Sports Reality TV Show Coming Soon

As I continue to network, grow my clientele base and connect with sports professionals all over the world, social media continues to be the driving force. As I take giant leaps forward with each and every day, my vision to create positive impact becomes more real. Let me explain...

I am connecting people and I'm connecting them through sport.

One of my clients is a Major League Baseball Scout in Southern California for the Toronto Blue Jays http://goo.gl/mqbExj and he recently introduced me to a Hollywood Film Producer in Los Angeles. A couple days ago, I called the producer for the first time and shared my ideas regarding a sports reality TV show concept I've been thinking about. The conversation was one of the best conversations I've ever had and after I explained the basic concept to him, he agreed to help me in terms of developing the pitch and connecting me to a sports reality show company in St. Louis, Missouri, who has a pretty impressive distribution network to say the least.

The basic concept of the show is to have aspiring pro Footballers from impoverished and third-world countries, such as Michael Bassey http://goo.gl/EGfrNB, whom I wrote about in my last Women Weave the Web article and live under the same roof. Additionally, there will be an “Undercover Boss” element, where a handful of Club owners and Major League Soccer team owners will be disguised as regular, blue-collar employees who interact with the players on a daily basis. In the final episode, these club and team owners will reveal themselves and potentially choose a player to come play for them.

A couple weeks ago, I got connected with a 49-year-old UEFA coach, so you know he’s been working in the industry for a little while at this point. He’s also an author and has written several sports books. He emailed me a couple chapters from two of his books and I found one excerpt particularly interesting: he coached a youth Football team in Mexico for five years and he shed some light into an area of the global game that I was unaware of. On one game day in particular, the team captain approached him crying. His first thoughts were, "he must not be able to handle the pressure". Actually, the reason the young team captain was crying had nothing to do with the game at all. He had to go home to a beating from his dad that evening because earlier that day, he didn’t sell enough gum and now his family wouldn’t get to eat dinner.

Around the same time as this, I also got connected to a guy on Twitter, who works for a marketing company that was recently hired by Gatorade to follow around seven pro Footballers. He told me it was a shame they couldn’t tell the human-interest stories of some of these guys. I asked him why. He shared the story of one player from Brazil who already had six surgeries, yet he still made it out to the pitch every single day.

I've come to realize that Soccer is a way out of hell for many boys in many different countries. My goal is to tell the world their stories and showcase the adversities they go through on a daily basis. Having the will to fight for your personally chosen dream is not something that many do, but those who refuse to give up are not alone. In fact, there's many of us out there and we don't have it in us to quit. Kinda makes for an ideal leader right?

As it turns out, this St. Louis sports reality show company is looking for Football content to surround network programming and this reality series would be an ideal choice to serve such a purpose. My next steps include creating a slide deck for the pitch as well as a sizzle reel. Stay tuned for more at ca.linkedin.com/in/leahdyck to read progress updates as I turn this vision into reality TV.

I’m also currently working on a podcast about athlete marketability, which will be used to support the Football reality show. Each episode is featuring either a pro athlete, someone close to pro athletes or a VP-level sports professional. The first series is about global Football and currently, I’m interviewing seven sports professionals who specialize in a Football niche. My role is to facilitate the conversation and leverage the featured guests’ expertise in a way that is not only informative to the audience, but also interesting as well.

I couldn’t have done any of this without social media. LinkedIn has been especially helpful as it's connected me with some of the sports entertainment industry’s best leaders. Social media connects the world through a variety of shared interests. I look forward to seeing who will come up with new ways to save lives, impact others in a positive way and leave a digital footprints for the next generations to be inspired by.