Why we set up the Brothers & Sisters Sports Club agency

Brothers and Sisters was founded by former Sky Creative director Andy Fowler in 2006, with the pay-TV broadcaster as its founding client. 

Since then it worked with Sky for almost two decades, playing a key part in creating the Sky Sports brand and launching its Premier League coverage each season, before more recently working TNT Sports since its launch in the UK. However, it is only now that Fowler, along with CEO Matthew Charlton and new chair of the Brothers & Sisters Sports Club Robert Tansey, has decided to launch a bespoke sport-focused division of the agency.

Brothers & Sisters Sports Club announced itself earlier this month with WTA Ventures as an opening client, and the TNT Sports partnership to also move over to the new agency. 

Fowler believes the company’s long history with UK sport broadcasters is exportable to other broadcasters, as well as rights holders and brands, with lessons from this work relevant for the whole industry. Most importantly that, “The sport industry is awash with data, and creativity has become undervalued. The intangible value of creativity can bring results outside of the norm.”

While many will know Brothers & Sisters for its work with broadcasters, it also works with brands such as Centre Parcs and We Buy Any Car, and has helped Grenfell United, the football club set up by those affected by the Grenfell disaster. For We Buy Any Car it created a TV jingle with Micah Richards, which many will have seen before Sky Sports’ Premier League coverage, that fans have adapted into terrace songs at Premier League matches.

Charlton believes this shows that fandom is a similar phenomenon across broadcasters, rights holders, and brands - although does say that broadcasters around the globe are likely to be the Sports Club’s, “sweetspot”.

He points out that advertising rights is vital for the sport industry, noting, “If you pay £2bn for rights, then you need to turn them into £4bn of value or it’s a bad deal. At some point you have to pass cost onto the consumer, and that’s where creativity is powerful to convince people.” 

He adds, “Broadcast is fundamental, and we want it to stay that way.”

Tansey, who was a brand director at Sky for nearly 15 years, makes clear that advertising rights isn’t necessarily the job of the broadcaster, “The fundamental challenge stays the same whether it’s broadcasters or rights holders – we have to bring the product to life,” and that, “There’s an opportunity to work directly with rights holders to make the most of deals.

“Broadcasters may not have the in-house capability [to market rights effectively], so rights holders could offer this as part of the rights acquisition.”

With this in mind, the trio believe that there is a shortage of agencies that aren’t specialised on the activation level, nor are one of the huge agencies that offer all-encompassing services, and especially few that come from the broadcast side of the industry.

Looking ahead, they have a variety of hopes for what Brothers & Sisters Sports Club will look like in a year’s time, Fowler saying, “The dream would be that we’re an agency that there’s a lot of chatter about,” Tansey aiming, “to have done a really brilliant campaign for a non-UK rights holder or broadcaster,” and Charlton that it is, “helping to spearhead the transformational power of sport – like our work with Grenfell.”