The Premier League Returns with a Brand New Sound

MassiveMusic has partnered with creative agency DixonBaxi to create an entirely new audio identity for the Premier League as it returns for the 2016/17 season.

The Premier League unveiled a bold new visual aesthetic earlier this year to coincide with the league’s decision to drop title sponsorship, and DixonBaxi were tasked with coming up with the creative direction and vision for the broadcasting rebrand.

To complement the fresh look, MassiveMusic’s London office has revamped the audio identity of the Premier League’s international broadcast shows and taken it in an equally striking and brave direction. 

The two companies also worked together to create this season’s walk on anthem, which will be heard at the start of every Premier League match this season. 

The broadcast rebrand will reach a global audience of two billion viewers as the Premier League delivers global television feeds of all 380 Premier League matches to right holders around the world, as well as distributing a total of six weekly magazine shows.

Roscoe Williamson, Head of Branding UK at MassiveMusic, comments: “DixonBaxi, DesignStudio, and Premier League have gone for an ultra-contemporary look with the visual branding, and we felt that it was really important for us to do something with the music to reflect how brave they’d been with the visual aesthetic. The Premier League had an opportunity to own a space in music as we found that the majority of leagues around the world sounded exactly the same.”

Aporva Baxi, Co-founder of DixonBaxi, comments: "Creating a radical, new TV experience for the Premier League needed a brave, original soundtrack that matches the bold identity. Our concept was highly innovative for this genre and our long-standing partnership with MassiveMusic led us to choose them to help us develop a global, human and celebratory anthem for the world’s most watched football league."

The musical concept that MassiveMusic and DixonBaxi came up with is based around three elements: the global community that surrounds the Premier League; the requirement for a contemporary feel; and the emotion stemming from the ‘theatre’ of the game. 

MassiveMusic created an over-arching master theme for the brand, adapting it for different deliverable channels and creating a number of versions and variations for the Premier League’s broadcast shows. 

Roscoe explains: “We approached the project using a strategic sonic branding process, eventually honing in on three particular sound territories; dynamic electronic production, location field recordings and re-processed classical instrumentation. 

“We needed to capture the full spectrum of emotions Premier League fans feel. We recorded and manipulated location sound during a Premier League match at White Hart Lane to give us a ‘real’ sounding aesthetic to the anthem and the broadcast packages. Combining this with rousing and unexpected instrumentation, we were able to achieve that hair-standing-on-the-back-of-your-neck emotion.”

Tim Preston, Producer at MassiveMusic, adds: “This project was a real test of our growing global network. We needed to use the full breadth of our composer network and at any one time we had up to six composers from around the world working on the project. Creatively, we went through a research stage for each individual show, and for that we utilised the creative services of our other offices.”