Welcome to The Takeaway, Trippant’s new-look round-up of essential stories on communications trends in sport, entertainment and experience.
This week: Trippant has a new podcast, Taylor Swift has a new boyfriend in the NFL, Hollywood’s writers have a new working agreement and EA Sports has a new football game that’s different from the old one in one commercially significant way. Welcome to The Story Board — The Sports Storytellers Podcast
Here’s a little announcement from Trippant — we’re releasing our first ever original podcast.
The Story Board is a series about sport and storytelling, where Trippant head of content Eoin Connolly talks to journalists and authors, filmmakers, media and comms professionals, innovative creators and campaigners about how narratives are shaped and experienced through sport in a fast-changing cultural environment.
First up is Richard Ayers, founder of immersive theatre company Rematch, who talks about how its warmly received Rumble in the Jungle show has altered perceptions of live sports experiences and the future of nostalgia.
Other guests already confirmed include sports media authority Peter Hutton, wk9omen’s sports campaigner turned Netflix documentary director Sue Anstiss, Goal Click founder Matthew Barrett, and the actor, comedian and football writer James McNicholas.
It’ll be rolling out imminently across all the usual podcast channels so please do listen, like, share and subscribe.
The Verge on Spotify’s translation experiment
Despite the growth of the medium itself, Spotify’s heavy investment in exclusive podcast content has not yet provided a decisive competitive edge.
For all that, the company is still pushing to innovate in the space. Its latest venture is an AI-powered translation solution that captures the voices of hosts and guests and translates them into other languages. The possibilities, and potential headaches, are easy enough to understand.
The New York Times on Taylor Swift x Travis Kelce
You might have heard: Travis Kelce has got a girlfriend.
The Kansas City Chiefs tight end is all but officially the new man on Taylor Swift’s arm. He is among the most recognisable and marketable players in the NFL but dating the world’s biggest pop star could well change his life, and his career, in ways he will only have begun to contemplate.
Forbes on the Rolling Stones’ trip to the plate
In other sport and music crossovers, the Rolling Stones have agree a partnership with Major League Baseball to promote their latest album, Hackney Diamonds.
The legendary rockers have issued 30 collectible editions of the record in ‘baseball white’ vinyl with individual branding for each of the league’s teams on the sleeve.
Variety on the end of the Hollywood writers’ strike
US film and television writers are going back to work. Their union, the Writers Guild of America, has confirmed a new three-year agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after securing concessions on residual payments and more transparent audience numbers from streaming platforms, minimum sizes for development writing teams, and guidelines around AI use.
Daytime and late-night talkshows will return within days, though many other scripted shows remain on hold with Hollywood’s actors still on strike. In the meantime, the episode has outlined wider debates around the value of labour, the source of creativity and the impact of technology.
Wired shares the confessions of a viral AI writer
Canadian journalist and novelist Vauhini Vara got curious early about the potential of chatbots. After reporting on the leaders of AI companies she began exploring the capabilities of generative text systems such as GPT-3, using them to ‘co-author’ pieces like ‘Ghosts’, her celebrated 2021 essay on grief and the death of her sister.
Yet however well she has been able to harness these tools, she cannot shake her uncertainty about their implications for the writing craft.
The BBC unveils the future of UK free-to-air television
The big beasts of British terrestrial television are all set for a post-aerial future. Freely is a new service that will offer live channels from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 over broadband in a single hub when it launches in 2024.
Following the rise of FAST [free ad-supported streaming television] channels within the last year or so, it promises to further erase the lines between traditional TV and streaming.
Sky and Esports Insider on Fifa’s video game test
Late September has, over the past couple of decades, become an important annual milestone for a large cohort of football fans worldwide, as they dive into the latest edition of a market-leading EA Sports video game.
From the mid-90s until this year, that meant ‘playing Fifa’. However, a 2022 split is proving especially tricky for the sport’s world governing body. EA is pressing on not just with a revamped, official licence-packed series — EA Sports FC — but also an independent global esports competition that will launch in the spring of 2024. Meanwhile, with Fifa yet to find a replacement development partner, EA has also scrubbed all previous editions of the game from digital stores on every platform.
Ad Age on a Leagues Cup boost for MLS
The summer of 2023 was pretty good to Major League Soccer. Lionel Messi’s arrival at a hitherto struggling Inter Miami created the biggest story in American sport, one that celebrities across the country wanted to take part in as the world looked on.
And MLS had put itself into a good position to capitalise. The Leagues Cup, the midseason tournament it runs with Mexico’s Liga MX, afforded Messi and his new teammates an unexpected early opportunity for success. Ahead of the 2026 Fifa World Cup in the region, it also gave league partners a platform to benefit from the sport’s burgeoning local profile.
GQ talks to Mark Cuban
As the owner of basketball’s Dallas Mavericks and a co-host and investor on Shark Tank — the US version of high-pressure pitch show Dragon’s Den — Mark Cuban has developed a reputation as one of America’s more accessible billionaires.
So he was a good fit for the launch edition of GQ Clout — the magazine’s interview series on ‘productivity and success’ — where he discussed a colourful career and his attempts to disrupt Big Pharma.
Trippant champions people and storytelling to grow businesses across sport, entertainment, and experience. If you want to see what we can do for you, head to our website.
