How Sports Superfan David Lieb Is Bringing Authentic Sporting Culture to the Screen

Born and raised in the north of England, David Lieb is a London-based director and creative with a passion for sport. He has delivered work for some of the world’s biggest brands such as adidas, Visa, Qatar Airways, Budweiser, EA and Nissan. Those films have featured some of the world's biggest stars including Messi, Neymar, Mbappe, Max Verstappen, Vinicius Jr. and many more.

David is an expert in sports advertising and comfortable working under the time constraints and pressures that come with working with elite athletes. Having spent over a decade working within sports advertising, David’s ability to get performances out of athletes and non-acting talent under strict time constraints has seen brands come back to him time and time again.

David chatted to LBB about his upcoming work with F1 giants McLaren and Ferrari and how sports advertising is venturing into braver creative briefs.

Name: David Lieb

Location: London

Repped by/in: The Banquet

LBB> What are some upcoming projects that you're excited about? Tell us a bit about them.

David> I have a nice project coming up with McLaren technology centre and one of their major sponsors. I can’t say too much about it just yet, but we are going to utilise their full 360-screen at The Monthly Cut and create something that blends practical with archive in a creative way.

I’ve also got a really nice film for HP and Ferrari that I’ve been sitting on for ages which hopefully is out any day now.

LBB> What excites you in the advertising industry right now, as a director? Any trends or changes that open new opportunities?

David> I guess this is more specific to the space in the advertising industry that I'm in, but in sports advertising, I’ve seen an attempt to move away from boring homogenised work.

I look at the work Homeground is doing for Beats and adidas, ‘The Midnight Club’ for adidas, those Nike Football ‘Scary Good’ commercials or Leigh Powis’ Under Armour work where brands are taking chances and doing things that aren’t “safe”.

Instead of a footballer in a greasy spoon or working mans club, we’ve got Cole Palmer ice skating or Pedro Porro standing next to a broken sink in the dark – it’s weird and it’s visually interesting. It stays with me more than a player doing a football drill and I hope it means I will be seeing braver creative briefs land in my inbox too.

LBB> What elements of a script sets one apart from the other and what sort of scripts get you excited to shoot them?

David> I’m a huge sports fan, it’s why I ended up trying to carve out a niche in the sports advertising space in the first place. As a fan, I am essentially the kind of person I'm advertising to.

When I get a script, the first thing I'm looking for is an understanding of the audience. So often we are taking authentic fan culture and selling it back to them with a brand logo attached. Audiences aren’t stupid, they know this is happening and if it’s done badly, they will let you know.

Scripts that are really exciting are the ones that treat the audience with respect, that feel authentic to the culture as opposed to a blatant cash grab.

LBB> How do you approach creating a treatment for a spot?

David> The first thing I do is look for the element of the script that excites me the most and work from there.

Agency decks are often so full of information that they can be hard to decipher. I like to look at the core idea, followed by what we are selling and who to.

Then I just try and put down on paper how best I think we can achieve the visual – whether from a technical point of view or an emotional one.

LBB> If the script is for a brand that you're not familiar with/ don’t have a big affinity with or a market you're new to, how important is it for you to do research and understand that strategic and contextual side of the ad? If it’s important to you, how do you do it?

David> It’s kind of rare that a brief like that would come my way, but regardless of whether I know the brand or not, I will always go back and look at the work they’ve recently done, what’s going on with the brand’s Instagram or other social channels.

They may have a distinctive style that you’ll quickly know not to veer too far from or they might be fairly safe in the work they do, so you know not to throw too many out-of-the-box ideas all at once. I definitely think having an understanding of the brand’s strategy is going to help in the long run.

I’ve been in a situation before where the client wanted certain changes to an edit which were strategy-led but had never been shared with me. A quick chat with the team told me more about the brand’s future plans, which made the whole back and forth on amends much easier.

LBB> For you, what is the most important working relationship for a director to have with another person in making an ad? And why?

David> I want a producer who is going to back me. Someone who believes in the idea and will try and put as much of the budget on screen as possible. I believe I'm a fairly calm presence on set, but that is helped by having a producer who can keep the nonsense away from me, only bringing creative problems to me rather than anything else they might be dealing with.

LBB> What type of work are you most passionate about - is there a particular genre or subject matter or style you are most drawn to?

David> I love the storytelling aspect of my job, being able to do commercial work with a documentary lens is what most excites me.

LBB>What misconception about you or your work do you most often encounter and why is it wrong?

David> David Lieb is the sports guy… I mean, I am, no doubt, but there’s a lot more to my work than just the sports person doing said sport. I recently did a commercial and branded documentary for a paint brand called Zinsser, this was way more character-led, focusing less on the product and more about the people who use it. It’s not usually the kind of project that would be put in front of me, but the creative director on it was confident enough in my reel to champion me.

LBB> What’s the craziest problem you’ve come across in the course of a production – and how did you solve it?

David> Most shoots come with a level of crazy, especially around high profile talent. I remember one time, being told not to ask Neymar to say something in English despite nobody asking him if he was ok with it, I chanced it on the last take and he did it no problem. I'm a firm believer that if you treat these athletes as people they will most likely do what you need.

In terms of craziest/most stressful, there was one particular project where we were working over the Twixmas period which made it to the grade. It turned out that someone somewhere hadn’t done due diligence on an influencer that had been given to us for the shoot. The football club involved in the project did their own due diligence and we had to halt the grade, re-cut the film, get another one of the talent to send us a voice note to replace the lines of the guy we could no longer use. It was mental but you wouldn’t notice someone is missing unless you were privy to the earlier edits.

LBB> How do you strike the balance between being open/collaborative with the agency and brand client while also protecting the idea?

David> For me, filmmaking is all about collaboration, with a brand or agency, they’ve probably been working on the idea and strategy way longer than I have, so I value their insight. I like to understand their thinking, so I can apply it to the film and leave them happy.

I just try and make it clear that the time for ideas is before the shoot day or in rehearsal, there’s nothing worse than working with talent and someone tries to pivot while the talent is on set. It makes everyone look like they don’t know what they want and is the fastest way to get the talent to disengage with the idea.

LBB> What are your thoughts on opening up the production world to a more diverse pool of talent? Are you open to mentoring and apprenticeships on set?

David> I'm always open to this and think it’s a great thing. I’m fully aware that I am in a privileged position and would have loved some sort of support or guidance when I was trying to establish myself. There’s enough gatekeepers out there without me becoming one, if I can help someone on their journey then I’m happy to do so.

LBB> Your work is now presented in so many different formats - to what extent do you keep each in mind while you're working (and, equally, to what degree is it possible to do so)?

David> I'm still a purist and I like to see work presented in a horizontal format. I understand the need to have output across all channels and being able to shoot open gate on cameras has partially helped ensure I can shoot things that don’t lose integrity through digital reframing.

I’m always going to try and ensure we’re delivering for all the formats needed so where possible I will shoot certain things like close ups twice when I have the time, one that works for vertical and one for horizontal. What can be frustrating is sometimes I get things that are only going to be shown in one format but nobody seems to want to be brave enough to just shoot for purpose. Like if it’s only going to be shown vertically then why not shoot it that way.

LBB> Which pieces of your work do you feel show what you do best – and why?

David> EA FC Team Of The Year – I do a lot of football shoots especially as part of marketing days at clubs. With this film being more brand ambassador level players, we were able to spend a bit more time and craft a story around their involvement. We had a lot of camera toys and body doubles as well as the legend that is Andy Ansah. I love this film, as I think it’s just a hint of what I can do with bigger budgets on a larger scale.

​Betway x Man City - I’m a huge football fan and I really wanted to visualise the support of Man City but on a much bigger scale. Rather than just having access to players on a marketing day, we built a bespoke set and filmed vignettes around Manchester to really elevate the scale. A lot of the fan stuff could have been done with the archive but I wanted to strike a nice balance between what we shot and what we used from City’s archive.

​Toyota x The Hundred x Sky - I’d love to be doing more car work, so when this brief came to me I was all in. Not only do the cars look great but we got to show them off in a less conventional way, building them into scenes but not always the hero. For me, like the Betway film, it’s about the world we built; vibrant and colourful like The Hundred but also feeling authentic to the game of cricket.

​EA FC 25 - Superfans - While I’m striving to do more commercial work, I still love the opportunities where things aren’t constrained by traditional TVC lengths. My style is all about that premium documentary feel and this series really allowed me to lean into that. Long takes, slow zooms, letting scenes breathe where they could. The easiest thing to do with a football brief is fast pace edit, loads of transitions etc but for me it’s a bit played out. Trying to do something against the norm in the sports space is exciting to me.