— ROLE

Creative + Art Direction

— COLLABORATION

Ian Gray

The Banquet

“Sky Bet are too corporate and out of touch with the fans!”

This was a blow dealt by a Qual research group early in 2023. A seemingly growing sentiment born from the brand activity to date and the close connection to the Sky Sports mother brand.

The brief almost wrote itself.

The challenge was to create a short series of direct response TVCs for both football and racing offers running every week. Customers are used to seeing our brand ambassadors dictating what to feel about the sports they know and love. So we decided to flip this around.

Jeff Stelling (football) and Ed Chamberlin (Racing) are in their usual punditry environment, when they are posed a question so simple and personal, that it leaves them momentarily stumped. “What is the sport all about?”. Before they have a chance to give their usual, media-trained answer, we cut them off with vox pops from the real fans, in their environment, telling us what it means to them personally. This allowed us to relate to grassroots truths from fans and celebrate the subjective differences that make fandom what it is;- personal not spoon-fed.