REVEALED! Mark Goldbridge’s blueprint for fan-driven football content

0:03Hello and welcome to the Leaders Sport Business Podcast, the podcast about leaders in sport from From Leaders in Sport, my name is James Emmett, and I'm the editorial director at Leaders. And with me, as ever, is my great good colleague, David Kushner. David, how are you? I'm very well, thank you, James. Experiencing another heat wave here in the UK. Is it? Yeah, it's been hot. Okay. Have you not noticed? Well, no. Because you're in a lovely air-conditioned studio. Yeah, I stay inside. Yes. No, it's warm, but things are well. Thank you. Good. That's good to hear that things are well. What's coming up on the podcast today?

0:41Today, we are, well, I am going to speak to Mark Goldbridge, who is a name you will be familiar with. We're continuing a Manchester United theme on the podcast, aren't we? Yeah. We heard from Mark Armstrong, the Chief Business Officer of Manchester United, and Don Maguire from Snapdragon, Manchester United's main partner, on the show last time. Mark Goldbridge has created the United Stand. And you'll be familiar with Mark Goldbridge, of course, if your algorithm is anything like mine. His clips pop up, usually, you know, having a rant or celebrating a goal or, you know, doing something amusing.

1:26Mark Goldbridge is one of these. He's actually a very intelligent and articulate media operator. but when you first expose to him he's one of these guys these sort of uh football influencers i suppose um who other fans love but fans of the club that they support don't necessarily if that makes sense yes uh and he has uh built a well quite a colossus in fact two um youtube channels The United Stand, which is a Manchester United dedicated channel where he does live streams, where he does, you know, he has an almost a sort of, you know, a regular slate of daily, weekly programming all about all aspects of Manchester United.

2:13live streams of all the games, him watching the games, well, you watching him while he's watching the game, audience interaction, 19 million views for the United stand in June, making it the number one YouTube football channel globally for long-term views. He also runs That's Football, a more general football YouTube channel, which in June had 9.85 million views and was the second highest or second most popular YouTube football channel globally. So he has created out of nothing over the past sort of eight, nine years, a really dominant football platform in amongst this world of football content and something that not only has its own audience, but sits outside of mainstream football coverage and sits on YouTube, which, as we will talk about in the conversation with Mark, has, as we've talked about, become very much the platform of choice for the sports industry and the football industry over recent times.

3:21And I think this is a really instructive conversation. As you say, he is really articulate, He is really considered and he is, you know, you'll hear a very different Mark Goldbridge to the clips that you will have seen of him on here because actually he talks through the business model, the structure of his production, his relationship, his increasing relationships with the world of brands and branded content. He has been doing some stuff in partnership with Baller League, the new sports influencer entertainment football tournament as well, Football League. So I think it's a really interesting listen.

4:09He's got some really, I would say, quite punchy views on mainstream football coverage and what in-house club media content operations should be doing. And he also sort of hints a little bit at maybe some future plans for him to move into a world where maybe there's some rights and some footage applied to what he's doing. Well, it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to see someone like Mark Goldbridge taking a leaf out of Casamiro's book, for example, Casa TV over in Brazil and move into a more traditional rights buying model, having built a huge audience through non-traditional coverage of football.

4:58And I've listened to the interview, actually. It is really interesting. It's particularly interesting on that element of kind of necessity being the mother of invention. These folks who are hobbyists, really, or started as hobbyists, providing content for ever-increasing audiences, but with no rights. So having to be creative and compelling, being forced to be compelling in a way that perhaps mainstream platforms with the luxury of rights don't do in quite the same way. Well, it's interesting that what we are seeing, I think, is mainstream broadcasters increasingly looking to the world of creators and influencers and to bring them into their coverage in some shape or form.

5:46At the same time, as you are seeing mainstream broadcasters, and you could talk about Gary Lineker and his podcast Empire, Gary Neville with the overlap, Piers Morgan in the news business who are moving to YouTube and platforms like YouTube in order to have audiences that they can own. So it's a real, you know, no pun intended, overlap in terms of, you know, each side wanting a bit of the other. And it makes for a really interesting mix. So, yeah, I think there's lots in here. Should we bring him on then? Let's do it. Mark Goldbridge, thank you very much for joining us on the Leaders Sport Business podcast.

6:32And you're in your familiar surroundings for anybody who doesn't have the benefit of video here. your familiar studio surroundings. That's right. Thank you very much for having me. It's always nice to be talked at rather than talking to people. So yeah, looking forward to it. Thanks for having me. Good stuff. Let's start with how you describe yourself to strangers at dinner parties. Yeah. I mean, that's always an interesting one because it's been like that for the last decade with family members as well. When you're saying you're not going to a summer barbecue because you're sitting at home watching Croatia play Belgium on That's Football for a watch-along.

7:10It's always been a difficult thing. I suppose it does get easier because people are becoming more aware of what YouTube content is and YouTube influences. But I don't see us as that. I think that the United Stand, which is a Manchester United fan channel, and then that's football, which is general football, I see it as new media. I see that we do a lot of content really, really well. but I think for myself um I tend to just say I'm a director because I own the businesses because although I'm in front of the camera I've been the graphic designer I've been the payroll person um I speak with the accountant I you know set up the schedule I produce so yeah I like to just say director really now because otherwise it just and I suppose there's a lot of people out there when when you when you create something yourself you you sort of master everything along the way and then start hopefully growing to delegate.

8:06How are you at delegating? And give us a sense of what the team around you looks like now as this has grown. We can maybe get into the Mark Goldbridge origins story, but how this has grown from, I suppose, hobby to fully fledged business, businesses. Yeah. So, I mean, my background is I've done quite a lot, but my previous job before this, I was working in the financial world and this sort of started as a hobby simply because I'd become a little bit disillusioned with the mainstream football sort of conversation. I don't think it was really through no fault of its own. It was very sterile. I felt it couldn't go in places that the conversation down the pub or with your mates goes.

8:47So I started this sort of weekly YouTube live stream chat in a very basic sense with a webcam and um it's it's grown gradually over the years into something that is you know churning out three four bits of content a day um we have a studio in manchester and um yeah so it started off with myself like in front of camera behind camera doing absolutely everything social media um and we're still quite a small team because i think that that works quite well i've never been a great believer in just employing loads of people and throwing loads of money at loads of things i I think I'm a firm believer in doing things well.

9:27And I think that that's something that's sort of born out of building it from the start myself. So we're still quite a small team, but we've got social media managers. We've got producers and people who take the load off me, other presenters as well. Was there a moment when, in your mind, it moved from hobby to business? I mean, can you sort of look back and think that was it? I think there was two things, yes. I can't pinpoint the point. I would say it was probably around 2017. I was in quite a demanding job and I was sort of on the way to work doing a mobile phone stream about the morning transfer news for Manchester United and then on the evening at eight o 'clock and then you're trying to do work, you're trying to have a family and a social life.

10:19And I think I could see the potential of what we were building because there wasn't really anybody else doing it in a live content sense. And whilst the earning wasn't that great, it wasn't particularly far off I could see in the next 12 months from what I was earning. So it was a bit of a persuasion on the wife to sort of take a punt on it and which I'm indebted to because obviously it's gone from strength to strength, but I think it was just hitting that point where you either park it or go for it. And we went for I think it's quite hard for people to miss you online if they're in any way a fan of football, and whether that is through the live stuff that you do or the clips and the memes that that live stuff spawns, I guess.

11:07Give us a sense, Mark, of what an average week during the season looks like from your point of view in terms of sort of production schedule, other things that you're thinking about as you're also trying to run the business and build the business? Yeah, I think it has peaks and troughs. And certainly that's been the case over the last few years. I mean, it's very busy. I respect anybody that steps into this world. And there are a lot of people out there that have seen the success of what we've done and replicated it down to the fact that sometimes you put a YouTube video on and apart from it being me, I'm like, that's our graphic designs.

11:39That's our background. That's our 10 o 'clock show. So there's a lot of people out there doing it. But I mean, that's fine because I think although it wasn't a crusade, I think, as I said, that the big issue I had was I felt that the mainstream conversation was dull. So if people have picked up on what we're doing and doing it in that way, then ultimately when I stop doing this, I should be able to find places that actually talk about football in the way I want to. But yeah, so we've got the United stand, which is Manchester United. I then started That's Football, which is general football, because I spend a lot of time watching that.

12:11So on a busy day, you could have a morning show talking about Manchester United, a lunchtime show. And then on the evening, you might be watching a match as well. And then in between that, you've got all the normal stuff that you have running a business, whether it be staff issues, emails, sponsorship stuff, things like that. And of course, Saturday, Sunday can be quite busy days because that's when the games tend to be as well. So there's very rarely time to take a day off. I think the only day off I really ever have off is Christmas Day. And I'm not, you know, that's not a sympathetic stance.

12:46I think anybody who runs their own business, you work hard and you hopefully enjoy it. So I do really, really enjoy it. And it's hard to switch off really, because there's always a story breaking or there's always something to research. We're in this really interesting period and you reference finding mainstream football coverage to have become a little bit dull. But I think we are in this period where some of that mainstream football coverage is leaning more and more on the world that you occupy. And whether that is bringing influencers into programming or taking sort of, you know, a little bit of the audience interactivity stuff that works really well in an online environment.

13:27fast forward to where we are now versus where you started do you do you see a a positive change in mainstream football coverage are there still in your mind fundamental things that are wrong with it yeah i think there has been improvement and i think you're right um and whether that's a good thing or a bad thing i think they sometimes get it wrong um in how they look at what we do and try and take it into the mainstream because i think sometimes i'll i'll put something on and i'll see they're using influencers and I'll be like, yeah, okay, they're influencers, but they're not, they're not like the big influencers or anything like that.

14:02Or it'll be an influence of who's not football related, which we've seen a few times. So, and I think football fans are capable of seeing through that. So I sometimes think, well, you're not giving the best representation of this world really, are you? Because you're sort of thinking any, any, any shoe size will fit. but I also think that there are ways that they maybe weren't doing 10 years ago that they are now. I'm not a massive fan of the streaming services because mine always seems to be a lot further behind everybody else's but I do like some of the interaction features that Amazon Prime were offering when they were covering the Premier League.

14:41I thought that was quite intuitive. so but look I don't think we're at that point yet where where mainstream actually thinks they're doing anything wrong and I think sometimes the strength is the tv rights if you're somebody like sky sports the soccer Saturday show I grew up on with people like um George Best and Rodney Marsh and Frank McClintock was brilliant they're still doing that it's like it's like a it's like a tv show that it was good in season one and two and now they're on season 22 so I still think that having the tv rights can lead to laziness and complacency because everybody's got sky because they want to watch the the premier league games they don't necessarily want to watch the latest um poor version of soccer Saturday or you know ref watch or anything like that so I still think that's that's that's their big big card really is is the tv rights and maybe flipping that on its head, have you considered what you might do if you had footage rights to certain games?

15:45I have. And we're in some sort of conversations at the moment with certain people about that. So I wouldn't disclose exactly what we would have planned. But I think that what I would certainly say is that if I was Sky or TNT, one of the things that's just a complete and utter open goal is that when you've got something like that's football which has got hundreds of thousands of people watching me watch a game without the tv rights it's a real open goal to say alternative commentary is available because all you've got to do is flick a switch and you're listening to me over the top of that game um we've done some interesting things with and you have to this is the great thing about football as well is that it goes beyond the premier league so last season we went to Charlton who gave us a box and we set cameras up we couldn't show the game but we did everything but that we we got the crowd noise we had a camera on the other side sort of panning into me on a box we was a late penalty then we then walked onto the pitch afterwards and it was it was actually being covered on sky and we got more views than they did with the official footage so I think that shows you that even without footage we can be imaginative in a ground And imagine what we could do if we actually had the rights as well.

16:59Another big aspect of this sort of football content ecosystem, if I can call it that, is in-house, in-club media channels. And we see clubs and we talk to a lot of people who are deeply involved in that, churning out a lot more content, getting a lot more creative and a lot more investment going into the content that they're producing. if you were in a club say Manchester United and you were overseeing their content output what are some of the things that you would be advising the club to do I think Manchester United is always a really difficult one because they are absolutely awful on the pitch which I can testify to and we've seen that we've seen the clips Mark we've seen the clips yeah yeah and And we're probably at the lowest point we've been.

17:51And yet, I've got no doubt every kit we're going to release in the next month is going to sell out. Every season ticket is sold out. And it's a bit like having the TV rights with Sky or whoever. You're always going to score because people are always going to buy the ticket. So with Manchester United, I think they're a difficult one because they're always going to be popular. so I would say if you were in Everton or someone like that it's easier to be have more of a voice and have more of appeal Manchester United can do it it's whether they have the appetite to do it because they pretty much know that even if you've had your worst season in the world when everybody comes back for pre-season as long as everyone smiles and does a bit of a you know banter in the dressing room it's still going to get hundreds of thousands of views but what we did is we did do an interview a couple of years ago with a Manchester United player where they let us in and okay there was the not that we would anyway but we asked interesting questions that our audience and the fans would want asking but you can't ask every question because they're a professional football club and you understand that but I think those sort of things are are really important because the relationship between the fans and the modern football club is I would say distant comparable to when I was a kid growing up in the 80s.

19:08It felt a lot closer. So I think that having that relationship and not a fake relationship because anybody can get a fan in and go look at us. We're talking to fans. But if you had like Mark Goldbridge talking to Mo Salah at Liverpool, or I'm not a Liverpool fan, but we have that's football or Manchester United, as long as it's done in the correct way, I think it gives an authentic sort of link between the club and the biggest Manchester United fan community in the world. And that starts to build relationships because I think that modern football clubs are seen as businesses who take fans for granted, who increase ticket prices, who don't interact with fans unless it's a sort of their, their softly, softly approach.

19:52And yet any sponsor is sponsoring the football club because they want fans' eyes. The reason the TV rights go for so much is because they want the fans to buy the subscriptions. Without fans, football falls. And I think that that sort of relationship needs to be fostered in a better way. And that's not just about having a relationship. It's also about how you put your content out. What is it fans want to see? Whereas I think a lot of clubs put out what they think fans want to see. And it tends to be winning team photos and smiling, walking into the training ground. Whereas I think there is lots and lots of things that could be done from a content point of peace.

20:27Let's talk specifically about the United stand. So I think you popped this on your LinkedIn, 19 million views last month. So the number one YouTube football channel globally for long form views, an incredible success story. How much do you know about the audience that you have and are there things that you would really like to know that you don't yet know about the audience um i think with most social media platforms now you can gather the the basics around demograph where they are in the world uh viewing habits um age etc um yeah so i think that that a lot of the information that you're going to want as far as we're concerned um is there I think that what would be useful is to know a little bit more about emerging markets.

21:30I've noticed massively over the last couple of years, there are markets in Africa that are expanding in our audience. And I presume that's probably because of advancements in technology and access to internet and mobile phones, et cetera, and infrastructure. But I think that's the next step for football. So we sort of go hand in hand with that. You look at the way the Club World Cup in the United States is perceived as a failure in Europe, but probably isn't a failure for FIFA, who are completely trying to build different audiences and invite everybody. So I think that side of things is quite interesting.

22:07And from a United standpoint of view, Manchester United, as you say, there are imitators, there are other versions of what you do. People are doing this for all sorts of clubs now, particularly sort of Premier League clubs and the big European clubs. And you only have to sort of flick around YouTube when any of those teams are playing to see the various live streams. With Manchester United, and you referenced current Manchester United form for about the last decade. do you have a sense of whether it's actually been uh good for your business uh the fact that Manchester United haven't been the winning machine that they once were over the last 10 years yeah I think this sort of started a few years ago with the AFTV the Arsenal fan TV channel which I I mean I know Robbie who who set that up and and he's done fantastically well but I've said it to his face I really don't want any association with what you do because I think we're different I don't like the whole Wenger out standing outside the Emirates screaming and shouting because it works and that's your model but ours is a little bit different to that however United have been so bad you're naturally going to fall into especially after match reactions when you've lost again to a team you should be beating you have to give that raw emotional sort of service to your community because otherwise they're like, well, you're clearly not a fan.

23:31But I look at this summer and I always say this, everything's contextual in the sense of growth. So we're bigger than we've ever been at the moment. And when we won the Europa League under Jose Mourinho, we were a lot smaller. So you can't measure it in views, but I think comparable to the size we were then and now, our most watched show would have been winning that Europa League final. And that was just pure happiness at winning something so I don't subscribe to the view that being bad means more views I think what happens is on a particular watch along if you're losing 7-0 to Liverpool a lot of people will come in to laugh at you but will they be there for the Sunday night show reviewing it not necessarily and I look at this summer transfer window and it's painful we we've been we've been trying to sign a player from Brentford for five weeks and we need goalkeepers strikers etc so this is not a good time and I know it would be a lot better this summer for us in relation to content if we were doing the things we need to do so I do accept that when the bad results happen it can lead to a spike but we've always been organic and steady growth anyway so I would rather be from a fan point of view but also rather be climbing a mountain rather than keep having these drop-offs and when you're covering a United game well any game actually and you go live.

24:55From a sort of production point of view, what does good look like? I mean, how aware are you as a game is progressing of what might turn out to be sort of viral moments, stuff that can be clipped up? You're obviously watching, the nature of a game is there's ebbs and flows and exciting bits and sort of less exciting bits where you can be interacting with the audience. What is a measure of good when the final whistle goes? What are you looking back on and thinking about? To be honest, I'm quite fortunate that I've always had editors to do that for me anyway, and they're very good at picking out the bits.

25:36So it's normally an hour or two after the game when I'm on social media and I'll see a clip and I'll go, oh yeah, they've caught that really, really well. I think actually being in front of the camera, it's certainly something that like I had my own show on talk sport for a couple of years I've done mainstream bits I've done um other sort of better when I say better produced I'm just in front of a camera on my own with a camera and I don't have a producer I might have a you know people messaging me about updates on other scores but I have done things where people are in your ears and they're saying talk about this or maybe add that and I've got to be honest I don't like that it just doesn't work for me.

26:13I'd rather just keep hitting the target. And if I score, I score. And if I miss, I miss, and then I'll trust my editor on it. I think when goals go in, you're very aware that your reaction is going to get used. But I think it's a dangerous road to go down when you start trying to produce it yourself or overact or anything like that, especially when I've been doing it as long as I have. I think that people would see through it. I mean, I will always concede that there are the odd analogies that I may have thought about in the previous few weeks or months that I'll try and memorize. But it's very rare that you can do that, especially in a Manchester United game.

26:49It's very, very rare. So yeah, I tend to just leave it to the editors to pick out the bits. And they deserve the plaudits for watching me for two hours trying to find little bits like that. You talked about this earlier, but it's pretty relentless what you do. It feels to me like You're on this sort of hamster wheel of content and also having opinions, takes on whatever the issue of the day might be, whether that is the game you've just watched or the transfer market or the new stadium at Manchester United, any of the sort of, you know, the noise around Old Trafford. And from your point of view, we're just through a very, very long season.

27:33There's obviously football still happening. But during this sort of slightly more downtime, is it the sort of cadence of a football club where you are using this time, June, July, to sort of do some planning, work out what the next season looks like, work out how you evolve what you're doing? I definitely thought that would be the case. And then I realized very quickly that, and I was a little bit naive to this, but I suppose I wasn't in the sense of an audience. Like for me, when the season ends, it's a transfer window and I've always been really into that. I didn't realize our audience would be.

28:10So it becomes really busy on that in a very different way. So if a game's on, that's going to take up four or five hours of your day. In the summer transfer window, it might be, we're about to sign this player. We need to talk about it now. and that could be 11 o 'clock at night or 7 o 'clock in the morning. So it doesn't slow down. It just becomes a different type of busy. And actually, the funny thing is, I think you can structure your week better when the season starts because you know when the games are going to kick off and you know there's not going to be a transfer story dropping. But you're right.

28:42It is a time that we do try to sort of plan for the next season, especially around anything that we want to implement. It always looks good if you start the new season with a different type of graphic or a different type of thumbnail. Or if you're going to bring new staff in, it's probably a good time to bring them in in the transfer window and prep them for that as well. But I would say, to be honest, we're always looking at that throughout the 12 months and grabbing what opportunities we can. Because it can just get really silly around Manchester United. I mean, with the sale and all sorts of stuff over the last few years, there's been a lot of things that have gone on off the pitch that you just can't plan for.

29:20I want to talk a bit about YouTube as a platform, as your sort of, I guess, primary platform. I guess that's how you would describe it. And we have been talking about this a lot in a sports industry context where YouTube, you know, for some seems to have sort of been hiding in plain sight as this sort of incredibly versatile global platform. And they're really certainly over the last 18 months, I think the sports industry has really started to wake up to the possibilities of YouTube in all sorts of ways. From your point of view, as somebody who has, you know, millions of subscribers on that platform, how closely are you working with YouTube itself on, you know, developing what you do, sort of working with the platform, maximizing, optimizing on it?

30:10And what would you say are some of the big pros and maybe a couple of the cons of the platform as it is at the moment? Yeah, I think the big pro is that it's always been seen and still is quite an inclusive platform with very few barriers as long as you're operating within the regulations. organizations so what I mean by that is is that it's for me personally it has become a tv channel which is a which which it wasn't when we started off so I I was actually down in London a few weeks ago doing um I mean obviously YouTube's a global business so when I say working with YouTube this is YouTube UK and um we were doing a bit of a they were doing a whole day in front of um brands and everything like that and they asked me to go and just just talk about it a little bit and the big message I was putting out there was that YouTube is watched more than iPlayer.

31:06It's watched more than Netflix. It's basically a TV channel. And I certainly consume it like that. I'll put it on at 10 o 'clock at night and I might be watching Stephen Hendry's channel. And then I might be watching something about how to, you know, change a tap or something like that, or, you know, a Game of Thrones review show or something like that. You can just get lost in it. We got a little, insight into your world there Mark with those three examples I think we can you know the essays will be written on exactly what you said there snooker taps and game of thrones yeah I was just trying to think off the top of my head what what's the latest thing I've been watching I mean but I I've got like a VR headset and I do like um three uh it's called thrill of the fight too and it's like proper boxing um so I'm like I keep losing games and winning games so I'll go on YouTube and listen to people talking about that.