It’s no coincidence that as our attention capability shrinks so too are formats in which to watch stuff.
The new Celebrity Traitors is much applauded by audiences, luvvies, pundits but it is an old-fashioned format in the wider sense, offering the audience insufferably boring content (the tasks) with highly addictive, compelling content (the round table).
Imagine if they cut out all the boring bits and focused on the juicy, catty, duplicitous exposés of the wretchedness of the human condition instead, the ‘murders’, the plotting, the Faithful reactions when they get unfairly booted off the show.
Now imagine the same reductive format scenario in a football context where at least 6/10s of match time is spent disengaged, higher if you are a Blackpool fan.
Earlier this year the Baller League, a six-a-side league, launched in the UK.
Betting companies were first to pick up on the new 30-minute, 11-week league phenomenon, with Paddy Power keen to explain to its customers the rules, namechecking the lead ambassador ‘YouTube behemoth’ KSI and where to watch live streams on Sky, Twitch and YouTube.
Early fan engagement stats for the new footy format look promising, with just under a million hours watched by 115k viewers.
To put the numbers in context, major football matches like England vs Netherlands Euro 2024 semi-final peaked at 21.6 million viewers.
Even niche emerging sports leagues, like the BKT United Rugby Championship drew 3.4 million viewers in the peak of 2024.
So how can the Baller League be perceived as a success story when the KSI KPIs are instantly diminished by the above comparisons?
Depth is increasingly more important than breadth, massive vanity metrics like Superbowl 25’s peak 137.7 million viewership are not as meaningful as influencer metrics from ‘creative entrepreneurs’ like Jade Beason, recently interviewed on the BBC’s Media Show, who has monetised her 10k subscribers through curated content, shifting as Jade calls it, ‘from reach to resonance’. Content can directly convert to cash in hyper-targeted campaigns delivered by credible influencers.
Meanwhile in the Ballers League there are a host of credible influencers and pundits, not just backing the format but participating in the teams, with former Chelsea captain John Terry’s 26ers pitted against Brixton rapper Dave’s Santan FC.
So the reported 990,629 hours of fan engagement suggests people are sticking around for multiple hours over those two matchdays, not just tuning in briefly, which is often the case in longer form football coverage.
The equivalent of a 115k audience in the entertainment arena would be a mid-tier TV show like Love Island: Aftersun (200k overnight viewers), Celebrity Googlebox Repeats on E4 (130k viewers), Premier League Highlights on Quest (200k viewers).
When you look at a global audience for niche content, the mouse begins to roar. Audiences start to scale rapidly.
Trainspotter Francis Bourgeois (real name Luke Nicholson from Willesden, north London) whose choo-choos reactions, showing infectious glee and delight at passing locomotives have awarded him a TikTok audience of 5 million.
Gen Z TikTok star Italian Bach shares comedy videos, has more than 3 million highly-engaged followers and is now on the physical comedy circuit with a podcast tour called Outta This World, charging £70 a ticket for a Meet and Greet package at the Bristol Beacon, for example.
If the Ballers League aim is to attract younger audiences and globalise niche sports content, then perhaps next season the rightsholders should engage with Francois Bourgeois, Italian Bach and Jade Beason et al, who own hyper-engaged, content-to-cash converting fanbases. Maybe get their fans to come up with the name of the Baller League teams!
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