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SPORTING INSIGHT
There was also a very different ‘broadcast’ from Royal Ascot, plus (at the time of writing) there was Wimbledon and The Open to look forward to. On a content level – lockdown for some has no doubt meant multiple Miracles at Medinah or furlough-enforced football replays, but most striking has been the athlete/team-led content in the Netflix documentary, The Last Dance. Such incredible access to players/teams has seldom been afforded here in our major sports, though Living with Lions and last year’s The Edge on Amazon Prime, should go on your viewing list. It’s proven that insightful content builds fan engagement and offers other commercial opportunities, as the countless Last Dance products online show. By contrast, an existing piece of fan engagement content caught my eye. A Day at The Open is a beautifully-crafted ‘story’ that combines the perhaps not obvious, cross-generational appeal of the event, with a sense of usergenerated content, as a grandfather, son and grandson attend the historic event together for the first time, at Royal Portrush last year. Little did the youngster know that his prophecy of “that might never ever happen again” (as he high fives top golfers) would become so meaningful in 2020. On a sign of the times level - the return of the Premier League will see all players’ shirts adorned with phrases and symbols relating to the very ‘human’ causes of our time and with 92 games in five-six weeks, that ‘always on’ feeling should be strong, even without Euro 2020. It will be interesting to see if this feast of football, drives sales of licensed products, but also whether new licensed products are Inset: The Last Dance has been a spawned on more accessible terms, popular view with post crisis. Netflix audiences. Picking up on this point, the British Top: The 149th Open will now take Olympics Association and other place in 2021 after sports bodies should be praised for this year’s tournament was having shown fairness and cancelled. discretion to their partners in the unprecedented situation of the
Games moving back a year. The sense of the industry being one entity has certainly been given thought at Team GB HQ. And finally, on what I’d like to refer to as a human level – you only needed to cast an eye online to see ‘GOATs’ from Michael Jordan to Michael Johnson, calling for action on racial inequality, with Jordan pledging $100m to related initiatives, in support of BLM activities worldwide. This and the re-emerging news topics of sustainability and our planet’s environmental and resources crisis, are bigger than I can cover here, but sport and its associated media, partnerships, licensed products, merchandise and massive use of man-made and natural resources, needs to keep considering all these as well, going forward.
LICENSING SOURCE BOOK EUROPE 2020
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