Short Form Content: Street Football's Internal Bleeding

AUTHOR:
TOMISLAV BAZDARIC
PUBLISHED:
December 26, 2024
TAGS:
OPINION
TLDR: Short form content has driven Street Football back into the eyes of the fringe football fan, but it comes with a catch. Short Form is a driver to larger viewership which is based on gimmicky content, but it isn't the ecosystem building tool that Street Football needs. As more and more athletes fall to the draw of the flashing lights of individual high follower counts achieved much easier through short form content, the less viable Street Football is as a whole, and the less likely the sport is to grow its own cash flow ecosystem that long form content provides.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Stories.... weren't they supposed to be supplementary content to your actual content? Weren't they supposed to be used as a way to draw in an audience to your much higher value long form content? That's what I got from it at least. Clearly Street Footballers didn't understand it in this way.

Do me a favour; Log onto Youtube and try and find an ecosystem of regularly posting long form content Street Footballers, who have posted recently. I personally just did this experiment as well, you know what I found? A 1v1 channel that focuses 11 a side players 1v1ing each other on a regular 11 a side pitch, I found 10 year old videos of Sean Garnier, and I found a Street Panna Video from 2 months ago. Now yes, this is due to my personal algorithm, but this isn't the ecosystem that we need to grow a sport. In terms of Street Footballers on Youtube we basically have Sean Garnier and Jack Downer. Sean posts genuine Street Football content, while Jack posts 80% 11 a side content with some Street Football content thrown in whenever he actually has the opportunity to capture anything Street Football that actually works as long form content. So there we have it, non-street-football content parading as Street Football, and 2 total long form Street Football creators. Yikes.

‍

The Problem

Short form content, that's the problem. I won't attack the two content creators above for anything here, even if they are guilty in some aspects, because unlike absolutely everyone else, they actually have long form content, so they are immune from these criticisms. The problem of short form content can be broken down into many reasons as to why it exists. Let's start with reason 1, it's so much easier to make. You can capture a clip with your phone, throw it into a free mobile editing software like Capcut, export it, and have it uploaded in less than 5 minutes. Now you tell me how I can convince people to instead film up to 70 hours of footage and spend a month editing it into a 40 minute video with depth and a storyline when it will get a tenth of the views of 5 or 6 of those short form videos which would have taken a max of 25-30 minutes to put out. That's the problem, Street Footballers are seeing immediate numbers and less work as an incentive to only focus on the short form content. Reason 2 is a little more contextual, but long form content generally requires a larger investment in gear, which most Street Footballers either can't afford or justify.

‍

Why This Is a Problem

This is super simple. With a whole sport only releasing short form content, there is no-one looking for any long form content, meaning no one will watch it when someone inevitably puts it out, leaving that creator to eventually give up. This is a problem because short form content, while flashy, it's ultimately useless for raising capital and getting paid in comparison to long form content. The difference is night and day. Long form content is pivotal in building not only capital, but also depth and understanding in a sport. You don't and can't get to know anyone after watching 50 of their useless trick tutorials, or their over saturated videos where they do a trick and pull a face. These short clips do get engagement, but they serve no true purpose other than destroying the economic path of the sports future, it's a plague that's destroying Street Football before it really takes off.

‍

The Solution

Together as a sport, champion any long form content from absolutely any Street Footballer whose content reaches a certain quality threshold. Share it as much as you can on pages such as ISFA, eventually the message will be received and more will follow. Don't stop long form content, just for the love of God sideline its importance to what it is, a gimmick.

Tomislav Bazdaric is the founder of the Gone20 Ecosystem. With an expertise in Business Development, Marketing, & implementing Bleeding Edge Technology, his aim is to reshape the landscape of Street Football globally.