Budweiser and Sky Sports

Kings of the Premier League:  Where stats meet social and influencers debate with legends of the game on TV and YouTube

Budweiser has long been associated with football in the UK due to their long-standing partnerships with the FA and the World Cup. In 2019, they launched a three-year partnership with the Premier League and needed to announce the partnership to drive a deeper association between the brand and the Premier League. However, with so many sports channels and content providers, Budweiser needed to do something different to establish cut through, get noticed and engage with its consumers in a crowded marketplace.  What better way to do that than to partner with Sky Sports – the home of the Premier League since 1992 and the leader in bringing the amazing action to football fans across all media platforms.

Budweiser approached Sky Media with a challenge: to raise awareness for its global partnership with the Premier League to ‘ABC1 25-34’s’ across the UK. Budweiser had become the official beer of the EPL on a global level for three forthcoming seasons and wanted to strengthen their credentials during highly anticipated matches by further aligning themselves to premium football in the UK.  However, in order to get the cut through they needed, a traditional approach to media wasn’t going to work and Sky Media was certainly up to the task.

Sky Sports was naturally the perfect destination for Budweiser to achieve its brand KPIs. With a dedicated Premier League channel, rights to broadcast 128 matches live in 2019/20, Sky Sports viewing showing growth of 10% YoY, the viewers index at 130 for Young Men (vs Adults) and Sky Sports’ access to stellar talent, this was the perfect environment for Budweiser’s desired audience. Moreover, Sky Sports Premier League has recently tapped into its fan base*, to find that there is, “a real appetite for more opinionated, fanzine-like comment and analysis” and the view that “debate and discussion is crucial to engaging and interacting with live sport”. So with the audience’s insatiable appetite for even more football content, Sky Media and Budweiser had an opportunity to:

1. Establish Budweiser as THE premium beer you choose for high energy occasions
2. Elevate the fan experience by bringing them closer to the kings of the game
3. Activate the power of Taste Greatness to drive sales
4. Driving talkability and having cut through during the EPL

*understanding sports consumption study, 2018

Budweiser, Sky Sports and The Story Lab collaborated to create a truly unique proposition: a new monthly TV & YouTube show called Kings of the Premier League. For the first time ever, guests could use a combination of Sky Sports Power Ranking stats, fan voting data (King of the Match data from the official Premier League app) and expert pundit opinion, to debate and select the best 11 players to form the fantasy team of the month. With Budweiser flowing through the set and title sequence, the show featured ex-players, world-class pundits, renowned football influencers and celebrity fans armed with the most detailed analysis of the Sky Sports Power Rankings data ever seen on TV.

Sky and Budweiser created a bespoke AFP to reinforce Budweiser’s premium nature and engage fans in hot topics and debates with expert analysis from our world class pundits (including Jamie Carragher, Jamie Redknapp, Sol Campbell) and influencers (such as F2 freestylers, Spencer FC, and Sam Quek).  The show tackled who the best players of the month had been across all Premier League teams using a mix of the Kings of Match (as voted by fans) and Sky’s very own power rankings. Our talent then approached the discussions from two opposite angles: the cold, hard stats, and the raw emotion and passion of the fans. Head vs Heart. Facts vs Feelings. Who’s right and who’s wrong? This brought together a show that had fun, fiery, engaging debate until a ‘King of The Month’ was crowned by our pundits and influencers.

Kings of the Premier League was originally pitched as a purely social show, however the strength and calibre of the idea was championed by Head of Sky Sports Production and was soon promoted to feature as a Linear show played out across the weekend’s primetime Premier League football. This content pillar was amplified with paid for media, and promoted across Linear, Digital and Social.

Digitally, an always-on presence was achieved with bespoke editorial articles on SkySports.com sponsored by Budweiser with direct links to partnership content and promotions. The articles updated fans weekly on the highs and lows from the weekly action on a Monday and reviewing week, allowing the passionate fans to keep up with latest leader board, driving deeper engagement into the statistics and discussion amongst fans from every club. The long-form linear show was also pushed to a secondary audience through our Sky Sports Football You Tube channel with social cutdowns across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube driving viewers to watch in their own homes or on the move.