90min’s ‘Life’s a Pitch’ Podcast
The 6th Annual Awards
- Best Women’s Sports Podcast
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
‘Life’s a Pitch’ is 90min’s new bi-weekly podcast that centers on hosts, Women’s Championship players and Republic of Ireland teammates, Ruesha Littlejohn and Lucy Quinn, as they dive into their lives as professional footballers, share their ‘red cards of the week’, and sit down with special guests including Birmingham City's Jade Moore and Remi Allen, former Scottish footballer, Ally McCoist, and Ruesha’s very own twin sister, broadcaster Shebahn Aherne. Despite only being launched in November of 2023, ‘Life’s a Pitch’ has already exceeded expectations and has become one of 90min’s most successful series, outpacing even their most successful men’s football focused content.
How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?
As mentioned above, despite increased viewership and interest from global audiences, content solely focused on women’s football, specifically the Women’s Champions League, is still drastically lacking in comparison to its male counterparts.
The success 90min has seen with ‘Life’s a Pitch’ clearly shows that the interest from audiences is there - giving a new proof point in the fight for more content around women’s football.
Within the first three months of release, ‘Life’s a Pitch’ has set a new benchmark for 90min’s women’s football content - garnering millions of views, hundreds of thousands engagements and hundreds of five star ratings across the major podcast platforms. This instant success has proven to not only the 90min team, but also to the industry, that the demand for more women’s football content is already here.
Just like with the men’s game, fans want more than just game coverage and stats, they want to know the athletes, the inner workings of teams and the fun and passion behind being a professional footballer. It’s time that the industry finally understands that the same innovation and investment brands have put behind men’s sports will be just as, if not more, successful within the women’s game.
Objective
90min has always supported and amplified the women’s game with robust editorial, video and podcast content completely dedicated to the incredible women’s leagues, teams and players.
As a leader in this space, the team couldn’t help but notice that despite viewership breaking records in the 2022/2023 season, premium content around the Women’s Championship League, and women’s soccer in general outside of major tentpole events, was still lacking. With the demand from fans and audiences clearly growing, 90min set out to fill this gap by launching ‘Life’s a Pitch’, a new podcast fully dedicated to the women’s game.
‘Life’s a Pitch’ centers on hosts, Women’s Championship players and Republic of Ireland teammates, Ruesha Littlejohn and Lucy Quinn, as they dive into their lives as professional footballers, share their ‘red cards of the week’, and sit down with special guests including Birmingham City’s Jade Moore and Remi Allen, former Scottish footballer, Ally McCoist, and Ruesha’s very own twin sister, broadcaster Shebahn Aherne.
With this series, 90min aims to add a new layer to their women’s football content offering and address the gap of coverage and premium content around the Women’s Championship league by connecting fans to the teams and players.
Strategy & Execution
Today’s sports fans have more options when it comes to how, where & when they consume their content than any other generation before them. 90min knew that in order to break through the noise they needed to be in the right place, at the right time with the right content.
The Right Place: The podcast is distributed in both audio & video formats - including full episodes & social breakouts - across all major podcast & social channels including 90min’s YouTube channel (with over 130K+ subscribers). By capturing this content in both audio & video, 90min optimized the longevity, distribution strategy & engagement of ‘Life’s A Pitch’ empowering it to become the brand’s most popular series yet.
The Right Time: ‘Life’s a Pitch’ is distributed across the above mentioned channels on a bi-weekly basis, providing audiences with new content consistently enough to maintain scale, while also giving enough breathing room to not overload or bore their key audiences.
The Right Content: By focusing on the relationship between the hosts & creating a fun, light-hearted space for fans to connect with their love of women’s football, ‘Life’s a Pitch’ carves out its own unique niche within the sports podcast world, enabling it to shine through & successfully build an engaged audience.
Organizations
- 90min
- Minute Media
Links
Featured
- Ruesha Littlejohn
- Lucy Quinn
Credits
Ruesha Littlejohn
Life's a Pitch co-host
90min
Lucy Quinn
Life's a Pitch co-host
90min
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Join us for the 6th Annual Hashtag Sports Awards™ on the evening of June 6, 2024 as we celebrate finalists and reveal the winners of this year's awards live during the show.
