Creating great video for fans comes down to storytelling, no matter the platform

If you love sport, you know that feeling when you can’t watch something live.

You’re checking your phone, but avoiding WhatsApp, trying not to see the score. Once you know, the moment’s gone.

That’s the thing about sport. Unlike so much of the broadcast and entertainment industry, it still has a real-time pull. You either see it as it happens, or you’re catching up.

But what has changed massively, in line with our shifting media landscape, is what happens after that moment.

Sport doesn’t just live on the pitch. It carries on beyond the live broadcast to show up on your feed, in group chats, in clips your mates send to you. You might watch the same moment five different ways in the space of an hour. And then again, a week later, when it pops back up.

So, the job now isn’t just capturing the moment. It’s understanding how that moment travels across platforms.

You can’t just “put it on TikTok”

One of the things I still hear a lot is: “Can we use this on TikTok as well?”

And I get it. Everyone wants their content to go further. But it’s kind of missing the point. TikTok isn’t just another place to put something. It’s a completely different way of watching. Same with Instagram, YouTube and broadcast.

When I’m watching a game on TV, I’m settled in. You’ve got time to enjoy the moment, the commentary, the replays, the suspense. You expect it to look good. You expect it to feel big.

On TikTok, it’s the opposite. It’s immediate. It’s instinctive. It’s often the messy, emotional bit that cuts through, like the raw celebration after a key extra-time goal.

Instagram sits somewhere else again. That’s where fans shape identity a bit more, with what they share and what they align themselves with.

So, it’s not about resizing the same content and pushing it out everywhere. It’s about asking: what does this moment need to convey on each platform?

That’s how we need to look at the reframing.

Sport gives you the drama, but story makes it stick

The beauty of sport is that the drama’s already there. You don’t have to manufacture it. But people care because of the story around it. Rivalries, history, context. The sense that this is part of something bigger.

That’s what the best teams and organisations understand really well.

Formula 1 is world class in this respect. Every piece of marketing and content feels connected. Whether it’s on broadcast, social, or streaming, it all feels like it belongs to the same world.

They don’t treat platforms as separate outputs. They treat them as different ways of telling the same story.

You see it in football too. Clubs like Arsenal are really good at this. After a game, you’ll get completely different types of content depending on what you’re watching - raw fan reactions, polished edits or long-form breakdowns - it all still feels like them.

It’s consistent, without being repetitive.

Fans don’t just watch, they carry the story on

The other thing that’s changed is how much fans are part of it all.

It’s not just about watching a game and talking about it the next day. It’s constant.

Group chats going off mid-match. Clips flying around straight after. People pulling up moments from years ago because they suddenly feel relevant again.

You see it all the time. Something happens in a game, and suddenly someone’s sharing a clip from 10, 15, 20 years ago that feels like a perfect parallel.

That’s what’s interesting. Moments don’t disappear in sport, they boomerang.

If you think about that properly, it changes how you create content. You’re not just making something for now. You’re making something that might resurface later, in a completely different context.

You’ve got to think about this at the start

Where teams tend to fall down on social is when this all gets bolted on at the end.

You’ve got your broadcast masterpiece, and only then do we ask, “right, how do we cut this for social?” At that point, you’ve already compromised.

If you want content to really work across platforms, you’ve got to think about it from the beginning. How it’s shot. What you capture. The different layers within it.

It’s the art of storytelling.

That can feel like more effort, but producing with an eye on multi-platform needs can result in costs saved in the long-term. If you don’t, you’ll end up with content that kind of works everywhere, but doesn’t really resonate anywhere.

It all comes back to story

For me, that’s the thing that doesn’t change. Formats will shift. Platforms will come and go. The way people watch will keep evolving.

But if the story’s there - if it actually means something to people - it will carry across time and platforms.

I still think about certain games like they happened yesterday. Who I was with, how it felt, what it meant at the time. That’s what you’re trying to tap into.

Fans don’t really care about formats or platforms. They care about moments and the stories that make those moments matter. That’s what content needs to tap into.

Matt Buckle is partner and managing director at Transmission