Depth, Data, and Fantasy: The Athletic’s Formula for Universal Appeal

Welcome to The Social Setpiece — bringing you one piece of sports content that has knocked it out of the park, and three championship-caliber takeaways to make you a better marketer — let’s play ball!

This Week’s Game Plan:

The Athletic has made a name for itself in the world of sports journalism by daring to do things a little differently. Its focus on providing detailed and bespoke content for each and every team in the major divisions it covers has allowed it to grow exponentially since its inception in 2016. It sought to provide "smarter coverage for die-hard fans," leveraging huge names in the world of journalism and giving them the remit to write how they wanted without feeling the need to compromise in pursuit of more clicks.

This method of operations has allowed the Athletic to produce content that no other media outlet would probably dare to create. One of the best examples of this is today’s case study, “The Five Kingdoms of Football” by John Muller.*

^{*This is a paywalled piece of content.}

“The Five Kingdoms of Football'' is an exercise in excellence. Coming in at just over 3,000 words, with multiple custom graphics, and a tailor-made fantasy-styled map that would rival something produced by J.R.R Tolkien, this piece of football content very much flys in the face of what we typically see from most sports media outlets.

The premise of the piece is to mix football with fantasy — not the game that ruins your life every weekend as you consistently pick the wrong players — in a mashup of genres that has absolutely no right to work so well.

You play the part of a shipwrecked captain with a conveniently numbered crew of 10 others who have washed up on a mysterious island. A mystic druid — this world’s analogue of the humble football data analyst — regales you with a tale of the five warring kingdoms that inhabit this land. Each kingdom is comprised of towns with recognisable names to you and I, all great football clubs of Europe’s elite leagues. Each kingdom has its own style of play attack:

• The Counter Kingdom

• The Bunker Kingdom

• The Launch & Squish Kingdom

• The End-to-End Kingdom

• The Controlled Kingdom

The beauty of this piece of content is in its effortless blending of these two vastly different genres. It reads like a true fantasy novel, but is laden with clever football references and astute wordplay reminding you of the true purpose of the article. Aside from this, each Kingdom has been carefully developed through advanced football analytics, with a graphic detailing its specific tendencies accompanying your journey into each new land.

Finally, the piece-de-resistance of this glorious piece of content — the map.

The time and skill it would have taken to create this would have been astronomical. Each kingdom contains the clubs that represent it, scattered seemingly at random, but there’s actually so much more nuance going on here. The map makes use of some extremely inventive regional names, from ‘Klopp’s Canyon’ in the north-west, through ‘The Half Space’ and south into ‘The Corridoor of Uncertainty,’ all the way to the perilous plains of ‘Route One.’

I won’t spoil the article and tell you where your journey through the five kingdoms ends, but I will share with you what the result of the journey was for the reader. In a word, learning.

Unbeknownst to you or your crew, as Muller guided you through these lands he was teaching you the different philosophies of European football, what metrics actually matter, and how they’re used. The appendix of the piece explains the real data science that went into the creation of the kingdoms, but without the wonderfully weaved story around this it would be worthless.

You probably couldn’t print this piece in a newspaper, and it probably wouldn’t generate the clicks a more sensationalist headline might, but it’s exactly the kind of content that some of us are crying out for. Here’s hoping that we get much more like it in the future.

Post Game Analysis

1. You can still make detailed, long-form content.

Despite the success of TikTok and the rush for other platforms to catch-up when it comes to short-form content, there’s still plenty of people craving something with a bit more depth. Yes, you can absolutely still create shorter content as promotional material, but why not base it off longer pieces? Take the above piece from the Athletic as a good example. You could easily make a full series of TikToks on this story, which could also be Twitter threads in their own right, or even a YouTube series.

Make the content that you’d like to consume, you’ll soon find that there’s probably an audience out there that wants the very same thing. Shiny object syndrome is hard to ignore, and social media will make it seem like if you’re not blowing up on every new platform you’re failing. Content is a long game however, so why not make sure you’re able to last the pace by creating things you actually enjoy?

2. Use data where possible, but make sure to give context

Some people hate analytics in sports — there’s just no other way of putting it. They believe that things should be left to “the eye test” and that data is ruining the games we love. It’s probably no secret after reading this newsletter, but I’m a big fan of data analytics. I do, however, agree that data doesn’t always tell the full story. That’s why this piece works so well. It takes the data, uses context and experience to inform the narrative, and ends up creating a highly entertaining and educational piece of top-quality content.

This can be applied to any type of content. Data is your friend, it can inform you and help you make your arguments more cohesive. Data without context though is hard to compute, and simply isn’t convincing enough for most people. Let the data you have support your content, but make sure that your storytelling is what’s really driving your message home.

3. Not everything has to be for your ideal audience

It’s hard to think of two more disparate groups than your average sports fan and the typical fantasy novel aficionado. Now, I’m very aware that that’s a huge generalisation based on common stereotypes — real life is a lot more nuanced. However, it’s clear that “The Five Kingdoms of Football” was written with two quite different groups in mind. Normally, trying to make something appeal to such dissimilar audiences would be difficult, but when handled in the right way, it could be your ticket into a whole new community.

Don’t be afraid to create content that, while still serving your typical and existing audience, might appeal to entirely different groups. If it’s content you enjoy creating, your followers will likely still enjoy it. If it doesn’t land with the new audience, no harm done. But, if it works, you could be setting yourself up for unprecedented growth.

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into John Muller’s fantastic article. If you did — or even if you didn’t — let me know why by replying.

If you’re feeling really generous you could also share this with a friend you think might enjoy it so we can grow the Social Setpiece Squad even more.

See you all next week

PB ✌🏼