From a TikTok Series to Television: How Branding Turned a Football Side-Project Into One of Nepal's Most Watched Sports Shows
When the FIFA World Cup came around, the media house I worked with didn't have the official streaming rights but they still wanted to give football fans something worth showing up for. What started as a small TikTok series, squeezed between twenty-plus daily news posts on a page built for an audience over 35, ended up breaking viewership records, surviving a copyright setback that wiped out our views overnight, and eventually graduating into a full television show that became one of the most-watched sports talk shows on the network in years. This is that story.
Erson
Brand Content Strategist
Kantipur Media
Not every big win starts with a big budget or an official license. Sometimes it starts with a simple question: what can we actually offer, given what we have? When the World Cup rolled around and streaming rights weren't on the table, that question landed on me. The answer became a TikTok series, one that had to fight for space on a page that wasn't built for it, survive a near-fatal copyright mistake, and eventually earn its way onto television. Here's how it happened, step by step.
Finding Space on a Page That Wasn't Built for Us
The page belonged to the biggest media house in Nepal, a page where more than 20 pieces of news content went up every single day, and where 85% of the audience was over the age of 35, coming in specifically for daily news updates. Sports commentary content, especially something as niche and youth-leaning as a football series, simply wasn't what that audience showed up for. The first two videos proved that the hard way, they barely moved. It forced a real reset: instead of assuming the existing audience would adapt to us, we had to study what that audience already loved about the page and figure out how a football series could speak that same language while still pulling in the younger, sports-hungry crowd we were actually targeting.
The Breakthrough, and the Setback That Nearly Ended It
Once we adjusted the approach, the series took off. Videos started consistently pulling in over 100K views each, becoming one of the strongest-performing content types on the entire page. It felt like the project had found its rhythm. Then came the moment that nearly derailed everything: a small copyright oversight in the branding caused our views to crash overnight, from 500K down to just 3K. It was, without question, one of the most demotivating points of the entire project, watching weeks of momentum evaporate over a mistake that felt minor in the moment but wasn't. But there wasn't time to sit in that setback. We reworked the affected branding elements, resolved the copyright issue, and got back to rebuilding what we'd lost.
The Comeback That Redefined the Series
The recovery didn't just restore the series, it improved it. After adjusting our branding, the views started climbing again, and this time they stabilized around 200K per video, consistently. The series became the most reliable, most consistent performer on the entire page, exceeding the targets we'd originally set for it. That consistency mattered more than any single viral spike could have. It proved the format worked, the branding worked, and the audience, the younger, football-loving crowd we'd set out to attract, was actually sticking around.
When a Series Becomes a Show
The series performed so well in its first half that the sponsor made a call few people expected: they were willing to invest more resources to turn it into a full television show. That decision changed the scope of the entire project. A parallel production track began, the team grew, and I moved into the role of assistant director and post-production lead, while the branding itself had to evolve again, this time reworked for a television audience rather than a short-form TikTok feed. Balancing both formats at once keeping the TikTok series running while building out the TV show behind it, meant the branding decisions made months earlier (the sponsor's blue as the anchor color, with yellow, red, and white as supporting tones) had to now hold up across two completely different viewing experiences.
The Premiere That Broke the Charts
When the first episode of the TV show aired, it didn't just perform well, it broke several viewing records for the network, becoming the most-watched show on the media house's platforms in three years, excluding sports highlight reels. The first episode wasn't a soft launch. It was a banger, and it set the tone for everything that followed.
Conclusion
By the time the project wrapped, the series and show together had pulled in roughly 15 million views across social platforms in just two months, with the television show landing as one of the best-performing broadcasts the network had aired. What started as a workaround, a way to give football fans something meaningful without official streaming rights — ended up becoming proof of something bigger: that the right branding, applied consistently and adjusted intelligently through every setback, can turn a side-project into the main event.
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