BFBS Update July 2024

Welcome to our July newsletter, with updates from the last three months. It includes a very special message from our patron, Her Majesty The Queen, news of a huge gig for troops in Poland, all the latest on our incredible sport offering, and upskilling with our BFBS Academy. 

I’m also delighted to share news of more collaborations with our industry stakeholders, including a video produced with Airbus at the Combined Naval Event (CNE). We recently became a regional gold partner with Rise – the leading organisation dedicated to gender diversity in the media and tech sectors – and looking ahead we've been invited to give a keynote speech at Scotland's inaugural conference on Armed Forces in Society at the Edinburgh Fringe. 

Wherever you are based, I wish you all the very best! 

Ben Chapman, CEO BFBS 

To ensure that our forces and their families who are based overseas didn’t miss a minute of the UEFA EURO 2024, we shared the BBC and ITV coverage on BFBS TV, and in Germany we also funded the ‘Sennelager Fan Park’ big screen jointly with NAAFI (pictured left). 

We showed major UFC events from TNT Sports – including Pereira v Prochazka, Makhachev v Poirier, and Britian's Edwards v Muhammad 2 on home soil – and will show the upcoming Plessis v Adensanya in August. Headlining our boxing are Fury v Usyk from Sky Sports and TNT Sports, and Paul v Perry from DAZN.  

Thanks to our unique relationship with the Premier League and their broadcast partners, we will be showing all matches on the opening weekend of the new season alongside more football than ever before including key EFL fixtures from the new Sky Sports+ service. 

And as world-class sports men and women compete in Paris, we are thrilled to be showing BBC Sport’s coverage of the Olympics, also on BFBS TV. 

For our followers in the UK, we continue to show more military sport than any other broadcaster, and our thirty-seven sport livestreams this year have had more than 1million views. We'll be covering the Army Super Cup Final, and the Inter Services Rugby League finals for men and women in Portsmouth, St Helens, and Wakefield. In October, we’re planning to livestream the final games of the Aki 10s from Cyprus in what will be one of our most ambitious live streams to date! 

Welcome to BFBS Forces News…and Some Unforgettable Moments 

The forces.net website has been renamed BFBS Forces News and can be found at forcesnews.com with all the same great analysis, opinion, kit pieces, videos, and explainers as ever. Our audiences and followers can also sign up for a daily BFBS Forces News newsletter here. 

D-Day 80 was understandably one of the biggest stories in the last few months. BFBS Forces News’ focus in the run up to the commemorations was on rarely heard stories including incredible deceptions and veteran recollections.  

On June 6, a small team were in Normandy to cover events, including live streaming the parachute drop. Digital views across social media totalled 4.2 million, 1.75 million on June 6 itself. 

We've also had exclusive access to follow a Royal Marines sniper course from start to finish as they adapt to the L115 A3 rifle. Mastering Marksmanship has had 150k views on YouTube in two weeks, whilst part two of three on the skills phase was seen 115k times in the first 48 hours.  

And for the first time in its history, Joint Force Headquarters allowed cameras to follow how it trains personnel to deploy at a moment’s notice into some of the world’s danger zones. The tri-service team is tasked with evacuating British nationals from hotspots, ensuring diplomatic staff can escape warzones and rescuing civilians from natural disasters. James Wharton joined the newest members to see how they train for any eventuality. 

British troops on NATO's Ex STEADFAST DEFENDER enjoyed a night to remember when BFBS Live Events staged a festival show line up for them, with drum and bass supremos Sigma. 

In the middle of the Polish countryside the BFBS Live Events teams delivered a huge boost to morale. It was a challenging location in terms of resources, but the team was supported by the British military visits team who handled the road moves and infrastructure. 

Lance Corporal Carl Mason (DJ “CarlosM”) was the surprise guest act who jumped on to the decks to give the crowd a roaring 30-minute warm-up set before the headliners Sigma with MC Degs played an hour-long set of drum and bass bangers. 

Cameron Edwards from Sigma said: “I never thought I’d be in the middle of Poland playing to our troops, I’m very privileged to be here.” 

Commander of 12th Armoured Brigade Combat Team, Brigadier Henry Searby OBE, said: “This is a big exercise, it’s a big commitment over here with thousands of troops from the UK. This is a small token to show our appreciation to them for all their hard work.” 

The BFBS Forces News team were honoured to produce a video with Buckingham Palace of Her Majesty The Queen speaking to the military community to mark Armed Forces Day – they are picture left preparing for filming.  

The team accompanied our Royal Patron on all her military engagements, from inspecting the Royal Lancers as Colonel-in-Chief, to meeting veterans at the Poppy Factory, and families helped by the Colonel's Fund.  

This footage was used to illustrate the Queen's message which was filmed by BFBS Forces News at Clarence House. The video was reported widely across UK media, and a collaboration with the Palace on Instagram had 2.5 million views on Armed Forces Day.  

Our BFBS Academy has been running a social media campaign to highlight the range of courses available, and we are thrilled to share the news that eight of our media courses have been CPD approved. 

They are: one-day media training, campaign planning, three-day photography, three-day podcast, smartphone filming with free app editing, smartphone filming with Premiere Pro editing, visual storytelling, and storytelling for social media. 

If you'd like more details or to sign up for any of our other training courses, we’d love to hear from you – just email [email protected].

We are hugely excited to share news of two award nominations…  

Our BFBS Creative team is shortlisted for Communications Agency of the Year in the Third Sector Awards for their Cross Government response to Russia/Ukraine. 

Due to the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign preceding and during the Ukraine invasion, the MoD sought a groundbreaking communications strategy. This involved rapidly declassifying top-secret intelligence to expose Putin’s falsehoods. BFBS Creative was engaged for strategic communications support, requiring high-level clearance. Within 24 hours of the request, our team received a Top Secret briefing at MOD HQ. The BFBS Creative team has also just launched a fantastic new website here.  

And the BFBS Forces News Sitrep team has been nominated in the Press Gazette’s Future of Media Awards which '... recognise journalism from around the world and look at the best digital products in news media, not just the journalism'. Sitrep is competing against five others in the Podcast (Specialist / Regional) category for their weekly podcasts which bring audiences discussion and analysis on defence, foreign policy and the stories affecting the British Forces.