Premiership - Blog Posts

This is our new YouTube football show with Ian Wright and Jimmy Bullard: 4 Leagues | 5 topics | 1 show.  We'll be covering more than the top 6.

Ball Street's first YouTube football show with Ian Wright - here's the promo for 451.

So, what is exactly is Ball Street?

Many of you have been asking the same thing.  What is Ball Street?

Ball Street is an idea, a vision, where the size of a club, and the league it is playing in doesn't determine the quality of insight and the level of coverage that the club gets.

We understand that more people are always going to watch Top 6 games, and that things aren't going to be solved overnight, but if we #ClubTogether believe we can change things.

  The start

Ball Street started as a small collective of football fans (including Luton, Huddersfield, Forest, Leeds and Rangers) who shared the view that most proper football fans are missing out.  With a few skills and experiences in production and sports media, we reached out to Ian Wright to see if he wanted to be a part of it.

Fans of most teams would have admired the passion he showed on the pitch, but most important to us, Ian knows the value of all clubs and the role football plays in our culture.

Before our meeting with Ian, he sent this tweet.  The response was fantastic and like he said to us, "we gotta get something done".

Serious question peeps - Who do you support and do you get what you need in terms of media coverage?

January 21, 2013

THANKS 4 amazing response.Most fans not happy with their teams coverage. Me and @ball_street are gonna take this on. Will need help tho!!

January 21, 2013

Having Ian Wright on board is huge for the cause.  He has profile; he has experience; he has contacts; and he wants to be part of something that benefits the game he loves.  But he can't do it alone, and neither can we. We need your help.

  Where are we heading?

It's too early to say exactly what Ball Street will become.  You're with us here on the ground floor as we start out on this journey.

At the very least, we're going to create a digital football show with Ian Wright that provides a platform for, and can be shaped by, fans of all teams. 

Consider our first production a pilot; a co-production created with your help and contributions.  We can shape something that we all want to see.

We don't have the funds of resources of the big boys, just a few quid that we've cobbled together from friends and family.  

We have many ideas about how we can work with fans, bloggers, established media companies and other organisations, and judging by your tweets and emails so do you.  So keep them coming, keep believing and please look out for, watch and contribute to our first show.

UPDATE - the people have spoken

What a 24 hours that has been.  Couldn’t sleep for excitement and my eyes are so sore from reading the whole of Twitter last night.  Thought it would be good to take stock of where we are.

Firstly, this is our company blog.  The company was only formed recently, but Ball Street is an idea that Stuart and I had a good while back. 

“Most fans are underserved by the media”

We loved the response to Wrighty’s tweets.  Many fans see it the same way we do: most teams get 30 seconds of highlights per week with little insight.

@ianwright0 Coventry and about 2 minutes on the football league show. Not enough media for outside prem in general given fan base.

— Gilby (@skybluegilby) January 21, 2013

@ball_street Everton main one, we could win the league and the media would talk about the rest of the prem having a off day.

— Ian McMenemy (@ianmc23)

@ball_street Fantastic! Hopefully more fans get on board and you + fans as a collective can really make a difference.

— Nick Murphy (@NickDRFCMurphy) January 21, 2013

That's just a fraction of the responses, with many supportive of the idea that fans outside the top 6 are underserved by the media.

To clarify, we're not having a pop at the BBC Football League highlights show, or questioning the logic of Sky showing the matches that generate the most viewers.  However, we are questioning the lack of depth and quality of the media coverage outside the top 6 in general and we want to help make a change.

We don’t have all the answers, but we do want to be a part of the solution.  We want to improve the media experience for all fans.

As Wrighty says:-

  Morning all, overwhelmed by the response yesterday. @ball_street are you watching? The people have spoken - lets get something done!!

— Ian Wright (@IanWright0) January 22, 2013

Some old friends and many new friends and followers have rallied to the cause, asking to help out.

We’re meeting up with Wrighty and the others today to discuss what we can do.  This feels like the start of something big.

  Matt, football fan/dreamer