Why Sky & Ad Hoc took a Mission To Burnley

Burnley is the latest football club to have a behind-the-scenes docuseries focusing on it, joining the likes of Manchester City, Arsenal, Newcastle United, Sunderland, and more.

With the format proliferating in football, and plenty of other sports, it was the combination of an historic club and area with new ownership and manager Vincent Kompany that drew Sky and production company Ad Hoc Films, who it partnered with on the project, to the Clarets.

American firm ALK Capital took over the club shortly before the documentary began filming, and showrunner and co-founder of Ad Hoc Films, Mat Hodgson, told Broadcast Sport, “An American ownership - spearheaded by [club chairman] Alan Pace -  in this locale isn’t something you might expect, but even more unexpected is the manner in which they threw themselves into it with vigour and purpose. And then, of course, Vincent Kompany, with all that he brings, coming in was a further captivating layer to the whole scenario.”

Ad Hoc producer and fellow co-founder Daniel Glynn added: “Foreign owners coming into a major British club with lofty ambitions for its future, it’s a story we’d been able to capture this way only once before [in The Four Year Plan, which followed QPR’s promotion push] with eye opening results and given we’d been approached with the promise of pretty much full access to everything. It was too good an opportunity to miss.”

Getting full access was important to Sky too, with head of co-production commissioning, Jack Oliver, saying, “Confident this series would have a strength of storytelling and an integrity, we knew we didn’t want a sanitised brand extending docuseries but ‘the story behind the story’.”

He added, “We had the pleasure of meeting with Alan and respected the fact he also wanted to fully consider Skys motivations for the series. It was genuinely about unique storytelling of a footballing club from the inside that excited us, the fact Burnley had a chance of promotion was a cherry on the cake.”

Glynn continued, “Many more clubs are opening their doors to a camera crew but its often very tightly controlled, and audiences just instinctively know when that has happened when they see the end result… I think people will be surprised just how close we get. I joked with showrunner Matt Hodgson the other day that it’s only taken us a decade and a half to make a proper sequel to our QPR film [The Four Year Plan] a film that had a real warts and all approach, with a similar storyline.”

However, despite Burnley’s willing this still took work to grow the relationship, with Glynn noting, “You can’t just point a camera in someone’s face and expect them to act naturally or to be able to craft an honest narrative together in the edit. People need to feel comfortable and you need a structure and a shared understanding of what you’re setting out to achieve to put people at ease.

“Burnley were going to let our cameras move very freely through the corridors, the boardrooms, in the cars, the locker rooms and at half time team talks and they were true to their word in the end. We’ve been able to capture real reactions and moments as they happen and to tell a story as much as possible in the moment. It’s why we tend to make our observational doc films without narrators or voiceover. It’s harder to make them without a narrator, but they just feel more honest and satisfying this way personally.”

Hodgson concurred: “It can be hard to enter a football club with all its departments, and by nature they have to ring-fence a little. That is how sporting entities often have to operate. But we worked hard to earn trust and they were open to a belief in what we were looking to achieve.”

On aspect of the story where this relationship was particularly important was ALK Capital’s religion, Mormonism, and how it was portrayed. Hodgson said: “It’s part of who the ownership group are and that’s to be embraced from a story/character point of view, but we also couldn’t allow it to side-track or feel alien from the main story here. It’s only touched upon when relating to what the owners are experiencing through the football and I hope we got the balance right.”

The group now hope that football fans appreciate this close-up insight into a club bouncing back from the low of relegation, as well as those who don’t follow the sport so closely. Hodgson explained, “Sport is a fantastic prism through which you can explore the human condition, with all its ups and downs, and that was our aim here.”

Glynn summed it up, “It’s a very raw insight into the running of a major club and a lot more beside. Football is a truly brutal business, full of dazzling highs and crushing lows. I hope people enjoy this journey not only for all its insights but also but also because its entertaining. It’s uncomfortable, often funny and a very emotional watch.”

Mission To Burnley is available on Now and Sky Documentaries from 10 August.