We’ve been saying for quite some time here at Blurrt how we think there’s room for an extra seat alongside on-screen pundits for the world’s footballing fans to have their voice heard. Promisingly, we’re one step closer thanks to the innovative work we’ve undertaken with Sky Sports.

The Social Team of the Week has become a regular feature on the Premier League Daily show following each week’s set of fixtures and looks at a starting XI selected by the highest scoring players in their respective positions.

The ratings we give players are calculated using the Blurrt Score, a unique metric that measures audience reaction by analysing and understanding sentiment expressed in social media posts using our own natural language processing system as well as factoring in the volumes of conversation going on.

This means that if something particularly significant and reactive happens – like a last minute free-kick carefully crafted into the top corner or a diving full stretch fingertip wonder save – the rating for that individual will rocket upwards as the footballing world reacts to that special moment. Here’s a blog post we wrote that details a little bit more about how this works.

Blurrt also provided support throughout the 18 hour ‘Deadline Day’ live program that ran on the 31st January, providing social snapshots of how people were reacting to all the day’s breaking and biggest stories.

Content that aired varied from showing the most used emoji reactions from different sets of fans, to measuring overall sentiment towards a club’s dealings, to discussing which deals were creating the most buzz over social.

Blurrt’s social analysis and understanding also helped to provide supportive content for web articles on SkySports.com and has left us all here excited and optimistic for the future of aggregate audience reactions and eyeing up that potential pundit seat next to Thierry and Jamie!