Overview

Our task was to promote our client William Hill’s Up Front with Simon Jordan podcast – an industry-leading series featuring sporting personalities interviewed each week by the former Crystal Palace owner – as we looked to secure a regular stream of successful press coverage results across national and regional UK media.

The Task:

With William Hill launching its hero content series Up Front with Simon Jordan in April 2023, SITA was tasked with ensuring UK media were covering the best of the show on a weekly basis – while ideally linking back to the show’s YouTube channel – through to its most recent episode in December 2024. During this period, SITA was also required to do the same to leverage William Hill’s spin-off content series Three Up Front, featuring Simon Jordan, Graeme Souness and Troy Deeney.

The Activity:

William Hill’s Up Front with Simon Jordan first launched in April 2023 with former world cruiserweight champion Tony Bellew the first interviewee to be grilled by Jordan. SITA’s task was to dissect the episode, pick out the best of the quotes from Bellew, or Jordan, and produce a mix of press release materials covering a wide range of angles that we knew would appeal to UK media – be it national, regional, sport, boxing or fan site titles – before selling in the content accordingly to ensure it was being picked up far and wide.

Bellew was the first in a long line of heavyweight sporting stars to sit in the hotseat with Jordan, with the likes of Eddie Howe, Lord Sebastian Coe, Michael Owen, Sir AP McCoy, Gianfranco Zola, David Haye, John Terry, Mike Dean, Stuart Broad, Ruud Gullit, Jack Wilshere and Chris Eubank all following in line across the ensuing months. For SITA, it was a case of repeating our initial PR tactics on a consistent basis, while tapping into our team’s excellent book of media contacts, to ensure that coverage continued to land month-in, month-out.

The Result:

Since the launch of William Hill’s Up Front with Simon Jordan in April 2023, we were able to secure a mammoth 2,201 pieces of coverage (including across Three Up Front outreach) up until the latest episode in December 2024, including 1,279 links back to the YouTube channel, with an average Domain Authority rating of 63 DA. Coverage figures for the campaign also included 311 million estimated coverage views and an estimated reach of 8.09 billion, as we secured pick-up across leading titles including BBC Sport, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Mail Online, The Guardian, The Sun and the Mirror, to ensure Up Front with Simon Jordan became an essential destination for UK media looking for the week’s best sporting content.