HITS DIFFERENT
Surrey CCC asked Curveball to tell the story of their T20 season at The Kia Oval through a behind-the-scenes video series. How could we bring fans closer to the action and the players themselves?

Developed as an eight-part series, seven episodes around their T20 home games and one pre-season episode that introduced the players and staff as well as their preparations for the season. For the in-season episodes we picked a theme for each game to fit in and around the match action; subjects included Surrey Pride, the coaches methods, players’ preparations, family day and historic rivalries.
The crew on the ground consisted of a pitchside camera focusing solely on match action, a second camera focusing on match action through the crowd and from various iconic spots within The Kia Oval, two dedicated fan cameras capturing the all-important reactions / atmos and a producer who was directing the crew. We had GoPros on the benches and drones in the sky (when allowed!) to capture moments our crew might have missed.
Each episode was filmed, edited and published within 24 hours of the match, using only footage shot on-site. Delivered for YouTube with a bespoke thumbnail and 60-second hype promo that gave a glimpse of what was to come in the episode.
Social is at the heart of the campaign and it was vital to make the most out of all the incredible footage we were capturing. Alongside the full episodes we delivered real-time vertical videos for Instagram Reels and TikTok, taken straight from the camera, edited at the ground and published within minutes of it happening. Broadcast quality content at the speed of social.
We kicked things off with several group workshops with the client’s in-house team, talking through their new brand and what they want to achieve on social. These were a mix of on-site and in-office meetings to get a real understanding of what they currently do and why they’ve decided to change it up; what’s working and what’s not?
The previous strategy wasn’t working despite there being a huge global demand for their products, information and lifestyle. Who were the other companies in their direct and in-direct market space and how were they finding success? We highlighted potential direct competitors, providing a thorough report on how they were finding success. Beyond companies in the outdoors space, we looked at other successful pages across social and how their wins could be translated to Wiggle and implemented by the team
The information gathered from the workshops and competitor analysis allowed us to build a strategy that would change the face of their social media accounts. It focused on engaging with and being part of an already hyper-engaged outdoors community as well as creating content specifically for them, to think and create from the mindset of their audience. The Instagram, TikTok and YouTube playbooks we created for Wiggle had platform-specific best practices and instructions to increase valued engagements, and ultimately growth
The Wiggle team saw extraordinary results from the social playbooks and content strategy in the first six months since the rebrand. In an incredibly short time, the they have developed a distinct tone of voice that runs their content ideas and post copy. Successful strands have been created and the focus has moved from filming indoors to getting out in the elements and showing products in action. Outdoors people now come to the page to learn of new tips, tricks and products and stay for the outgoing brand personality
Audi have joined Sky Sports as their innovation partner and Curveball were brought on board to create some engaging digital content to help showcase and promote this partnership across a number of different sports. The brief was that it was talent-led and focussing on the theme of innovation.
After working with Sky and Audi to define the best ideas for each sport, we created documents containing run orders, camera plans, look and feel and schedules for the shoot and post-production. We also organised location bookings, wardrobe, branding, catering and transport.
Each production involved a full day of shooting, with Curveball providing cameras, drones, lighting, directors, producers and runners. Each episode was a completely different set up so required bespoke crews and equipment.
The videos were delivered as master edits (around 8 minutes) and we provided a large suite of social cutdowns and talent-specific edits. The content was shared by the talent (cricketers Chris Jordan and Eoin Morgan and Footballers Mason Mount and Beth Meade) as well as Audi and the various Sky Sports social channels.
To bring Hockey to new audiences we realised we needed to build stars and tell their stories in engaging and easily consumable ways. Professional hockey is largely focused around the international game so we decided to focus their life stories around that moment of walking out on the pitch to represent their country.
We were retained by Watch.Hockey to use social campaigns and digital content to promote their new OTT platform. In addition to building hyper-engaged communities within the social channels, it also meant providing brilliant content that was exclusive to the app. We knew the hardcore fanbase wasn’t huge, so we needed to make sure that anything we created was also bringing people deeper into the Hockey ecosystem and enticing them to stick around. This series was therefore built around high production values that weren’t previously common in the sport and focused on insightful storytelling narratives that encouraged people to become more invested in what happens next.
Our team on the ground at major Hockey events will plan ahead with the participant nations to book time with one of their major players. We find an area within the stadium and set it up with coloured lights to create a background that represent the featured nations. Players are asked bespoke questions about their lives and careers and we make sure we have a specified camera on them during their next match and training session for paint.
We create a long-form edit that is released exclusively on the Watch.Hockey app. We also create social media cut downs to help drive people to the full episode on thefaEQ app and create short-form clips to give to the player, national team and international federation to promote the player, the content and the app.
We filmed 10 interviews on-site at the IBF World Championships, grabbing bowlers and bringing them to a three-camera interview space that we had prepared for them. We used MC Aperture coloured lights to change an empty white room into a branded backdrop.
To really take the interviews to the next level, we created animated illustrations and used clips / photography from their social media channels to highlight key moments in each bowler’s life. A bespoke illustrated thumbnail / poster was created for each episode.
We created a series promo to launch the campaign and then published long and short versions for each bowler dependent on the social platform it was going on. Every bowler was given an asset to share on their personal social platforms. In total the series hit more than 100k views and is the best-performing social media series in bowling.
We created a bespoke announcement promo that informed fans of what was to come in a creative way. Using footage from our promo shoots with the fighters, we illustrated and transitioned to hero shots throughout to make it pop and draw the attention to the big names.
Alongside the launch promos, we created a ‘Welcome to BOXXER’ campaign on social. All 20 fighters had their own creative design to post on their social channels, as well as BOXXER’s, to push the announcement as far as possible and keep all the social feeds in sync.
From training days with Chris Eubank Jr to creative promo shoots with the BOXXER Series fighters, we filmed and edited social-first content that helped promote upcoming fight nights on Sky Sports Boxing.
We created pre-fight content from promos to fight posters to mini docs, and then when fight week hit we had a full team of professional content creators on the ground to turn around social-first content and live social producers publishing all the content in real-time.
The client came to us looking to create their master piece of content ahead of the 2022 Women’s Euros, in line with their campaign. Our idea was to create an origin story with Millie Bright that showed her journey to the top and how it inspires the next generation of women footballers.
The production involved two shoot days; one with Millie Bright to get hero and training shots, one inside a Greene King pub with actors to create the end scene of a young girl watching Millie on the big screen.
To tie the piece together we needed to visualise Millie’s journey from watching football on TV as a child to playing on the streets against boys to representing her country as a professional. We did this by creating and then animating a collection of comic-book illustrations that showed key moments in her life, creating an emotional connection between the viewer and the story / athlete.
The video was delivered in 60”, 30” and 15” versions in a variety of sizes so that it was ready to post on all social platforms. Every Greene King pub in the country published it on their social accounts and Millie Bright posted it on the eve of the tournament, receiving lots of positive comments about her story.
Pre-tournament posters, hero designs, illustrations and infographics. Everything we created for the IBF World Championships was intended to make people stop scrolling and take in the historic moments from the tournament.
Everything from IG Reels / Story and TikTok trends to hype promos and reactive graphic design, we created it on-site and published within minutes.
Our mission was to show the bowlers as something they’d never been seen as before: elite-level athletes. We had a team on the ground at Dubai Expo filming the finals live and then turning around short-form social content from the footage in real-time.
8.6m video views. 147k social media engagements. 8909% increase on the previous IBF World Championships in 2019. World-class content with actual results to show for it.
Creating archive-led and original creative promos to help promote upcoming fights and events. We use the unique characteristics of each fighter to tell their story in a number of different ways.
So far we’ve created two mini docs for PFL. The first was Ricky Hatton Meets Brendan Loughnane that looked at the history of combat sports in Manchester and their own personal journeys to the top. The second was ‘A Day In The Life w/ Brendan Loughnane’, taking him around Manchester to see his mum, coaches and learn more about the streets that made him.
Shooting and editing fight breakdowns and explainers with MMA legend Dan Hardy, delivering short and long-form videos for all social platforms.
PFL held two historic events in the UK in August 2022, we provided them with creative video support during both fight weeks. We filmed and edited content for social & broadcast throughout the week, including capturing key moments on fight night and getting angles the broadcast don’t see.
Before the tournament started we filmed, produced and edited a hype promo telling the story of Netherlands’ dominance and other nations’ chance to take their crown… Good luck. As well as teaser video content, we created a infographic for all 16 nations competing that really kicked off the campaign from a visual point of view.
We produced bespoke illustrations, hero artwork, infographics and branded designs to celebrate key players, fixtures and moments before, during and after the tournament.
We started with remote social media, clipping and community management for all of the Pool fixtures. Then we had aN expert team creating real-time social video content on the ground for the knockout stages. This allowed us to bring fans who couldn’t be there closer to the action and capture moments not seen on the broadcast.
The team on the ground captured content from interviews, training and matches to create social-first video content in real-time. This ranged from IG Reels and TikToks of key moments to our ‘Pitchside’ and ‘Player Cam’ series to personality-led interview series called ‘Playing For My Nation’.
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