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Juventus Football Club has embarked on a new path to consolidate its popularity among younger audiences.
We’re talking about a TV series, Team Jay, launched in 2019 and now in its second season, which promises to become the next licensing success in Italy and internationally. At Brand Licensing Europe, Team Jay will be one of the main highlights of the market and the Turin football club. In this article, we try to discover more details with Daniele Lunazzi, Head of Product Marketing at Juventus Football Club.
Why did a football company think about expanding into the animation field?
The main objective was to diversify and reach the kids target in an innovative and certainly original way for us and for a sports brand like Juventus. The strength of the Team Jay project is supported by a series of data that emerged in the market, demonstrating how children and young people today want to feel like protagonists of their choices and not have them imposed by others. Young people want to discover independently what is “cool” and corresponds to their tastes, rather than having adults point it out to them.
Consider that in the USA alone, 1.2 trillion dollars in annual purchases are generated by 50 million children under 11 years of age. Moreover, still in the United States, 73% of parents say they buy what their children tell them to purchase. In Europe too, the trend is similar, with 82% of adults stating they are influenced by young people in their purchases.
What we have highlighted is that there is no longer a need to teach or educate children in a didactic way. Today, the key to dialogue with this target is to help them develop and acquire empathy, also thanks to storytelling and animation, to build a bond that can last over time.
We aim to capture the attention of Generation Alpha and Z, which together make up 41% of the world’s population and will generate 20% of global turnover by 2030. With this audiovisual project, we intend to establish a lasting relationship with this target.
When did you start developing this project?
We launched the first season in 2019. We planned to continue immediately with subsequent series, but Covid forced us to take a brief pause. This year we launched new episodes on the official YouTube channel in May, and by December we will release more new episodes of the second season.
Can you remind us of some data about the launch of the first series?
The results obtained with the first series immediately encouraged us to continue this adventure. I’ll mention a few. In June 2019, a month after launching on YouTube, we aired on NickJr. and landed on the digital terrestrial channel Super! in February 2020. In the same year, we participated in the Slime Fest organized at Mirabilandia, one of the main amusement parks in Italy; while in September 2019 we organized a big event at the Allianz Stadium.
Speaking of television results, the first season of Team Jay on Nick Jr. achieved an overall 2.6% share for the 4-14 year old target audience and an average monthly reach of 77K children and 215K individuals (+13% vs. the channel average), establishing Team Jay as the 3rd most-watched property on Nick Jr.
On the YouTube front, the numbers were significant. We had a peak of 14 million views in a single month – a rare organic figure for YouTube channels targeting children, reaching a total of about 361 million views and over 1.6 million subscribers, making the Team Jay channel one of the largest kid-targeted fanbases of any sports club.
Do you also plan to expand to other platforms and television channels beyond YouTube with the 2nd season?
Certainly. First of all, we are launching the episodes of the second season on YouTube, and then our goal is to find other partners to release the series on streaming platforms and television channels. I can already confirm that the serie will be globally available on Amazon Prime, while other television partners on board include Rakuten, Sling, and Pop TV. Actually, we are in negotiations for a free TV partner in Italy.