Quietly competitive – Part 2: Shelley Garton from Premier League Productions discusses digital tech and a trailblazing attitude

Premier League Productions’ Shelley Garton is digital producer for the business

Premier League Productions’ Shelley Garton is digital producer for the business, which is part of IMG. As a member of the digital team, technology is ever-changing and core to the job. She values curiosity and adaptability to be able to keep up and deal with the challenges. Split into two parts, Part 2 explores Garton’s top five events she has been part of, technology, and her advice to other women looking at moving into the sports broadcast industry.

What’s the most challenging thing about working in live sport today?

Technology and the need to remain up to speed in such a fast-paced, fluid environment, is an ongoing challenge in live sport today. How content used to get made is unrecognisable in 2025. Where previously there were so many more people in the chain, today we empower individuals to make fantastic digital packages seen by millions.

Combined with the ever-changing social media landscape, spontaneous algorithm shifts and the expanding, dizzying list of deliverables with every piece of content, this can definitely be difficult to remain on top of. It’s immense and when you think you’ve cracked it, it develops again! Our challenge as digital producers and digital creators is to be aware of the changing landscapes. Be curious – always. And be ready to change and adapt. Listen to your audience too. Their response is the driving force in what we do.

Premier League Productions’ Shelley Garton working on the Magic Bus in India

What’s the coolest thing you’ve worked on in the course of your career?

I’ve been so lucky, and I have too many. I’ll keep it to my top five!

1. As part of a 20-year celebration of the Premier League, through the League Managers Association, I conducted a 30-minute in-depth interview with Sir Alex Ferguson on his football management style and how he changed the culture of Manchester United. I will always cherish this.
2. Filming in Mumbai, India, covering the incredible work of the Magic Bus charity. Using sport, particularly football and cricket, to give young children a path from childhood to livelihood is one of the most humbling stories I’ve had the opportunity to cover. This will stay with me forever and I still follow the great work they do.
3. Mutiple football interviews including Arsene Wenger, Carlo Ancelotti, Alan Shearer, Roy Keane, John Terry, Steve Gerrard, Gary Speed, Gianluca Vialli, Gianfranco Zola, Marco Van Basten, George Best and Alfredo Di Stéfano. Plus, a few tennis legends like Pete Sampras, André Agassi, Pat Rafter, Carlos Moya and Boris Becker. I was part of the Wimbledon documentary crew who interviewed Boris Becker after his very last match at Wimbledon. An emotional moment.
4. The Mild Seven Quest was an IMG outdoor adventure race in the mountains of Lijiang in China, 650 miles from the Tibetan border. It was one of the biggest filming crews I’ve ever been a part of. Weeks of filming schedules and daily 2am call times to drive to our locations. Then we had two-hour walks to our filming positions to wait for the athletes to either kayak, cycle or run past us. The landscape was stunning, and I relished the cultural differences and the lack of sleep. Off the scale insane.
5. Covering the ATP tour in Moscow was wonderful and challenging work. Yevgeny Kafelnikov won the Kremlin Cup tournament instead of coming to us for his post-match interview, he went for a congratulatory meeting with, then Russia President, Boris Yeltsin. As much as you plan your edit and satellite news play outs, a sporting day can throw up surprises. Be adaptable.

What advice would you give to other women looking to move into a role in sports broadcasting like your own?

Have female role models to aspire to and learn from. My first job was given to me by a woman. In sailing, there was healthy female representation including production managers, producers, assistant producers, and sailors – women competing with, and against, men as equals. Personally, I was able to learn from other women in my rapidly growing network, including meeting someone in our IMG cricket department and being inspired by her. I knew I wanted to be her, and we did work together, many times. Turning up at London offices for overnight shifts alongside some of the cricket greats, discussing how the crease would play that day. We are still great friends today, and we still love our cricket.

There have been female trailblazers throughout my career, including women working on the NFL based in America, who knew their sport and gave young women like me the opportunity. I worked in an all-female ATP tennis production team, and the 2002 Noble Peace Prize documentary and live snooker events were produced by women. There were also incredible male role models too – manager directors, head of departments, producers – who believed in all of us. We learnt from them as well. That team ethos, drive and success comes from all areas of sports production, whether you are male or female. Absorb it all, work hard, really hard, and enjoy it.

Be yourself and be honest. If you don’t know something, or you need some guidance – ask. Be brave. I made sure before any interview or any story I was going to film, or any highlights I was due to edit, I would be prepped and researched. Plus, I would always check with my producers that I was covering what they were expecting. Attitude, communication, and attention to detail is so key. Get it right in the planning stage but always have a plan B up your sleeve.

Trust is key. Any production team I’ve been a part of, welcomed me from the start and treated me as an equal. I had creative, kind, and fun producers and team mates to learn from. They believed in me but also threw me in at the deep end; asking me to log the morning’s session of cricket, edit it, and add all the graphics on my own, or interview Andre Agassi when he’s just lost to Pete Sampras. Whether its running onto the pitch with your cameraman to do the post-match interview at the FIFA Women’s World Cup, broadcasting live around the world, or asking Stuart Pearce what he thought of his nickname ‘psycho’? If your producers believe in you – believe in yourself.

Aim to maintain positivity, empathy, dedication and resilience. And take every opportunity presented to you – and if it’s not there – then ask for it. Take the initiative. It might not come straight away, and it might present itself to you in a different way, but embrace it all, and embrace change.

Never stop learning. Thrive on team spirit – it’s how we all develop. To be successful we need a whole squad, male and female. And a sisterhood at work, and behind the scenes at home, with coffee, love and support – it’s the glue that holds it all together.

Working on the FIFA Women’s World Cup pres, Shelly Garton from Premier League Productions

The technologies used in sports broadcasting have evolved rapidly over recent years. What for you in your day-to-day job is the most exciting, and also what is the biggest gamechanger for this industry overall?

The day-to-day excitement for me is being part of a team who is creating new digital content for the Premier League and the international broadcasters around the world. We have excellent relationships with both, and we all work hard to make sure we are collaborative, focused on our shared values, end goals and new strategies.

As well as the producer of 40 digital media access day shoots throughout the season, I’m also the producer of our Premier League Matchday Social Channel, where we cover the matchday experience with access all area accreditation through the lens of mobile phones. Our live content creators capture digital first behind the scenes content, giving our broadcasters, and fans around the world, an intimate view of real-time match action, goals and key moments of the game. I’m incredibly proud of the quality and development of this digital offering at live games and there are excellent females at all levels of our digital teams and output. But we need to always be moving forward; what is the next development? What’s the next strategy? We don’t stop.