.
In article image 1 courtesy of @skysportsfootball via Instagram. No changes were made to this image.
In article image 2 courtesy of @cbssportsgolazo via Instagram. No changes were made to this image.
In article image 3 courtesy of @wearetheoverlap via Instagram. No changes were made to this image.
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