The rise of digital & social media have given creators incredible tools to find innovative ways to present highlights content.
When I started in the sports broadcast industry, there was really only one way that sports highlights were being presented, the SportsCenter-style voiced-over highlights package. While there's still a place for that in today's media landscape, the availability of new technologies makes it possible to find more creative ways to tell those stories. And the feedback from the consumer and fan tells us that there are perhaps better ways to reach them.
Here we're going to look at 5 innovative ways to present sports highlights.
Condensed Games & Long Form Highlights
There is nothing like watching a game or event live, but sometimes there's just so much time between action it can be hard to enjoy. Condensed games and long form highlights, like those found on YouTube, can be a great way to watch a game. While you don't necessarily get real feel of all of the drama the way that it unfolded, you can see all of the action (or relevant action) in a fraction of the time the game took to play out in real time.
Highlights Hype
On the other end of the spectrum, you have what I call "Highlights Hype" videos. These are the kind of videos that condense plays down to the most important parts, they're usually cut to fast-paced music, sometimes have a graphic component.
At the Ryder Cup in 2021 we produced a lot of this style of highlight. Oftentimes this is a great option to get a highlight to be within a minute in order to optimize for social media. If a typical golf shot takes roughly :15 seconds, we can only get four shots inside of a minute, but if we quick-cut those shots down to only the most important parts (impact, result, reaction), we might be able to fit double or triple that number within the same duration.
Stories Format
We're seeing more and more of this kind of storytelling. Stories became popular initially on Instagram, but many sports apps are including the format, and it's a great one for telling curated stories. I love the fact that it includes highlights, but isn't completely dependent on them. When I look at an NFL team stories I usually see video from each quarter of select plays, and at the end of each quarter a graphic of how the quarter ended.
Apps like the MLB app and the PGA TOUR app have rolled out stories functions within their apps themselves, and I think this is a great way to tell the story of a game with mixed media elements.
Highlights in Motion
I haven't seen too many examples of this, but using highlights within motion graphics can be a visually appealing way to make your packages stand out. And there's the additional benefit of being able to use interesting animations and text to tell a story.
I created this this mock up for to tell the story of a player who would qualify for the 2023 Ryder Cup team and the purpose is to tell a story announcing that he qualified for the event, and giving a little context to how he qualified and his past performance in the Ryder Cup.
TikTok-Style
This is something else I haven't really seen, but that would be really interesting. One of the appeals of TikTok and Reels on Instagram is some user control. I get to decide when I advance to the next video.
Imagine a sports app (like NFL or NBC Sports) where next to all of your game scores is a highlights button. When you click the button, it takes you to a TikTok style interface presenting a series of curated video content specific to that game. As a user, you swipe up to get to the next clip, taking no action automatically replays that moment - giving the user replay control without having to scrub. Each clip is a single moment and users would be able to comment on each clip. When you get to the last moment in the series the next swipe up takes you back to the scores. Here is an example of what that might look like:
Similar to the Stories Format, a TikTok style format would have a natural experience because of user familiarity with navigating Reels and TikToks.
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