The Background

The betting market was a cluttered and intimidating space, full of loud voices and big personalities. Everything was beginning to look and sound similar. Which meant that thought-leadership and cultural relevance had become more essential to create that cut-through.

Sky Bet and their sponsored football discussion podcast The Overlap, hosted by Gary Neville, seemed to provide something different and had initial success, but lacked the perfect studio space to house the content, and therefore to become a true home of the northern football conversation.

The Challenge

We had everything we needed in our in-house studios to become home to The Overlap Stick to Football, but we needed to design and craft the perfect space – a space that brought not only the luxury and gravitas that could suit the range of Gary Neville’s guests, but also the down-to-earth charm that would feel both on brand for The Overlap and Gary Neville, while also being evocative and inviting for northern football fans.

The Solution

No one has heart for the beautiful game like northerners. So, in creating this space, we started with the very people we were trying to connect Sky Bet and The Overlap with: the northern fans. We carried out an in-depth qualitative research phase to codify that northern footie aesthetic. In our study, fans reminisced about the smell of Bovril, the walk through the streets and past the chippy on the way to the ground, the cult footie figures they loved growing up, the key moments that defined them as a fan. This gave us something to bottle, to bleed into our set design and craft.