Formats Unpacked: The Athletic's Daily Football Briefing

Hey,

How are you all doing? Before we jump into this week’s format I wanted to remind you that we’ve developed a workshop for SXSW 2025 called Boring 2 Brilliant: B2B Storytelling the Hollywood Way. Could you spare us a vote? It’ll take just a moment of your time. As we’ve pointed out recently on Attention Matters, your competition for attention isn’t your competitors. It’s Netflix. It’s Xbox. It’s TikTok. So you can’t afford to be dull. This workshop helps B2B brands learn from an industry that knows how to capture and hold attention better than most - Hollywood! If you’d like us to run that workshop for your company or organisation, hit that big button below.

OK. On to this week’s unpacking. This week it’s me writing about a format I’ve been a little obsessed with. I explain why below. Enjoy.

What’s it called?

The Daily Football Briefing (podcast by The Athletic)

What’s the format?

A daily football podcast that delivers all the news fans need in ten minutes or less. Every morning subscribers wake up to the important stories about what happened the day before, what’s happening today, and a rundown of what games they can catch on TV tonight. It’s as simple as that. Straight in. Straight out. No messing about. Sounds obvious, right? So why did I have to wait an eternity for someone to make a thing I didn’t know I needed?

What’s the magic that makes it special?

The Football Daily Briefing has a BRILLIANT host in Iain Macintosh. His whimsical delivery is a delight first thing in the morning. Having spent years writing for The Guardian and working on their hugely successful Football Weekly podcast, Iain set up Muddy Knees Media. His first podcast was The Totally Football Show which attracted 5 million downloads in the first two months. Muddy Knees was then acquired by The Athletic which was then acquired by the New York Times. 

All this tells me that Iain isn’t just a brilliant host, he’s a very smart media operator. And very smart media operators are incredibly good at surveying the landscape, noticing what’s missing, and creating formats audiences didn’t know they needed. 

Let’s be clear, as a football fan there’s no shortage of football news to turn to on any given day. Almost every major news publication has a football section. Dedicated radio and TV channels are pumping out news and opinions 24/7. And as I have pointed out previously, numerous YouTube fan channels are clogging up the internet’s arteries. Did I really need more football news? It would appear so! Why I needed this show is written large in its strapline: “All the football news you need in ten minutes or less.”

This is where the magic is. The Daily Football Briefing fits neatly into my morning routine and delivers me the perfect amount of news. I don’t need to sit through long interviews, wait until the end of the regular news or skip around various publications to feel fully caught up. It’s all there for me “IN TEN MINUTES OR LESS!” It doesn’t replace the news, it just gives me the right amount, in the right format, at the right time of day. 

In a piece on The Athletic introducing the new season, Iain outlines the value proposition: “Most people aren’t on X. Most people aren’t constantly plugged into the news cycle. Most people have partners and families and friends and adventures. Some stuff cuts through, but it’s easy to miss big stories when real life has the temerity to intrude. What I really needed was some sort of podcast that would tell me all the big news first thing in the morning, so I didn’t miss anything...Just something I could swiftly ingest while I made a pot of tea, or my daughter’s packed lunch before school. Something for the walk to the station, as opposed to for the train journey itself.” For me, “Something for the walk to the station, as opposed to for the train journey itself” is the magic!

One surprising thing about the Daily Football Briefing is that it hasn’t inspired a bunch of similar football briefing pods. Most people didn’t think they needed a daily news podcast until the massively successful The Daily from the New York Times launched in 2017, alerting plenty of other publishers to its power. Podcast listeners like listening to the news. As Nic Newman pointed out in his Reuters report on news podcasts “Daily news podcasts make up less than 1% of all those produced but account for more than 10% of the overall downloads in the US.”

The question I’ve mulled over for months is what industries or sectors don’t yet know they need their own version of the Football Daily Briefing? Does yours? If the answer is ‘yes’, and you’re the first, then you can own the attention of some very important people first thing in the morning. If 15 years in radio taught me one thing, it’s that when you get people’s attention at the start of the day you’ll get it again later. That’s why breakfast show DJs get paid so much. 

Favourite Episode?

A daily news briefing isn’t exactly the kind of show where you have a favourite episode but the first episode of the new season was what I needed after a summer break of three whole weeks!

Similar Formats?

As mentioned above, news publications love this format because it’s a brilliant way for getting people into the funnel. These podcasts are frequently filled with mentions of articles on their website that sit behind a paywall. While BBC Radio 5 Football Daily delivers daily news, it’s much longer and features a range of contributors. There are also plenty of daily news briefing newsletters, many inspired by Morning Brew which launched as a business PDF newsletter in 2015 and has since expanded into many areas.

Thanks for reading.

Inspired by this idea of owning attention first thing in the morning we made Caught Up on Cannes which tested the idea of a daily morning briefing around conferences. It went well and we plan to roll this out further for SXSW 2025 and more. We’ve just made a daily podcast pilot for another sport which we are keeping under wraps for now. Both of these cover everything you need to know “in nine minutes or less.” You’re wondering why nine minutes, right? Well, your snooze is set for nine minutes by default, not ten, and that is when I hit play on my first podcast of the day, which is usually the Daily Football Briefing.

If you’d like to unpack a favourite format drop us a line. Or if you want to talk to Storythings about how we can help you with your content strategy hit that big button above. Here’s an idea. Why don’t we help you make a short daily news podcast for your sector so that you get to own the attention of all the important movers and shakers first thing in the morning?

See you all next time,

Hugh

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