The Evolution of Watch Alongs: A Game-Changer for AF TV and The Don Robbie Channel

Before the pandemic, watch alongs were a staple of sports broadcasting, but AF TV's approach to incorporating fans into their watch alongs took it to a whole new level. As a result, the channel discovered that the COVID-19 crisis presented an unexpected opportunity to innovate and adapt. With fans unable to attend games in person, the team quickly came up with a solution: host watch alongs from a socially distanced space in Trafalgar Square.

The first watch along was a gamble, but it proved to be a huge success. The setup consisted of filming in a specially created space in the office, where fans were seated at least two meters apart and underwent temperature checks before being allowed to participate. Despite initial doubts, the show blew up, attracting massive audiences and setting a new standard for sports broadcasting.

As the pandemic continued, AF TV refined their approach, leveraging technology to create an immersive experience that kept viewers engaged throughout the game. Before games, fans could watch as the team prepared and discussed their strategy, while during the match itself, they were treated to a live commentary of the action on screen. The channel's ability to adapt and evolve proved to be a key factor in its success.

One of the standout features of AF TV's watch alongs is the opportunity for fans to share their opinions and insights. In pre-game shows, viewers could tune in to hear fans discuss their team's chances of winning, while during the match itself, they were treated to reaction videos from fans around the world. This feature has proven to be a game-changer, allowing fans to feel like they're part of the action.

The watch along format has also enabled AF TV to create a more comprehensive package for viewers. On "Full Time," a show that airs after games, fans can share their reactions and insights in response to the final result. The channel's use of social media platforms has also helped to amplify fan voices, allowing them to share their opinions and connect with other supporters.

The success of AF TV's watch alongs has been remarkable, with numbers surpassing pre-pandemic levels. As the channel continues to grow and evolve, it remains committed to its core values: providing a platform for fans to share their opinions and insights, while also delivering high-quality sports content that is second to none.

For The Don Robbie Channel, which was spun off from AF TV, watch alongs have become an integral part of its programming. The channel's focus on fan-driven content has proven to be a winning formula, attracting a loyal audience who are eager to hear their opinions and insights. Whether discussing Arsenal or Manchester United, fans can rely on The Don Robbie Channel to provide an authentic and engaging experience that puts them at the heart of the action.

Ultimately, AF TV's watch alongs have been a key factor in its success story. By embracing innovation and adaptability during a time of crisis, the channel has emerged as one of the leading sports broadcasting brands in the UK. As it continues to grow and evolve, AF TV remains committed to its core values: providing high-quality content that is driven by fan opinion and passion.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi cnet viewers i'm don robbie and this is the don robbie studio soccer more commonly known as football to the rest of the world is a massive industry and they're not too many teams that come bigger than arsenal football club robbie lyle an avid arsenal fan started arsenal fan tv to give a platform to its fan base to talk about the good the bad and the arsenal he launched the channel in 2012 with a borrowed camera and microphone and has since built it into one of the most popular fan channels in the world with over a million subscribers third game of the season we've conceded eight goals and he's selling defenders his arsenal yeah the real team in london the king of london blood you understand we deserve that victory blood if i work it out it's just over seven years to get to this stage because um yeah when we first started out it was just one man and a camera literally for years you know i mean just up and down the motorway following arsenal if we were doing any sort of on you know on location shots or shows or anything like that it's just always just a one camera shot and that was it i've never sort of borrowed money or anything like that to to to do this i've always just sort of done it where any time i make money reinvest into equipment we can literally plot it like this we started by borrowing a camera borrowing a microphone right and the original camera that we borrowed was uh a tape camera so it wasn't even digital so when we used to film stuff we used to go to games and we'd film say two hours of interviews we didn't have to wait two hours in which for that to process before we could then start editing and get it up so it used to be a really long process and i remember loads of nights me and my partner like falling asleep and waking up and saying oh you know i mean we now it's it's processed now let's edit and stuff like i used to be mad well that's how they started but just how far have they come from one man and a camera my name is brennan paul i work for aftv and um i'm head of production over here all right so what we've got over here we're just setting up for a daily show that we do every day it's called aftv news daily basically the setup is a three camera setup we have three blackmagic 6k pros they all connect through to an 8m extreme pro iso we also have our audio and mics and they're the rode nt1 really good condenser microphones we use them for podcasts as well this is one of our main sets that we always use between live streams so this is the area where the brain as i said the operation the atem xtreme pro is a black magic design um basically all the cameras connect into into this one central unit you've got eight inputs of hdmi that comes directly from the camera in um at the moment we've got three cameras set up for our news daily and you can basically switch between cameras from here and that just gives you a live cut going through into your live streaming software to find out more about the cruise gear head down to the description for more information the piece of tech in the studio that's invaluable to me has to be this atem extreme iso this is a workhorse and it does a lot for us it's the brain as i say of our whole operation as well as the cameras i mean i'm a camera guy and i'm i love a good camera and these black magics have been great but to bring them all together in this one central unit is the best thing the piece of tech that has been most troublesome during our live streams has been the pc i don't feel like it keeps up with what's going on it takes a lot of processing power especially was talking about the graphics i would say pcs could be a letdown but you can get some good ones out there so we're in the process of upgrading at the moment the most challenging aspect of making it to this point has obviously been financial to get good equipment costs a lot of money to get a premises to get a studio in london close to the emirates is very expensive once you get the equipment you need people to you need people to run that equipment so you're going to employ more staff and you know and get good stuff as well because within the space that we do it's not just about having people that are good cameraman and good you know sound technicians and that they also got a love football with the af tv stuff we do we want them to be arsenal fans you know the don robbie stuff they've got to be a football fan really to feel have that real feel around what they're filming so you know and a lot of the stuff as well has been done in the studio is done out on location we film lots of stuff out on the road lots of stuff at the stadium at other various different stadiums this is another set that we use a lot on the match days um for the watch alongs we've got a tv in the background that we just put display images we could be logos or anything during the stream um and tactical pad stuff that we use when we actually analyze analyzing the game goal is um aaron ramsey yes brilliant the watch along format became a staple of the channel after the pandemic stopped fans from going to games it soon became one of the most popular shows on the channel yeah we weren't doing watch alongs until the pandemic obviously we couldn't go to games anymore no fans allowed at any games so i sat down and i'm like well we need to come up with something that keeps it going otherwise we you know what can we do so i very quickly in my head said to myself well let's do watch alongs because there's been a couple of channels that did watch alongs but i wanted to do them in a way which would involve fans and not just on stream so i checked out all of the kovid laws at the time and uh we sort of created a it wasn't really a studio it was the office that we was in in trafalgar square but we just created like a socially distant space in which we could film and uh you know basically anybody who came into the office we did all the checks on them and temperature check and all that and then we sat everybody in a socially distanced two meters apart space and then we filmed i didn't know how it was going to go i thought to myself it would be okay but it just blew up and became really really popular and now it's become a fully fledged part of what we do it's kind of been one of the things that we have developed out of the pandemic and learned throughout the pandemic and we've honed it made it better hence why i was like well we need to get it into a proper studio we can do it really really well so the watch along was doing as good as when we were doing the games before which we were averaging probably about 15 to 20 million views a month numbers have gone up you know across all platforms because of the watch long and what we found so really good about the watch along is that we used to have dead spots during the day like for instance when the game's on so obviously we before we we interviewed a lot of fans after the game and we did some stuff before the game it's always very difficult when you're on location to get you know um a good internet quality to upload videos and that before games because so many people turn up and you know they're probably using the same signal and your signal just drops but what we've with the watch along now we can keep it going so we can have we can do a start in 11 and have a real proper debate about that before the game we can do a match build up before the game we can do the watch along and that can continue throughout the game then after the game now we can do like uh we've got this thing show called a full time show on af tv where people can send in their own videos you know reacting to the result and how they felt about it and those are features that we just didn't have before and then after that you'll see the videos coming up from outside the game so it's more of a complete package and on the don robbie set you know don robbie's arm side of things it's enabled us to do these incredible watch longs where we can have fans of the different clubs in the studio those real authentic fans i mean we had a game yesterday man city liverpool brilliant watching it you know i mean a liverpool fan on one side man city fan on the other side yes yes their reactions to the goals and their knowledge around their club is second to none when you're watching it it's like wow so all of these things probably wouldn't have been possible or would have been possible but we might have been way down the line had it not been for the fact that we were kind of forced into moving quickly on it because of the uh pandemic the end goal for me on af tv and also the don robbie channel i always have to factor that in now because that's growing so big at the moment um it's basically to be a media company to really be a media company that completes with the best of them but is always fan driven it's always about the fans it's always about giving fans amplifying the fans voice getting fans opinion you know whether it be on af tv fans talking about arsenal and they love of arsenal and what they like and what they don't like and you know we've got that on aftv and then on the don robbie channel now we've got fans talking about you know of all different clubs whether it be a burnley fan or a man united fan talking about their club and really giving an insight so that's the end game it's all about keep working hard keep building keep reinvesting and just keep you know as well you know finding those brilliant fans out there that you know have got great opinions and giving them a chance to have their sayhi cnet viewers i'm don robbie and this is the don robbie studio soccer more commonly known as football to the rest of the world is a massive industry and they're not too many teams that come bigger than arsenal football club robbie lyle an avid arsenal fan started arsenal fan tv to give a platform to its fan base to talk about the good the bad and the arsenal he launched the channel in 2012 with a borrowed camera and microphone and has since built it into one of the most popular fan channels in the world with over a million subscribers third game of the season we've conceded eight goals and he's selling defenders his arsenal yeah the real team in london the king of london blood you understand we deserve that victory blood if i work it out it's just over seven years to get to this stage because um yeah when we first started out it was just one man and a camera literally for years you know i mean just up and down the motorway following arsenal if we were doing any sort of on you know on location shots or shows or anything like that it's just always just a one camera shot and that was it i've never sort of borrowed money or anything like that to to to do this i've always just sort of done it where any time i make money reinvest into equipment we can literally plot it like this we started by borrowing a camera borrowing a microphone right and the original camera that we borrowed was uh a tape camera so it wasn't even digital so when we used to film stuff we used to go to games and we'd film say two hours of interviews we didn't have to wait two hours in which for that to process before we could then start editing and get it up so it used to be a really long process and i remember loads of nights me and my partner like falling asleep and waking up and saying oh you know i mean we now it's it's processed now let's edit and stuff like i used to be mad well that's how they started but just how far have they come from one man and a camera my name is brennan paul i work for aftv and um i'm head of production over here all right so what we've got over here we're just setting up for a daily show that we do every day it's called aftv news daily basically the setup is a three camera setup we have three blackmagic 6k pros they all connect through to an 8m extreme pro iso we also have our audio and mics and they're the rode nt1 really good condenser microphones we use them for podcasts as well this is one of our main sets that we always use between live streams so this is the area where the brain as i said the operation the atem xtreme pro is a black magic design um basically all the cameras connect into into this one central unit you've got eight inputs of hdmi that comes directly from the camera in um at the moment we've got three cameras set up for our news daily and you can basically switch between cameras from here and that just gives you a live cut going through into your live streaming software to find out more about the cruise gear head down to the description for more information the piece of tech in the studio that's invaluable to me has to be this atem extreme iso this is a workhorse and it does a lot for us it's the brain as i say of our whole operation as well as the cameras i mean i'm a camera guy and i'm i love a good camera and these black magics have been great but to bring them all together in this one central unit is the best thing the piece of tech that has been most troublesome during our live streams has been the pc i don't feel like it keeps up with what's going on it takes a lot of processing power especially was talking about the graphics i would say pcs could be a letdown but you can get some good ones out there so we're in the process of upgrading at the moment the most challenging aspect of making it to this point has obviously been financial to get good equipment costs a lot of money to get a premises to get a studio in london close to the emirates is very expensive once you get the equipment you need people to you need people to run that equipment so you're going to employ more staff and you know and get good stuff as well because within the space that we do it's not just about having people that are good cameraman and good you know sound technicians and that they also got a love football with the af tv stuff we do we want them to be arsenal fans you know the don robbie stuff they've got to be a football fan really to feel have that real feel around what they're filming so you know and a lot of the stuff as well has been done in the studio is done out on location we film lots of stuff out on the road lots of stuff at the stadium at other various different stadiums this is another set that we use a lot on the match days um for the watch alongs we've got a tv in the background that we just put display images we could be logos or anything during the stream um and tactical pad stuff that we use when we actually analyze analyzing the game goal is um aaron ramsey yes brilliant the watch along format became a staple of the channel after the pandemic stopped fans from going to games it soon became one of the most popular shows on the channel yeah we weren't doing watch alongs until the pandemic obviously we couldn't go to games anymore no fans allowed at any games so i sat down and i'm like well we need to come up with something that keeps it going otherwise we you know what can we do so i very quickly in my head said to myself well let's do watch alongs because there's been a couple of channels that did watch alongs but i wanted to do them in a way which would involve fans and not just on stream so i checked out all of the kovid laws at the time and uh we sort of created a it wasn't really a studio it was the office that we was in in trafalgar square but we just created like a socially distant space in which we could film and uh you know basically anybody who came into the office we did all the checks on them and temperature check and all that and then we sat everybody in a socially distanced two meters apart space and then we filmed i didn't know how it was going to go i thought to myself it would be okay but it just blew up and became really really popular and now it's become a fully fledged part of what we do it's kind of been one of the things that we have developed out of the pandemic and learned throughout the pandemic and we've honed it made it better hence why i was like well we need to get it into a proper studio we can do it really really well so the watch along was doing as good as when we were doing the games before which we were averaging probably about 15 to 20 million views a month numbers have gone up you know across all platforms because of the watch long and what we found so really good about the watch along is that we used to have dead spots during the day like for instance when the game's on so obviously we before we we interviewed a lot of fans after the game and we did some stuff before the game it's always very difficult when you're on location to get you know um a good internet quality to upload videos and that before games because so many people turn up and you know they're probably using the same signal and your signal just drops but what we've with the watch along now we can keep it going so we can have we can do a start in 11 and have a real proper debate about that before the game we can do a match build up before the game we can do the watch along and that can continue throughout the game then after the game now we can do like uh we've got this thing show called a full time show on af tv where people can send in their own videos you know reacting to the result and how they felt about it and those are features that we just didn't have before and then after that you'll see the videos coming up from outside the game so it's more of a complete package and on the don robbie set you know don robbie's arm side of things it's enabled us to do these incredible watch longs where we can have fans of the different clubs in the studio those real authentic fans i mean we had a game yesterday man city liverpool brilliant watching it you know i mean a liverpool fan on one side man city fan on the other side yes yes their reactions to the goals and their knowledge around their club is second to none when you're watching it it's like wow so all of these things probably wouldn't have been possible or would have been possible but we might have been way down the line had it not been for the fact that we were kind of forced into moving quickly on it because of the uh pandemic the end goal for me on af tv and also the don robbie channel i always have to factor that in now because that's growing so big at the moment um it's basically to be a media company to really be a media company that completes with the best of them but is always fan driven it's always about the fans it's always about giving fans amplifying the fans voice getting fans opinion you know whether it be on af tv fans talking about arsenal and they love of arsenal and what they like and what they don't like and you know we've got that on aftv and then on the don robbie channel now we've got fans talking about you know of all different clubs whether it be a burnley fan or a man united fan talking about their club and really giving an insight so that's the end game it's all about keep working hard keep building keep reinvesting and just keep you know as well you know finding those brilliant fans out there that you know have got great opinions and giving them a chance to have their say\n"