Cydney Barge

My article looking into football in the spotlight of the general election campaigns, has been published today in Roar news. This looks into how football has been used as a political chip during the election, with various policies appearing in manifestos as well as appearances at clubs during the campaign trail. I explore the demographic political parties are hoping to attract with this, as well as its chance of success. https://lnkd.in/e5ybuCwv

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Key Reactive PR Opportunities this Summer: With a summer full of political debates and sports tournaments I am sharing what topics are top of my list when considering reactive opportunities for clients. 1. The UK General Election - on 4th July the UK general election will be held and with political debates making the news daily, it's a great chance to spot a reactive opportunity. 2. The Paris Olympics - the Olympics will commence this month in Paris and with the sporting tournament set to generate plenty of talking points, it is definitely one to keep an eye on. 3. The US Presidential Election - ahead of November's presidential election, Biden and Trump's head-to-head battle is sparking various conversations, from old age and health to opposing political policies. 4. The European Championships - major football tournaments always grab the attention of fans worldwide and this Euros is no different. The tournament provides talking points about football-related increases in domestic violence, player and managerial health concerns and WAG culture. What reactive opportunities have you been enjoying this summer?

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⚽ This week and next TheBusinessDesk.com in the North West will be previewing the start of the new 2024/25 football season with a guide to the financial strengths and weaknesses of the region’s professional clubs. ⚽ Starting tomorrow with analysis of the three Lancashire clubs in the EFL Championship, Blackburn Rovers Football Club, Burnley Football Club and Preston North End FC, we will then look at the five regional clubs in League One on Wednesday, the seven in League Two on Thursday, and then on Friday a special focus on the ambitions of some ambitious clubs further down the pyramid eyeing up new stadiums and potential promotion bids to the EFL (English Football League).   ⚽ Next week we will look at each of the North West’s Premier League giants, all of whom have been in a whirlwind of either takeover speculation or legal wrangling. ⚽ We have already been contacted by fans of clubs in the region with insights and intelligence (and unfounded rumours) about investment and takeover activity. Please get in touch if you have more local knowledge that you are happy to share. ⚽ The stakes are high this season as Sky is paying £187m a year for the rights to screen more than 1000 games across the three EFL divisions, earning each Championship club an additional £2m in income and £400,000 for League One and £200,000 for League Two clubs. 💷 EFL chief executive Trevor Birch said he hoped the exposure would have the knock-on effect of new and better sponsorship activities. 🎰 Many clubs are dependent on income from gambling companies, but the televising of games also could have an effect on match ticket sales with fans opting to stay at home and watch their team rather than attending in person. Thanks very much.

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We are seeing a massive increase in the proportion of our YouTube views coming from TV viewing. With that comes increased retention which is great! But there’s something else we’re seeing. Videos on our channels that have a high proportion of viewership coming from TV (40-50%) all have this drastic drop off in retention (15%) at exactly 35 seconds. I’ve never seen anything like it - but I think we figured it out. When hovering over a thumbnail on TV the video will autoplay with audio. This preview ends at :35. At that moment, the viewer has to take an action, click in, or not. This decision is a deterrent and I suspect many folks move on to something else. Has anyone else noticed this and are there any solutions? We are now adding a second hook with a strong tease at the 30-35 second mark to better entice viewers to click in. Will report back. 🕵‍♂️

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An experimental article from me today on The Sports Gazette, as I attempt to link the ongoing ‘Barclaysmen’ trend to the England team and how Lee Carsley has approached the job so far. Let me know what you think! #England #PremierLeague #sportsmedia #sportsjournalism

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With the ministerial team for the Department of Media, Culture and Sport now decided, we’ve launched our latest insight report to delve deeper into what this means for the UK’s culture agenda and what we can expect. The UK’s arts and culture scene generates £850m for the economy through tourism each year alone, and with the Government having the most state-educated and geographically diverse cohort that we’ve ever seen, the opportunities are there for the taking. 🤝 https://lnkd.in/eQcGpuDT   #LevellingUp #UKCulture #UKPolitics 

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𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐕: 𝐊𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐩 𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐭; 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐍𝐁𝐀 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐣𝐢𝐠 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐇𝐮𝐥𝐮; 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐭 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐧𝐞𝐲 Jurgen Klopp is whining at the scheduling of Liverpool matches. Klopp blames TNT for picking Liverpool for the early Saturday slot, but the real culprit is closer to home. Broadcasters do not call the shots here. The PL designs the packs of rights, broadcasters bid for what is offered. Pack A comprises 32 matches in the early Saturday slot. TNT pays £325m pa for its games, delivering risk-free income for PL clubs, then tries to make a business selling subscriptions. Having designed pack A and taken TNT’s money, it’s a bit rich to blame TNT when they schedule games in their slot. They have no choice. The PL does impose restrictions: each PL team must feature at least once and no PL team more than six times. Liverpool has been picked six times. Don’t like it? Fine, change the rules, but expect and accept less revenue. Of course it is safer for Klopp to blame a broadcaster, than blame the PL for designing the packs, or his Liverpool bosses who signed it off. Anyway, there’s no respite in sight. The next PL contract jumps from 200 to 270 live games, chasing more revenue, so more games will move from 3pm Saturday. Worse, Liverpool has qualified for the Champions’ League. A better strategy would be the Europa League; if you play Thursday night you can’t be picked for early Saturday. Meanwhile, much speculation about NBA rights in the US. Nothing official yet, but ESPN is said to be renewing, with a further “streaming pack” heading to Amazon. No sign of Netflix or Apple. The interesting Amazon point is these rights would sit alongside their NFL weekly game and extend their sporting season by several months, giving hope to European sports bodies that a weekly game of Champions League is not enough for Amazon. The bigger intrigue, however, is Comcast (NBC/Peacock) battling to displace WBD. This would be a boost to Peacock and could work for the NBA who would value the reach of NBC in all homes, something WBD cannot match. This is an existential risk for WBD, beyond TNT affiliate fees. Remember Sports Hulu, and the surprise that ESPN and Fox, the two obvious linchpins, picked WBD over Comcast to join their club? If the NBA rights flip from WBD to NBC, would that be enough to kick out WBD before the venture launches, to extend a late olive branch to NBC? WBD has a last matching right of some form, so it’s not over yet. Finally, much celebration at Disney’s results which showed streaming moved to profitability (+$47m) in the quarter. But hold the champagne. I have argued before that streaming profitability is a weak goal, a long way short of recouping the forgone profitability of the old model of channels and content licensing. Sure, the advent of streaming required a strategic response, but it did not have to be like this.

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Join Westminster Media Forum on the 13th May to discuss The future for the betting and gaming industry in the UK. Our keynote speakers include Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams Nottingham Trent University, Andrew Rhodes Gambling Commission and Sarah Fox Department for Culture, Media and Sport. More information: https://lnkd.in/eyWnM6tA #WMFEVENTS #gamingregulation #gamingpolicy #onlinegambling #gamingregulation #UKgaming #UKgambling #UKbetting #bettingIndustry

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**Why Sports Governing Bodies Should Hire Our Media Graduates** The post below this one is by Cameron Hitt. Cam is a student on our Sport Broadcast MSc cohort this year, he has a month left before he finishes his degree, but he's already been snapped up by Welsh Boxing as their new Content and Comms Officer. He was one of our stand-out students in the 23/24 group, a winner of our "Best Broadcast All-Rounder" award, and someone as comfortable producing a live programme as he is presenting it, so it's not surprising he's gone straight into full-time employment. When it comes to graduate employability Cardiff Metropolitan University leads the way in Wales and we're increasingly seeing our grads jump into roles within media teams at sports governing bodies and pro sports organisations. These positions are a perfect fit for students who bring an "all-court" skill-set to the party, can shoot, edit, script and voice a news package, produce video podcasts, make stylised multi-cam features, edit highlights and use their Adobe skills for digital content creation and social media management across all platforms. What Cameron offers on top of all that is an instinct for a good story and an aptitude for quality storytelling. Cam's work placement this year was with Welsh Cycling, recently rebranded as Beicio Cymru, another exciting and progressive Welsh sports governing body. When Cam told me last year he was doing his final project documentary on an athlete from Carmarthen called Emma Finucane I had to google the name to see who she was!. 9 months on and she's one of Wales' greatest ever Olympians. Cameron's film about Emma will be released soon. So, in his new role he'll be able to utilise all his film-making talents into telling all the amazing stories to be found in Welsh boxing. I guess my point with this post is... if you are a small or medium sized sports governing body looking to grow your profile, raise exposure for your sport, build your brand, shout a bit louder about your events...then we probably have a graduate who can help tell your story. So give me a shout if that's what you need. It's a crowded market place post-Olympics, kids have got so much choice in terms of what sport to take up, what sport to watch on the weekends, and if you are trying to attract Gen Z to your product, then you need some Gen Z creative storytellers on your team. Congratulations WELSH AMATEUR BOXING ASSOCIATION LIMITED on a smart hire w/ Cam. And he’s not the first of our grads to find work in the media dept of an NGB organisation or pro team: Ethan Harris is Content Lead at the FAW, Abigail Godsall is with Welsh Gymnastics , Steffan Alun Leonard has been on a 1 year internship w/ Team Wales, several of our students were interns w/ WRU this year, as well as Dafydd Jones at Cardiff Rugby, Bhavya D. at Glamorgan Cricket, Matthew Leon at Bath Rugby, Richard Early at Aberdeen Football Club & Greg Caine at Liverpool Football Club, all in full time staff positions.

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The UK TV licence fee is going up. But scrapping it will unfairly mean many pay even more. I saw an interview the other day talking about what was being proposed to replace the licence fee. And it’s not good news for anyone. Let’s look at some options :- - Scrap BBC. - Introduce advertising. - make it subscription based. - Introduce a diferent tax to replace it. Out of these.. scrapping the BBC is unlikely. Advertising is unlikely.. as comercial chanels are already struggling, and a subscription fee would not generate enough cash to replace the current licence fee. I know I’d not subscribe to the BBC for £175 per year.. I get virtually zero value from it now. And being more expensive than Netflix is insane for the value I get. So this only leaves creating a new tax. The one being proposed is a ‘Broadband Tax’. Even if you don’t watch live TV or iplayer.. I can almost guarantee everyone needs their broadband. This would widen the net.. and make everyone need to pay this. And even more concerning is to base it on the size of your house.. like council tax. So if your house is in the wrong band.. you could be paying a lot more than this current licence fee. It would be unfairly pushing prices up for an older widowed person living in a larger home. Currently over 75 year olds get free TV licnence.. I would expect this new tax be applied to everyone if the licence fee is scrapped. So sadly.. The idea of only paying for the BBC if you use it is unlikely to happen. At least it’s possible to opt out right now. In the future it could be more expensive, and impossible to legally not pay it. I could imagine many at a senior level at the BBC even welcoming the scrapping of the controversal licence fee because they would widen the net of people needing to pay, while increasing the price .. and be able to chalk it up as a win for consumers. I dont think it’s fair. And the BBC is personally not of value to me as a viewer. But they will likely win this one way or another. What does anyone think to my assessment of this?

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Latest article for The Sports Gazette out, taking a look at the Brits to have made an impact in the NFL over the years. Give it a read and share! https://lnkd.in/edirrv6Y

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Sports next billionaire? My interview with Anthony Joshua was on ITV national and News at Ten. Who do you think will win the fight? Over the years, my interviews with AJ alone have had millions of views and thousands of positive comments. I'm looking to get back to my one on one interview content for TV and video podcasts. If you want to work with me or need a presenter for your production or event- message me. #joshua #anthonyjoshua #sport #presenter #interviews

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Podcasts: People choose different podcasts for different reasons. One is to learn. We are always learning & should always want to learn. The Price of Football provides great insight courtesy of the brilliant Kieran Maguire & Kevin Day. Top guys. Top pod. Top banana!

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It was a pleasure to do some #filming at the #BirminghamCoffeeFestival in Digbeth Estate last year. The footage was for a promotional film for Cue Media, who provided all of the AV for the event. 🎥 As a big coffee fan, it's pretty fair to say that I was in my element! ☕ Cue lots of pretty shots of coffee pouring, milk frothing and cup sipping. 😊 #videoproduction #promotionalvideos #casestudyfilms #explaineranimations #filming #editing #EmbraceVideo #GetVisibleWithVideo

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