Manchester Varsity 2026
It wasn’t just the number of sports that grew with this Varsity - we produced even more content than ever before with a 2 day shoot to cram all of it into. It was a heavy undertaking but I truly feel the team and I rose to the occasion to make this Varsity unforgettable.
The Launch Video
Something I liked about last year’s video was the use of tableaus for each sport. From a very pragmatic point of view, it’s the easiest way of visually conveying a sport quickly and for new sports where we wouldn’t have Varsity footage, it was also the easiest way of being able to spotlight them. I took some inspiration from Manchester Basketball’s photoshoot after they rebranded in which they used duotone lighting. Manchester Met’s sporting identity across clubs is synonymous with the word “blorange” (blue and orange) the same way the University of Manchester’s slogan is #BleedPurple so it made sense to make that a strong visual element.
As we were going into our third Varsity (and our biggest yet) with both universities having won a title a-piece I really wanted to emphasise that pride and importance with the use voiceovers that I took from previous “Story of the Season” clips. I also used the crowd chants to really capture the intense atmosphere of Varsity and show sport as being entrenched in student culture. Where last year’s video was simple, clean and a series of images over audio, this year’s captured more of the heartiness and passion of this event.
The Game Explained
The Game Explained is a series of videos where club members/captains/sport scholars break down the fundamentals of their sports (points, periods played, kit, general rules) for the benefit of those who are not familiar with said sport. We timed the launch of some of these alongside major sporting events (such as the Six Nations or the Super Bowl) to generate additional interest alongside Varsity.
Story of the Season
Continuing from last year, this gave an opportunity to certain clubs who had particularly good BUCS seasons to give an insight into their journey and create a buy in for certain fixtures regardless of whether potential spectators had been at previous games or not.
The Varsity Game Show
Last year, Dan Davies and Jamie Ransberry from Men’s Basketball 1s completed a bike ride on the Wednesday visiting every single sport at Varsity and documenting this on @mmubasketball. Due to this year’s scheduling, they would be unable to do so. Throughout this year, they had been creating content in collaboration with us - providing light hearted game day coverage to some of our big fixtures such as Water Polo’s National Cup semi-final and the Women’s Rugby Union 1s Varsity. As ever, it’s important to me that our page is student focused and that their voices are at the heart of what we do so I was eager to keep Dan and Jamie involved even though their game would not allow them to do the bike ride they wanted to do this year.
Something I felt from last year was half baked were our challenge videos. I felt the light hearted nature was good - especially when balanced with the more formal interviews for Story of the Season but in retrospect I wasn’t convinced the rivalry really came through enough. This is what led me to the game show concept - where we could play on that rivalry in a lighthearted way and it feel more meaningful when a team won.
Dan, Jamie and myself drafted a series of questions and recorded content of us asking the public these - these reels/TikToks serving as teasers for the actual long form game show itself. I posted only some on our main channels with the others in our Instagram channel only to create a level of exclusivity for our Varsity content and encourage people to join the page.
Media Day Credits
Camera Operators (Media Day) - Aidan Everitt and Valentina Vettore
Game Footage - Baka Bah, Will Fountain, FuseTV (University of Manchester)
BTS - Will Fountain
Photography - Imogen Ward
Editor - Valentina Vettore
Production Assistants - Polly Bowman and Scott Davies
Game Show Hosts - Dan Davies and Jamie Ransberry
Story of the Season Interviewer - Felicity Hitch
Sport Development
This year was special as I also got an opportunity to gain some sport development experience. For Varsity 2026, I proposed the inclusion of karting as a sport, presenting to the Strategic Lead for Sport at Manchester Met before getting it signed off. My proposal aimed to resolve the issue of using the existing BUKC competition for points as prior to that season, our teams were in different divisions meaning a stark difference in abilities as well as number of races for it to be fair and comparable. It also would mean there would not be a chance for spectators as the nearest race on the calendar was in Wales. I wanted Varsity to feed into a wider piece of work I’m doing on a Driver Development Programme which aims to bridge the gap between our recreational drivers and competition team as there is currently no provision for this. Varsity was a development driver only event, meaning that we would not be using our competition teams and instead, drivers who are only “recreational” but are wanting to take the next step before looking to other competitions like the BIKC can get some racing experience.
As part of this, I obtained various quotes before we got a bespoke deal with TeamSport Victoria where our recreational team does most of their karting. The format I devised was a 10 minute practice, 15 minute qualifying session in which the drivers try to set the fastest lap which goes on to define the grid order for the race which was 35 minutes long. I wrote the regulations and handled driver registration in the lead up. On the day, with help from my colleague Lauren, we signed drivers in before going to the track for the event. Overall, the event was successful and preliminary feedback has all been rather positive so far. I look forward to fine tuning this event further in later Varsities.
Photography by Oscar Carey (@_oscar_carey_)