Through local Spanish football fans and cultural influencers within the COPA90 global creator network, we identified four Spanish regions and derby fixtures that would enable our audience to discover an unseen side to Spanish football culture.

Across four episodes, we explored the singular identities of Asturias, Galicia, Andalusia and Majorca, the unique character of their people how their regional DNA is defined by food, music, art, and of course, football.

Each episode was presented by Eli Mengem, COPA90’s global football ambassador. By playing the role of cultural explorer, his genuine curiosity and approachable nature sparked passionate and honest responses from the people he met, creating an authentic and insightful narrative arc.

The 15-20 min episodes premiered on the COPA90 YouTube channel every Sunday evening in March 2018, taking ownership of the gap between broadcast coverage of weekend Spanish League and midweek Champions League games, creating an appointment to view moment for an audience who no longer watch TV.

By returning to the principles of meaningful interaction through content experiences of value we cut through the noise of transient and throwaway football focused content.

To build hype and excitement for season 4, influencers, media partners and our community were invited to an exclusive screening in London. In addition, we created a limited edition run of Derby Days t-shirts and merchandise to coincide with final episode in the season.

Positive word of mouth and social sentiment meant that premium publishers, broadcasters and Spanish supporter groups syndicated the series, driving awareness and advocacy within their audiences.

Derby Days Spain achieved a total of 570k views with a total watch time of +5million mins. 36% of these views were from Spanish audiences (vs. 1.2% of previous Derby Days episodes ), helping us achieve our objective of reaching new audiences.

Social sentiment for season 4 was 99% positive, with over 10k people sharing the content socially. ??The premium nature of the content and the along with the groundswell of conversation contributed to premium mainstream publishers, media platforms and supporter groups such as The Guardian (264k monthly uniques), CNN (136m monthly uniques), Football 365 (2.1m monthly uniques) and MSN (258m monthly uniques) featuring the content and supporting editorial on their platforms driving an incremental reach of Derby Days season 4 to their audiences.

The success of season 4, led to fans from across the world reaching out to us imploring COPA90 to tell the untold story of their derby.

COPA90 believe football is the universal language. Our fan-focused storytelling unites fans globally and has established a new genre in football entertainment.

In our mission to harness football to explore and better understand the world, we created Derby Days, an original documentary series exploring the cultural identity, passion and perspective of football fans globally.

By focusing our narrative within the context of derby matches and the heightened rivalry this sparks within cities and regions, we shine a light on humanity at its most emotionally raw, giving audiences a truly visceral perspective on the untold stories of the game.

Tell the untold stories of a diverse football superpower

We established that Spain was a fertile nation to focus on by virtue of its incredibly diverse identity as a country all underpinned by a fierce regional pride.

However, we identified that across the football broadcast, media and publishing landscape, there was a fixation on coverage for the biggest and most famous clubs in Spain; Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid

50% of all social conversation focused on these three teams and their players

(Source: Crimson Hexagon social listening, Aug17 - Apr18)

To the wider world, Spanish football culture was defined by these clubs, their players and their fans.

We wanted to differentiate ourselves and knew that as a nation where football truly underpins people’s regional identity, there was a plethora of incredible untold stories to tell on the regions of Spain where global media exposure was limited or non-existent.

For 5 years we’ve travelled the earth, immersing ourselves into the cultural fabric of footballing hotbeds, telling the untold stories through the Derby Days series.

In this time we’ve amassed over 10million views on YouTube alone which, complemented by placement within British Airways in-flight entertainment, Sky Q on-demand and syndication across major media outlets and publishers, has been fundamental in establishing COPA90 as one of the most influential football media brands in the world.

For season 4, we set ourselves the objective of establishing Derby Days and the COPA90 brand into the consciousness of new audiences outside of our current fanbase.

To achieve this we knew we had to go even deeper with our storytelling and push the boundaries of our cinematographic style and approach to elevate Derby Days into the realms of Netflix, broadcast and cinema quality sports entertainment.