Episode 258 Snippets: Rob Gevertz of First Five Yards

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 258 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Rob Gevertz, Founder of digital sports consultancy First
Five Yards, formerly with Manchester City and Sky Sports.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the
full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast
platforms and at www.dsmsports.net.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 258: Rob Gevertz

Rob’s Career Path
“So I'm based in London in the UK. I've been the kind of working at the
intersection of sports and digital media and commercial aspects for about
10-15 years. I started off a long time ago, actually in a media agency was
kind of my first real job in London. A friend of mine [had] said There's a
job going here. You basically get to watch TV all day and get taken out for
lunch.’ And that sounded right up my street. So I did a couple of years at
the media agency, [then] moved into more of a sales role for media sales,
working at big newspaper over here in London called Metro, which is a big
free newspaper aimed at young professionals and [is] a really successful
product.

“So late 2000s [while] working over there was when digital started to
become more of an important aspect of media and sponsorships within the
landscape in particular, and following 6 or 7 really happy years at Metro, I
managed to get a role heading up digital partnerships at Sky Sports, the big
broadcaster over here in the UK. It was an interesting time really, because
up until about a year before I joined, Sky Digital Media had been a
completely separate business to Sky Media, and there was a wall in
between the two. They didn't talk to each other and the collaboration
wasn't really there. So a big part of the role at that point was kind of
bridging that that gap and ultimately kind of starting to integrate digital
thought processes and solutions into a wider sponsorship offering over
there.

“[For] three or four years [after] I worked at a similar position over at talkSPORT,
which is a big sports radio station here in the UK, and eventually found my way
over to an interesting role at Manchester City and the City Football Group at the
end of 2015. They, as an entity, were having huge success on the field with their
investment from Abu Dhabi, but realized that in order to compete commercially
with their peers — which in their mind wasn't just Manchester United and
Liverpool, but actually was Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and some of
the kind of bigger sports properties around the world, they need to really be
different and focus on innovation and digital in particular, because their fan
numbers didn't compete with with those other guys. So they brought in people
like myself that had more of a media and partnership background to help try and
overhaul their partnerships offering and their commercial operation, both from a
sales point of view, and more from a kind of delivery and activation side as well.

“I had a unique role that kind of bridged the gap that most rightsholders
over here have in between their commercial teams and the digital teams. In
most cases, still, unfortunately, they probably don't talk to each other. They
have no idea what the other one does, and the product kind of speaks for
itself in those days. But with us at City, we were able to really kind of start
to deliver great integrated solutions that had digital at the forefront of big
international partnerships. So my remit there covered working with the
partnerships teams, along with developing other revenue models and ideas
around bringing money in through digital IP and licensing, content
syndication and any other thoughts I could have really. =

“I just finally got to the end of my time there right at the end of 2019, start
of 2020 and that position didn't seem to exist anywhere else here in the
UK, so I set up my own consultancy, looking to work with rights holders on
that kind of digital monetization process. How can they maximize their
current assets, access, resources to develop more revenue streams in that
kind of sponsorship partnership realm, and as part of that process, have
also partnered with a number of sports technology companies who've got
products and services they're trying to sell into sports teams, but have a bit
of trouble maybe navigating that landscape over here. So it's kind of a dual
front in what the consultancy does, and I've thankfully worked with a
variety of interesting partners over the last three years or so.”

On seeing the evolution of digital in his time at sports media networks
“So when I first started off in a media agency, digital wasn't really a thing. So I was a kind of
guinea pig for a grand training scheme, looking at doing 18 months learning about TV and radio,
newspapers and magazines and regional media. So for us, regional radio and regional
newspapers, which aren't really a thing anymore, and only really towards the back end of my
time at Metro, around the kind of 2010-2011, did digital solutions start to creep into the wider
media offering. So we were traditionally selling in my space I was working in more longer term
creative solutions rather than day-to-day ad sales and so much more integrated partnerships.
But again, then you had very little understanding of your audience, very little understanding of
what creative solutions could be in that space and it very much took a broad-minded client to
start to see the opportunities that these cross-platform solutions could deliver, because
traditionally you were selling to people in very siloed roles, that they were either a print buyer or
a strategist or a planner or a digital person, of which they may have been a few [digital people]
within those agences. And it was only really once you start to go through the kind of early 2010s
that the kind of broader conversation started to take place a bit more.

“So that was starting to happen at Sky. But again, to your point around
digital being a throwing or an add on, that to me, unfortunately, is still the
case in a lot of spaces over here, let alone back then ten years ago. So at Sky
we would have the same thing where someone would come to you with a
brief and you'd really have to kind of work hard more internally than
externally on changing the way people would typically sell the solutions
back to clients, because they were only used to the areas they had formerly
been working in.

“So the sponsorship team were full of people from a broadcast background
and from a TV background rather than thinking more — that was probably
what one of the biggest kind of challenges success stories I had was around
changing the way of thinking into being much more around concept first,
platform second. Ultimately, sell good ideas and good ways of integrating a
brand partner into the subject matter, whether it be soccer or cricket or
rugby or whatever, and finding the right avenues to tell their brand story
rather than just going, ‘There's ten hours of programing a week that you're
going to have ad bumpers around, and we're going to add a million ad
impressions on our website,’ let's come up with a much more integrated
solution.

“One of the first things we did was we were able to sell in a short form digital
media campaign and a digital content piece; because there was a situation
where a particular client, a car manufacturer, Suzuki wanted to sponsor one
of their kind of flagship TV shows. So they used to have a show, that's
actually just ended — 25 years it was running. It was a program called Soccer
AM. It was on Saturday morning from 10-12, and it was a kind of like Good
Morning Football on the NFL Network kind of fun, jovial, but even more
comedic, more aimed at the kind of guy waking up on a Saturday morning
with a hangover from the night before. It had a very kind of UK lad kind of
culture around it; the kind of fun, cheeky nature of comedy with what they
did. But unfortunately for the client, the show wasn't available. The
campaign they wanted to do was a lot shorter than the long term nature of
that.

“So instead of going back with the traditional answer of the show's not
available for sponsorship but you can buy some ads in it, but we'll find you
some online ads that suit a 18-25 year old demographic I was able to kind
of pull back on our sales guys and say, No, there's another way here. We
can create some content that takes the ethos of this show. We used some of
the presenters from it, we created a kind of look and feel and a narrative
that was similar to what the show was typically like, but were able to shape
that much more towards the car and what they wanted to achieve. And it
was the first time, really, that we'd actually used broadcast ads to drive
people into a digital space rather than typically being the other way round,
where you just would use online to drive tune-in to a particular show.

“That would have been in about 2010, 2011, and it was quite a new thing
for them at the time. But that kind of format now has, I suppose, been the
kind of blueprint of what short form branded content looks like nowadays.
That was a real challenge to try and get the mindset changed internally at a
broadcaster like that; to think of, you know, we typically work in these
kinds of ways and these directions, and actually this is a new thing we can
do. That, I think really has been one of the things that I've tried to do in
most of the stops along the way, the kind of career journey of looking at not
focusing on the way things have always been done, but ultimately, is there
a better way that we can do things?”

On managing and creating inventory and assets for digital/social content
“I think it depends on whether you're talking about it from a publisher side or from a
club and a rightsholder side. So on the publisher side, they would simply have an asset
base and they'll be looking to do those, but they will potentially have a bit more
flexibility around creating narratives. I think the challenge sometimes is understanding
the somewhat dotted line between commercial and editorial, and making sure that
everyone's kind of happy in their spaces. Particularly having worked at a newspaper and
how strongly the editorial team were behind their beliefs and their ethics around what it
is they're writing that once you start to get into paid editorial advertorials or branded
content or whatever you might want to call it now is sometimes a challenge to try and
navigate that landscape and ensure that both parties are happy in that process. that the
editorial guys are writing something they're happy to do in a style and a language and an
element of openness that retains their editorial beliefs versus the brand ultimately
paying for something, and they want some kind of delivery in those spaces.

“I think when you look at rights holders now, the challenges for me and where I
see almost the biggest opportunity with the offering I have as a consultancy is in
a lot of cases, particularly in Europe, a lot of the clubs don't seem to realize the
scale of the opportunity of what assets they actually have that are available in a
commercial sense. They just haven't seemed to join the dots around there are
15, 20, 30 kinds of regular narratives that appear day in, day out, week in, week
out. Whether it is, like you said already, the team [lineup] announcement, goals,
substitutions, tackles, stats, it could be about training, practice, it could be
about fitness, it could be anything data or stats related, academy, women's —
there's all of these kinds of narratives. Then figuring out how can we maximize
the asset, the regular editorial kind of assets that we could be creating so each of
those narratives, let alone then integrating a brand and or creating bespoke
branded content in a very separate way to those regular stories.

“I think that there are huge opportunities for rights holders to create
revenue streams by maximizing, like I said before, their existing assets,
access and resources to tell those stories that sometimes the guys can't see
the wood from the trees because they may be selling the same types of
assets they've always sold. And, frankly, because most commercial teams
are filled with people with years of sports commercial background, but the
challenge is that they're selling the same things they did ten years ago, 15
years ago, whereas the world has kind of moved on a bit, and particularly
now where teams are trying to engage on a global level with a global fan
base in digital environments, you sometimes need that experience in
working within digital environments to understand the best way to
maximize what you're currently doing.”

On joining Man City and how digital partnerships evolved there
“I don't think it’s telling any tales out of school, but, you know, things change a hell of a lot in
my time there. In the early days, the conversations would pretty much be as simple as a sales
person coming to you with a contract on behalf of a deal they're trying to sell to a brand and
saying, ‘Can you add a couple of lines of digital to this?’ Because typically the way that these
deals would have been done, and I dare say is still done in some cases, is the sales person
would find a brand that maybe had some budget available for a sports property, and the
conversation would typically go, ‘I hear you're interested in sport, how much money have
you potentially got?’ And the brand may say we got $1 million, and the sales person would
just put as many bullet points on a contract as possible to try and get the client to spend that
million dollars without really any understanding. I would say it's not even about concern, it's
understanding of the concepts of things like yield and asset numbers and asset volumes. It
wasn't about knowing are we over or under promising what it is or our ability to deliver. It's
just as a sales person, my job is to get as much money coming into the business as possible.

“So the early days would just be trying to push back on the salesperson to
understand a bit more about what the brand wants to do, what's their objectives,
how do they work? On a general digital basis, what I would say is that at that
point, Man City were very far advanced from a content point of view [compared
to] any of their competitors. They focused a lot on YouTube in the mid 2010s.
They were the first, rather than going down a linear TV channel which some of
their peers had done and continued to do, they focused firstly on YouTube and
had big success there, and then built out a wider content business around the
other platforms, and now have a media department of probably pushing 100
people in a variety of different roles. But the commercial media function that I
was a part of was around that notion of bridging the gap between the commercial
team, the sponsorship sales and partnerships team and the digital team, whether
that be the content guys, the social media managers, the digital product teams.

“My role ultimately was to ensure that we could create as many
opportunities for brands to be a part of our whole infrastructure; to almost
being the commercial voice in the room for any of those noncommercial
departments to understand that we were being heard and understood in
those spaces. And over time, yes, a huge part of the role was around
developing models, whether it be pricing and valuation models, whether it
be just around content strands, commercial content, products and services
[so] that we could start to have as still a kind of an asset based offering, but
just growing our asset value and our asset numbers exponentially.

“The typical thing at that point, from a digital solution point of view,
brands would either get exposure, so we're going to put your logo in as
many places as possible within our infrastructure, and you'll get pickup in
content in as many places as we can. Or it was branded content, which in
those days would be footballers kicking a ball at product X, or footballers
playing the FIFA video game whilst chatting about product X. Thankfully,
over time we developed our branded content process to be much better
about integrated storytelling, working with outside production companies,
much more stock put into creative execution and glossiness and driving
that deeper engagement.

“But the biggest area of growth actually was the middle ground around sponsored
editorial content. How can we credibly integrate a brand into the general narrative of
editorial that we're putting out on a regular basis, and drive that value, because we
already knew that we would be able to monetize through, you know, YouTube and
through Facebook in the ad space, but actually being able to integrate a brand credibly
into those things. I did a piece of work and realized after a while that we were sitting on
more than $10 million worth of annual inventory that we could be selling to sponsors
that no one was touching. And that was just simple things that were going out every day
around — you know, they would have content strands such as On This Day, Goal of the
Day, Happy Birthday Player X - here's your five best goals. Or this weekend we're playing
against team X, here's the five best goals against them over the last ten years. Just simple
archive-driven or match highlights recut to tell different stories that you could easily find
brand partners and just tweak the title or the narrative ever so slightly to fit in with the
brand itself that's going to create infinitely more value than just the basic exposure that
you've got through happening to be in the background in this particular shot.”

On valuing different assets and the variables that go into it
“So if take a step back, first of all, one of the things we desperately tried to do was make
sure we were integrating the right brand into the right content piece. So, you know, if
you're talking about the best example of that is something like the team [starting
lineup] announcement. The starting 11 was sponsored by Hays Recruitment Company.
It was all about personnel, and it formed part of a wider partnership with the team
around anything that was personnel or leadership driven content. So we created some
LinkedIn-based content for them. And that's an asset that I think remains to this day.
So you're probably talking 8 or 9 years they've been on that because the connectivity is
there, so we would make sure that we would find [something relevant] — we created
something called the Midfield Engine which was a just a recut of the match highlights,
highlighting in particular midfield play that was sponsored by Valvoline Engine Oil. It's
slightly tenuous, but there's a reason there's a link between the brand and what they
want to do and the content and the narrative you want to do.

“There's so many narratives that you can create — any brand where you
can create stories around, particularly in a sporting environment. It could
be around passion, strength, speed, emotion, celebrations. There's all these
kind of buzzwords that fit in with the basic brand conversations and the
marketing conversations that brands want to have that you can find
sporting connotations that connect with each of those that are related to
content. So that's kind of what we tried to do instead of just logo slapping
and shoehorning; we try and find remotely credible ways of integrating
brands into the right areas.”

“With regards to the value aspect, that's a whole interesting conversation
because at that point we were working with Nielsen and we talked to a
whole other load of suppliers around valuation tools, and I wasn't really a
fan of any of those at those points because of the level of integration that
we were looking to do. To me, it didn't fit with where their products were
working. I'll give you an example of that. So the lead partner in Manchester
City was Etihad, the airline. So if we had done, say, a one minute video
highlights piece on YouTube working with whether it be at that point a
company such as Blinkfire or GumGum or Nielsen or whatever, any of
those AI video valuation tools; the technology is amazing, how they're able
to understand how big your logo is, how long it's on screen for, and the
equivalent media value of that piece.

“So if we did a one minute highlights video and it did a million views and
they said that would be worth x-thousand dollars. We were into year five of
a big storytelling piece with Etihad that was all around football fandom in
different cities around the world. Those cities were actually the routes they
wanted to promote their airline was flying to. We had product placement
showcasing the plane and in particular business class and the high quality
service that you could get from that. The content itself was produced by
external production companies like Vice, for example. So really glossy, high
quality, 8-14 minute edits with lots of other social cut downs. What the
content didn't have lots of was logos.

“So my question always to these guys would be if the highlights video did a
million views and the branded content piece did half a million views, what's
worth more? And they’d kind of go well, probably the highlights piece because of
the exposure value. And I would just be, like, that can't be right. So this was kind
of when we realized that we're really comparing apples and oranges, and we were
the only club really that were pushing this creativity, storytelling, deep
integration of brands and driving deeper metrics than just basic logo exposure.
Sometimes we found that actually that was a bit more difficult, because what we
ended up doing was working with a media agency to develop our own weighting
system to give what we felt was a true evaluation of each type of content execution
that we were doing based around the platform that it went on, based around the
level of brand integration, whether it was sponsored editorial, the basic exposure,
whether it was branded content, whether it had product placement in it, the level
of engagement that each piece was getting. We just felt that it gave a truer value.

“And really, we weren't looking for the exact dollar amount. It was more for us to understand
that we were pitching the right level of assets to the right brand, spending the right amount of
money. We didn't want to have a higher value asset going to a low value client and vice versa. It
just enabled us to understand that these types of assets and these types of content strands, this
is our highest value, this is our medium value and this is our lowest value. What that meant
though is that we would be going into pitches against other teams, and our digital solutions
would be 5 or 10x in value what our competition would be offering, and the brand would be like,
well, that can't be right. I don't understand how you're offering ten times the value. And we have
to keep trying to say, well, that's because we do it differently and we're offering, frankly, a much
better, solution than our competition. It was sometimes a real challenge to try and get people to
move out of the way they'd always seen it and known that, oh, we get, for our million dollars, we
get 12 Facebook posts, whereas we're saying, No, we're going to do this huge integrated content
solution that's going to be long form, it's short form, there's image, there's lots of brand
integration, we're going to drive through this research, all this kind of fully integrated solution.
That was a real unique proposition. Sometimes clients found it difficult to just compare and
contrast with everyone else that was pitching to them at the same time.”

On determining the true ROI of the sponsorships, from the club side and in
tandem with the partner
“I think there's different ways to look at it, because ultimately the value of
something is what someone's willing to pay for it. And ultimately all you're
trying to do in this scenario is create enough ammunition to your argument
to justify the price you're asking. So I don't think there'll be an end result
where there's a uniform system that everyone uses that gives the most up
to date thing. To be honest, it's no different to how TV viewership has been
done for years; most people don't really believe the numbers, but
everyone's numbers are wrong by the same amount. So you kind of follow
it as a trend and you get on with it.

“So I don't think we'll get to a point, even though there are companies out there
that have expanded on the valuation model and offering that seems to be slightly
more robust and maybe work on a project by project rather than this overall
nature of being able to value someone's entire inventory. But I do think that the
clubs are starting to get smarter, but they kind of need to because they're trying to
position themselves a lot at times as a publisher. You've only got to look at what
FC Barcelona are doing now, trying to kind of build this media house as a way of
creating a much bigger revenue stream for them now. But the reality is if you're
going to act like a publisher, you need to be a publisher. And by that [I mean] you
need to have all of those other back end abilities, like you say, around data and
around research and around managing those executions, whether it be from a
production or a delivery point of view, to ensure that you're comparing and
competing against some of the big traditional sports publishers in the market.”

On how the global nature of EPL clubs, the big, diverse platforms of their
players, and the composition of the fan base come into play
“I think it's a two phased approach. So yes, absolutely, the fan interest is
driven a lot by players and who joins and where they're from. I think you
have to understand that outside of the core local fan base around, let's say,
the Premier League and their teams, the reality is that most of their fans,
from a digital point of view, are international. And the international fans
generally follow players more than teams, or they'll follow a variety of teams
that normally are driven by players in those kind of spaces. The challenge
for teams is to try and capitalize on those moments where the sporting side
of things presents opportunities from a marketing point of view.

“So you buy a player — the biggest examples are currently are obviously
what's happened in the MLS and what's happened in the Saudi Pro League
with regards to the major acquisitions of Messi and Ronaldo. But taking a
step down from that and looking at some of the the more kind of longer term
things that have happened you look at the example of of Tottenham Hotspur
in London, who have the captain of the South Korean national team, Son
Heung-min; the fan base that he has from that part of the world is rabid, and
the club do a very good job of trying to maximize the commercial
opportunities around activating in that market. But it does require, if it is a
long term marketing play, then there are some basic building blocks you
need to put into place to ensure that you're able to capitalize on that market
over the long term, particularly as and when that player doesn't play for you
anymore.

“So finding ways to build official fan clubs and engaging regularly, creating
content in that localized language and formats, working maybe with
specific social platforms in those countries that are unique to that market,
rather than maybe some of the bigger global or US-based ones. There are
some aspects that you kind of need to do. Sometimes clubs will engage with
specialist agencies either on the ground or just global international content
agencies that specialize in in doing that and capitalizing on that. And then
the challenge is absolutely around how can you monetize that audience and
that fan base, whether it be through content specifically or partnerships
looking to activate.

“It's no secret, I think, that one of Tottenham's main commercial partners
is a partner because a huge part of their business activities take place in
South Korea and in South East Asia. So having an ability to leverage the
two parts of that brand together over in that market are very key. There's
differing ways that you can be monetizing from big brand long-term
conversations to short-term quick wins in the content space and kind of
building that credibility in those markets.”

On clubs trying to build fans on the backs of players that’ll stay fans of the club after that player is
gone
“I think there's definitely a case of that. I think the realities are that you cannot build your
commercial business off of individual players because they change around so often, so there needs to
be an element of long term thinking. But I think now is a time where you can start to make those
inroads and use it as a springboard to a long term conversation with a fan base. I'll be interested to
see what the NBA and the Spurs in particular do in France, starting now with Victor Wembanyama
arriving and using that. Obviously there's a game now that takes place in Paris every year as part of
the NBA and seeing whether there's a longer term conversation that can be had from a marketing
and a commercial point of view with France and the wider northern European region, and looking at
taking learnings from maybe what Denver does in Serbia (with fans of Nikola Jokic) or what Dallas
does in Slovenia (Luka Doncic), and seeing where they can have success both now, but then building
that long term conversation, I suppose, in the way that up until recently the Houston Rockets had
done in China. Obviously things happened at that point with that relationship, but they had built a
foundation that lived on beyond Yao Ming playing for the Rockets. So it's kind of what can you do
that even if you have 2 or 3 years of uber success because of the players there, how can you turn that
into a 2030 year conversation with a fan base?”

On making asks of the players when they have their content deals to monetize with
their free time
“There's a lot to unpack there. So what I would say, first of all, is it depends on the
level of team and sport and player that you're talking about and how much power they
have individually. So at the very top — I can only speak from personal experience at
Man City, the players are contracted to do a certain amount of work on behalf of
corporate partners of the club. Now some are more kind of on the front foot in doing
those, and some are very lazy to say the least, and it can be a challenge. However, what
you also find is that brands may come and do a club deal where they, particularly in a
certain region, it may be a lot cheaper for a brand — let's say Gillette, who want to do a
big campaign in Brazil with a Brazilian soccer player. It may be cheaper for them to do
a regional deal with a team to try and get access to that player than to do a personal
endorsement deal with the player themselves; so there may well be ways around that.

“And whilst the team would never necessarily 100% guarantee that all of
your activity is going to be focused around that player because you can't;
you know, a team deal will have to use a minimum of three players in any
kind of comms and activation, but the brand would always lean on the club
to say, look, can we please have this player as part of it? You know, you put
in a request and whatever else. So there are ways and means to kind of
make everyone happy in those spaces.

“As you start to move down the ranks; though, I think the realities are that
players are more than happy to do any commercial deal that they're sold to
and asked to do, because the money starts to become more valuable to
them in those kind of elements. I'm doing some work and have been
[hearing] a lot of talk around women's soccer in particular over here. And
the women's teams are a lot more open to a lot more commercial work, but
in particular a lot more integration of brands and commercial aspects into
it because they see the value in telling the story generally of the sport, and
they're becoming kind of pioneers and trailblazers for the sport. So there's
very rarely as much pushback on not doing stuff because they see the wider
picture of this, [that] these are things that we should be doing to grow the
interest and understanding of us as sportspeople in this arena.”

On the approach with localized social media accounts for Man City
“Yes, that they had marketing objectives on an international basis that meant that
they were required to have localized content in seven, eight, nine different
languages. And they also that would be driven by their marketing objectives and
the desires to try and maximize footprint and ultimately monetization
opportunities in certain key markets. But those key markets may also be dictated by
the players. Like we said before, at the end of the day, they they had an opportunity
for a while in Northern Africa because they had a player from Morocco that had a
big fan base, so that opened up an avenue and a direction. And so they started to
create content and run a language account in a different language than they would
have done before they had the. They were a unique club in that they had the
resources to be able to do that all in house, whereas a lot of other big teams utilize
third party agencies to run social accounts and create content in more localized
environments.

“From a commercial point of view, the clubs — I think, see this as a twofold
opportunity — a) to absolutely monetize and try and bring brands into the
space and capitalize on the kind of opportunity that a local market could
provide them, whether it be because of the players they've got there or just
knowing that it's an important market for people. But secondly, I think just
doing regional partnerships is a great way of creating a pipeline to try and
grow those into global partners. So I would say it's a try before you buy, but
it's an easier long term sales conversation to say come and work with us in
this core market and then the salesperson has a year or two years to kind of
have a run at the client for a longer, bigger global partnership that
ultimately is going to be worth more money for them.

“So there's a variety of reasons why I think that side. Where I think is really interesting
is where technology is coming in now and looking at how you can start to automate a
lot of those processes around localization of content and looking at what that means
from an IP point of view and from a player and a talent point of view. For example,
one of the big challenges used to be, particularly in regional deals, you asked players
just to speak live to the camera. It was the cheapest, easiest way to create bespoke
content, quote unquote, for a brand. More often than not, though, you're asking
players to say things maybe that aren't in their native language. And so actually, if
there is an ability for a player to speak to camera in their native language, but you can
create 15 variations of that in a video and audio format through AI and technology, I
think that's a really interesting development that does pose some legal and contractual
potential problems around players maybe not wanting — the argument of did I say
that or not, and whether it could be misconstrued or whatever else, I don't know.

“But I just think it's an interesting potential step down the road that could
create huge efficiencies for clubs, if they can do that and then you could
take it through to the nth degree with individual personalized messaging
for every one of your two, five, 10 million digital fans that follow you and
start to create really hyper localized, hyper personalized content. But a lot
of the building blocks need to be put in between now and then that,
frankly, most teams outside of the top 4 or 5 in the Premier League just
aren't set up to deliver at the moment.”

What was Rob’s first job in his life?
“So my first job was in a sports goods store in East London. I was about 13, 14
[years-old] working in the summer vacation. In those days they called it like a
sports outfitters. So they sold real equipment like soccer cleats, cricket
equipment; it wasn't like leisurewear and fashion stuff, it was real proper
equipment. It was a place where West Ham United, who were local, used to come
in every summer and get all of the cleats for all the players that didn't have
individual deals. So every year the kit man would come in and kind of go, Right, I
need eight pairs of Adidas World Cups in a size seven, nine pairs and an eight and
so on and so forth. It was teh location where David Beckham bought his soccer
boots. One year after I'd left there he came back with the first set of Adidas
Predators off of the line and presented it as the launch in the early 2000s. So,
yeah, Sedgwick Sports Shop in Walthamstow, East London, it was awesome.”

Rob’s favorite digital or social media campaign that he helped work on or put together
during his career so far?
“I think it was when I was at Manchester City, and I was responsible for the broadcast
rights for our Women's Champions League series. So it was the first time the women's
team had got into the UEFA Champions League and I was tasked with going out to the
broadcasters and trying to sell the rights. And the reality was this was 2017 and there
just wasn't any interest. We were barely getting any offers at all, let alone it may have
been a ‘will pay for production and that's it’ kind of thing. We won't give you a fee. So I
realized that at that time Facebook Live was becoming a thing, and we had enough
resources internally that we were starting to film games and I went to our content team
and our production team and posed the idea of what about if we self-produced it and
self-distributed it on our Facebook page, and we got sponsors integrated instead, and
we created the revenue stream through sponsorship rather than through broadcast
rights. And that's what we did.

“So the fact that we produced it ourselves meant that we could create many
more ways to integrate the sponsor, and then we could create shareholder
content to drive up the value of the partnership as well and create more
inventory for them. So we ended up selling it to Nissan as a car brand, and
they took the first game as a trial and then effectively signed on for two
years afterwards because it went really well. And we probably got 5x what
we offered as a broadcast rights fee, so it was a kind of win win for
everybody. And again, it helped I think a lot internally in kind of
understanding the opportunity that the digital platforms could offer.”

The most memorable game Rob has been at, whether for work or as a fan
“So I am an Arsenal season ticket holder, have been since I was probably
five years old. I would guess there's two games that stand out. There was
the game in 1998 when Arsenal won the Premier League. It was the first
time they'd won it in seven years under their new French manager, Arsene
Wenger, playing a really exciting brand of football. And they won their last
home game 4-0 and it was just a kind of a real — because there was no kind
of drama in the game. They scored two goals quite early on in the game,
knew that we were going to win and it was a real kind of celebration. So it
was kind of a just a fun day.

“The other game, though, was actually 2006. Arsenal got to the final of the
UEFA Champions League. And actually the semifinal was away in Spain at a
team called Villarreal, and Arsenal were winning one-nil going into the last
minute, and then they conceded a penalty kick. So I'd managed to go to a lot
of the away games in that season and the misery that struck of, Oh, they've
gone and thrown it away now’, kind of the last kick of the game and we've
wasted all this time and money and they're just going to throw it away. And
the goalkeeper saved the penalty. So that was probably the most crazy I've
ever gone in any sporting moment. Because typically when a goal goes in,
you're kind of at a medium level of emotion going up to a high. But at this
point we were so low and devastated, and then he saved it. And we just I
mean, that was kind of blacking out for 20 seconds kind of craziness. It was
awesome.”

The number one tip Rob gives for someone that wants to work in professional
sport
“If you are on the content editorial production side, just do it. Just make stuff.
There's no barriers to entry. Get out there. Do it. Make your own stuff and that
will, once you then have something to help you kind of get noticed by the big
clubs or the big organizations, those spaces. From a commercial point of view,
I'm biased, but obviously I think the digital is kind of the future of where things
need to be going commercially in the sports business. So understanding the
landscape and what you can offer these teams or these sports organizations
within that space to ultimately find and deliver them better results in those
spaces is going to be key. So looking at how you can ultimately learn more
about someone's audience and deliver those results, I think is going to be key.”

The social platform Rob would buy stock in for the next ten years and why
“I don't really know is the honest answer. It's such a weird space right now. I
think, if anything, maybe whether this classifies as a social network is YouTube,
just because I think that I'm really interested in the creator space and looking at
how people are kind of developing their own audiences and becoming their own
publishers and media houses, and long form YouTube becoming the catalyst for
actually deeper or broader short form content and monetization opportunities.
So the example for that may be the New Heights podcast with the Kelce Brothers.
The success of that is not necessarily the podcast and the YouTube, but it's the
social clips and the cut ups. I think that their engagement will be huge in the
social space rather than the long form, but you need to do the long form to have
the social stuff. So that kind of environment, I think is really important.

“And actually the kind of convergence of media and that people aren't just
podcasters nowadays. Your podcast is video and creating all these other
areas. So the kind of convergence into kind of mixed media offerings,
rather than being on an individual platform — to me is actually, if I could
buy stock in that, that's the kind of thing for me. It's not about the
platform, it's about the actual concept and the content and ensuring that
goes out into as many relevant places as possible.”

Rob’s favorite place he’s traveled to in the world and the place he haven't
been yet but wants to
“Favorite place to travel? I've been to see cricket in South Africa, which is
an amazing place and territory to go to. I actually just got back from Seville
yesterday to watch a Champions League game, which is a great day and a
half in a city there. I've been quite fortunate to travel a little bit around
European soccer, and I've been to the States a few times. I think you can't
beat the environment of a day or an evening at a Major League ballpark,
and just the experience of that, where the game itself is kind of secondary
to just the overall match-going experience and the atmosphere and the
food and everything. So something like that.

“As far as kind of bucket list stuff, I think I'd still love to go to Augusta. I
think that would be an amazing experience. I don’t know how I'd deal
being without my phone for eight hours, I think it would be a challenge,
but we'd see. And Australia — I think going to see a sporting event in
Australia, particularly cricket or rugby is one, particularly maybe
something your audience may or may not be familiar with are the British
Lions, which is a touring team made up of the best rugby players from
England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland that go on a on a tour every four
years. They go to either Australia, New Zealand or South Africa. So it's kind
of a 12 year round robin kind of thing. So that as a kind of like traveling
circus is, it looks an amazing experience from the outside.”

Will the Super League ever come to reality? And if so, when?
“It depends on what you mean by Super League. Ultimately, I think what
UEFA are doing and the changes they're making to the Champions League
is becoming a de facto Super League anyway. And actually it probably was
just bad PR that that kind of cut out the Super League previously. But
fundamentally the challenge is American owners that are used to a closed
shop moving into a European environment where everyone wants and
needs to have promotion and relegation. And how can you find the best
compromise to keep everyone happy? That ultimately will be whatever a
Super League will become will be that compromise.”

The best meal to get in the Greater London area and where to
get it
“I mean, wow, that's a podcast in itself. I think the boring
answer for me, and this is based really around the pre-game
for us is based on where we go to the stadium, where we park
the car or whatever else. There is a fish and chip shop on the
corner of Gillespie Road, near to the Arsenal train station that
is frequented on a regular basis and their chips are hot and
fresh. The challenge that we have over here is that we do not
have the quality local vendors that you guys might have at
stadiums around there. They just haven't embraced the local
communities and those kind of aspects. And being frank, for
most people, this isn't necessarily me, but for most people,
beer is more important than the food. So that's probably more
of the the pre-game routine for a lot of people. It's more about
which pub are you going to stand and drink in.”

The digital or social first sports media outlet in Britain that we should all know about
“There's a couple of things I’d draw your attention to. So again, kind of harping back to the
Welcome to Wrexham proposition, there's a part of the series where they brought a goalkeeper
out of retirement to be part of their team in their push for promotion. He's a guy called Ben
Foster who played for many years in the Premier League, he played for Manchester United and
he played for England for a few times. During the initial coronavirus lockdown he set up a
YouTube channel that brought together his two passions of football and goalkeeping and
cycling. So the Cycling GK [podcast] was born as a goalkeeper, but it's kind of morphed into an
ongoing kind of media proposition that combines [the two]. He would create some really good
matchday vlogs where actually he'd be taking GoPros into the behind the scenes of a matchday
environment in the changing room at the practice facility. He'd even put the GoPro inside of his
goal in the games that he was allowed to, to show you and give you a real kind of behind the
scenes thing. He now has a running podcast as part of the Ringer Podcast network with Spotify,
and it's building out a wider kind of content output. So like I said before, I'm interested in this
kind of new wave of of creators and he for me is one of the guys at the forefront of that.

“The other thing just to be aware of is that we had a couple of months ago, a huge YouTube creator
event headlined by a group called The Sidemen, one of whom you may have heard of is the kind of
leader or big name guys KSI, friends with Logan Paul, and Prime Hydration and of boxing fame. But
this kind of content group of Sidemen and the associated friends created a charity soccer match that
took place at the West Ham Stadium in London. They sold out 60,000 seats in no time at all, and the
live stream did phenomenal, like millions of concurrent viewers and hundreds of millions of
combined views, probably billions of views. Bearing in mind that the nature of the people that were
included — MrBeast was part of this process. So it's just an event to look out for year on year, The
Sidemen charity game, as a kind of example of how these are guys with humongous audiences and
rabid fan bases that are really super engaged and, you know, they are able to create; thankfully, this
was a charity event, but the monetization opportunities around these kind of things and looking at
what the YouTuber, boxing and those kind of areas are as well, it's an interesting space that just kind
of look at from the outside and I’m interested to see kind of what the next incarnation is. I know
they're already thinking about next year and what the game is going to look like, and how they can
better it from a size point of view. They went from two years ago they played the game in a stadium in
London that held about 25,000 to this time 60,000, they sold that out quickly. I think the hope is to
go to Wembley, which is 90,000. But then what is the digital and content output look like after that
as well?”

The sport besides football, besides soccer that Rob would buy stock in for England
pro sports for the next 20 years
“So there's two. One, unsurprisingly, is the NFL. It’s interesting just to see the
continued growth over here, particularly now with flag [football] being part of the
Olympics. What that means over here, will be an interesting one. The other one
actually is basketball and in particular the British Basketball League. So they had
investment from 777 Partners, and they are a big partners of the London Lions is, I
think, one of the biggest teams over here. They regularly play in the FIBA
Euroleague and they've recently sold rights to some regional sports networks to the
British Basketball League games. So I’m interested to see the kind of continued
development of that. Obviously it's a sport that's primed for a young digitally native
audience, so now they've got some decently experienced people working behind the
scenes, I’m interested to see what that growth looks like over the next five years.”

Rob’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
“There's a guy that's been doing a lot of work over the last 2 or 3 years in
really trying to educate and integrate the sports social landscape over here
in the UK. So there's a gentleman by the name of Scott Goodacre who runs
a handle called the Online Rule (@OnlineRule on Twitter). It's a really
good resource for best practices. He does a great survey looking at the
social media teams of UK sports to kind of find out and understand some
trends and some interesting aspects of their day to day role. Scott himself is
a freelance consultant and marketeer and whatever else, but just as a
resource and a great point of access into what is going on and what should
be going on is a great place to look.”

Where to ind Rob and First Five Yards (his consultancy) on digital/social
Rob is @RobGevertz on all platforms and find First Five Yards
@FirstFiveYards on all major platforms and visit the website at
www.firstfiveyards.com

@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
Thanks again to Rob for being so generous with his time to share his
knowledge, experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me
on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net.

Episode 258 Snippets: Rob Gevertz of First Five Yards

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Episode 258 Snippets: Rob Gevertz of First Five Yards