My first Publication Overtime November 2019 Merged PDF | Page 14

YOUTUBE IS NOW THE
PLATFORM FOR NON-LEAGUE
Brighton-based Your Instant Replay founder Louis Clark turned down playing with Jermaine Pennant in India to
film non-league football clubs. Now he plans to take the company around the nation with the help of students
THEY WANT YOU!
Your Instant Replay are
looking for young people to
help grow their business
Go to:
www.yourinstantreplay.co.uk/contact-us
Louis Clark (centre) wants young people to get involved with Your Instant Replay (Pic: Louis Clark/Your Instant Replay)
Words Ryan Moran
A
lan Hansen wrote himself into football folklore
with his infamous “you can’t win anything with
kids” analysis of Manchester United before the
won the Premier League in 1995/96.
But one company in Brighton prides itself on
achieving success with a fresh-faced workforce.
Brighton-based videography company Your Instant
Replay film football matches in London and the South
East, employing A-Level students all the way up to
university graduates. They film, edit and run YouTube
channels for non-league football clubs by filming
matches and editing them down to highlights.
Louis Clark, founder of Your Instant Replay, started
by filming at Steyning Town FC and now counts
YouTube sides SE Dons, Hashtag United and Palmers
FC among the clubs they film for. The Dons, Hashtag
and Palmers have 840,000 subscribers between them
and that’s just three of the companies on the the
company’s books.
Clark, an ex-Brighton and Hove Albion youth
player, started the company after studying marketing
in America while playing D1 college football for
Syracuse in upstate New York. After leaving America
he played football for three years in Australia and the
Philippines.
After initially accepting an offer to play with
Jermaine Pennant at Tampines Rovers in Singapore,
he turned it down to start Your Instant Replay. Clark
bought a camera and a tripod and filmed his friend’s
games at Steyning Town.
Clark said he faced some scepticism from non-
league clubs in the early days. “I was just going up to
clubs and saying, ‘look, let us film your games’ and
they were like ‘why would we want it filmed? We don’t
have a scaffold, we don’t have anything, and we don’t
want it filmed’.
“I was fighting a lot of battles with people that didn’t
understand it, but they do now. Everyone gets it now.”
Your Instant Replay has gone from filming four
teams casually and doing filming for free in their first
season to having demand for 50 games a week, all
within three years. This raised a dilemma for Clark.
He said: “There was a decision to make. Do we just
hold back, learn about what we were doing a bit more
and then do a good job? Then off the back of doing a
good job, take the work. Which was a hard decision.”
Clark was self-taught from filming to editing,
using iMovie in the first two years before upgrading
to Premiere Pro before their third season of filming.
The young people who work for him start in a similar
situation to how he started despite studying media
and journalism degrees.
Clark said: “I think a lot of them come to Your
Instant Replay and they have no work skills. And it’s
like starting again almost.
“They come to me after graduating university and
they’re like I don’t know what to do. I have a sport
journalism degree but I don’t really know what to do.
“I love kids like that. I want as many of them guys
as possible and our whole work force is youngsters.
Whether it’s the guys that do the socials, the guys
that are going out and filming, the guys that are in
the office until one o’clock Sunday morning, editing
Saturday’s games. Doing the marketing, everything,
all young people.”
“I was fighting a lot of battles with
people that didn’t understand
it, but they do now. Everyone
understands it”
Their decision to employ young people has been
incredibly successful, with their videos reaching over
8.5 million views, and over four million impressions
on social media since their inception three years ago
Clark put this down to creating relationships with
companies with big social media followings like 433,
SPORTbible and Soccer AM, who have 47.1 million
followers between them across Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram.
He said: “For the first two years we weren’t on their
radar. The odd clip would get posted by Soccer AM but
it was an as and when, sort of thing.
“You’re praying for someone to smash the bar, it
come off their face and then they scissor kick it in the
top corner or something.”
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This upturn in fortune for Clark has presented
the opportunity to expand and create more job
opportunities in wider areas.
Clark said: “We’re scaling up and we’re staffing up.
When we get this money we’re going to be able to offer
more part-time jobs, more full-time jobs across more
things. Not just filming, not just editing.
“I ideally want a sales team, people actively trying to
bring more clubs in, more work in.
“Our main thing we’re being strong with at the
moment is that we have all this content but can
someone go through it all and pick out these viral clips
for 433 and Soccer AM.”
Clark has no plans to bask in their success. He aims
to gain more work in London next year due to the
density of teams in one area, with the aim of going
national in the longer term.
Clark said: “I heard, and it seems a bit lofty, that like
15,000 games are played across the UK from all levels.
I’m talking pub football to conference prem (now The
National League).
“I heard it was 15,000. I can’t remember where
from, but at £100 a game that’s £1.5 million a week.
I’m saying obviously that’s never going to happen but
if you can take one percent of that you’ve got a great
business.
They have plans to innovate the product as well.
Clark said: “We’re just trying to stay ahead of the
curve. I think the next thing is live streaming but
there’s rules around live streaming. You can’t live
stream any game on a Saturday at 3pm.
“We’ve live-streamed a few games this year. Some
clubs are for it, some are against it. It stops people
paying their tenner when they come into the ground
which is very important to a lot of clubs to keep them
afloat.”
Clark wants to stay rooted with the company’s
purpose of filming in non-league and grass roots
football, despite big projects with Nike and Pro:Direct
Soccer in the pipeline.
He said: “For me, honestly I want to keep it where
we started. So, any Saturday team, any Sunday team,
any youth team, women’s football, disabled football,
beach football.”