The NFL to woo casual fans with influencers and talent
After successfully building a core audience for the NFL in the UK, the sport’s commercial chiefs are turning to influencers as well as celebrities and athletes to win over enough new fans to secure momentum behind its expansion.
NFL UK
It signals a different approach for the sport’s franchise, which has used its international fixtures at Wembley along with broadcast deals with Sky, the BBC and Channel 4 to fashion a sizeable fanbase over the last decade. But there’s now a move to do more to attract those casual fans likely to tune in for one game a season – the Super Bowl.
Consequently, the NFL’s commercial team has got together with sport and entertainment agency Clifford French to try and take the game mainstream across the country. “We’ll be looking to engage the casual sports fan,” says James Clifford, co-founder at Clifford French.
“American football can initially be quite intimidating for the casual sports fan because of the rules, plays and positions that are relatively alien to some UK sports fans. It’s an education exercise but the important thing is that we’re talking to people who already have a love of sport. They’re a receptive audience." explained Clifford.
It’s a big challenge. To catch the attention of what may be an uninterested audience, drawing them into something new which, on the face of it, seems foreign and laden with complexities in comparison to other popular sports like football.
Rather than risk patronising audiences with detailed explanations of the rules and plays, the campaign will partner with key influencers who, like the target audience, know very little about American football.
“It’a unique and fantastic sport so we’re looking to partner with different influencers from various sectors like sports, music and gaming to take them on the journey of an emerging fan. This will happen over the course of the season and we want to provide them with unique access and content opportunities that will really help them get under the skin of the game." said Clifford.
They will be encouraged to ask the questions that new audiences might otherwise be apprehensive about openly asking. By doing, the hope is that fans will gain a greater understanding of the technicalities of the sport through channels they’re already consuming.
While the NFL could explain these attributes of the game through its own channel, the causal sports fan isn’t necessarily engaging with it yet. However, as Clifford points out, if they see the likes of popular YouTuber Bateson87, trying the EA Sports’ Madden NFL 17 game and talking viewers through his own entry into the sport, then it will reach their target audience and be able to relay the framework of the game.
Core fans will still be part of the strategy and part of the campaign’s main focus will be to ensure that it does not in any way alienate the already established fans.
“The core NFL fan base in the UK is incredible so it’s vital we still offer them entertaining content. It may not delve into the deep tactical and strategic that they might otherwise consume on core NFL channels but it should still remain credible and engaging to that audience.”
Drawing in new audiences while still offering established fans something is a tricky tightrope, one the NFL plans to walk with a broad range of influencers who speak to different age demographics and different areas of culture. Authenticity in this pursuit is crucial however and so the campaign will only partner with credible figures who are either inextricably linked to the culture that comes with the NFL or have already shown a faint interest in the game.
“They don’t need to profess to be experts, as long as they already have an interest there” says Clifford. “It could be as simple as an influencer being fascinated by the fitness and conditioning side of the sport or, more simply, they might have watched a game at Wembley and shown an appetite to understand and learn more.”
As for the content itself, Clifford says part of the aim will be to show the culture that comes with the game, such as looking at interesting aspects of all the parts of the sport and its franchises coming together.
“The whole scale and structure of the sport is very different to what even soccers fans in the UK are used to so there’s great stories to be told around players, backroom staff, equipment and scouting. It’s a fascinating, exciting and hugely entertaining sport and we’re really looking forward to helping to demonstrate that to, in some cases, a new audience.”