INTERVIEW: SPORTS TEAM - MERCURY PRIZE 2020
A new album, a Mercury Music Prize nomination and a battle with Lady Gaga… 2020 has been a good year for Sports Team, but there’s nothing quite like being in among the fans on a bus down to Margate, writes Rob Hakimian
Images by David Titlow
Sports Team have provided one of the feel-good stories of recent years with their meteoric rise from another bunch of wannabes to headlining in front of thousands, signing to Island Records, going head-to-head with Lady Gaga and being nominated for the Mercury Award. But, really, they just want to be your mates.
In the last two summers, Sports Team have planned days out to Margate, bussing a bunch of their fans down for a jolly day on the seafront capped off by a performance from the beloved six-piece.
Apart from just being a lot of fun, Sports Team have organised these excursions because it’s become their mission to make their fan base into an extended group of friends – no matter the age.
“A lot of our fans are around 14-15 and I think we felt the same when we were their age: you haven’t got a lot of money and buying a ticket for a gig, getting the train, you easily end up paying £60 to go see a band you like,” says Alex Rice, the band’s singer and leader.
“So, basically, we wanted to do one thing a year where we give something back: free tickets, put it out to our community of fans and drive them down.”
Had things not been as they were in 2020, they would have repeated the excursion this year. “It’s beautiful in Margate,” Alex says, practically smacking his lips at the memories of The Tap Room and ice creams on the beach. “Great town.”
Sports Team still plan to repeat the adventure in the future and they’re eyeing up The Lido as a potential host for their all-conquering return show.
They’ll undoubtedly have a bigger crowd than ever when it does happen, but they’re not about to turn into unapproachable rock stars.
“All of us have been pretty conscious about being genuine, I don’t think anything we do is an act,” Alex says. “It’s always been a gang first – then we started playing music. We started off very amateurish, which was a lot of the appeal, I think. You saw us and you thought ‘oh I could do that, it doesn’t look so hard’.”
Sports Team formed at uni, where they met and bonded over music and simply having a laugh, as well as their experiences growing up in regional towns, dreaming of the big city.
For Alex and bassist Oli Dewdney, that town was Tunbridge Wells – but they always knew they would end up in the capital. “We always felt that pull towards London,” he reflects. “We’d go up to gigs and it was the ultimate goal to end up moving there.”
After graduation, they did all move to the capital, where they now all live together in one big house – but it wasn’t immediately the dream they’d envisioned as they were working long hours for little reward.
“You’re spending all your money on rent and you think ‘is this it?’,” Alex recalls. “You hear a lot of that challenging in our music: ‘there must be more’. For us, it was coming back late at night and rehearsing until three in the morning all the time.”
This dedication to practising certainly helped them grow as a band, but Sports Team remained purely an escape from their day jobs for a long time. It was only when they were offered an extensive tour supporting Hinds in 2018 that they took the plunge and made music their livelihood – “we couldn’t fake two months of sickies,” Alex jokes.
“...we couldn’t fake two months of sickies”
Things have only moved upwards since then, with tours in front of ever-growing crowds, signing to Island Records (home to Ariana Grande, Disclosure and The Streets, among many others) and releasing their debut album this summer.
That record, Deep Down Happy, ended up coming out a week after Lady Gaga’s long-awaited Chromatica, and the two were locked in a David-and-Goliath tussle for the top of the UK album charts, with the band losing by a slim 571 album sales at the last.
“It was Blur vs Oasis, and we were Oasis,” they joked on Twitter, but they got the consolation prize of having the pop star call their home phone and send them flowers (they have no idea how she got their number).
As if things couldn’t get any better, barely a month later Sports Team were informed that Deep Down Happy had made the shortlist for the coveted Mercury Music Prize – the top honour for British music artists, with prize money of £25,000 for the winner. They’re up against the likes of Charli XCX and Laura Marling, but of this year’s 12 finalists their album is the only debut – something the judges have been known to favour in the past.
In a year of unparalleled success, the only negative for Sports Team is not being able to take Deep Down Happy on tour. “Putting a record out is quite abstract in a way, like, what are you doing – you’re just uploading something to Spotify,” Alex comments. “But then it’s real as soon as you see a couple of thousand people have turned up and they’re singing the words back to you, that’s the real tangible bit.”
Nevertheless, Sports Team have been using the down time to start working on their second album – when they’re not watching cooking shows. “I really believe that if you watch Saturday Kitchen, that’s how you tap what British culture is at the moment,” Alex laughs. “It’s a little melting pot of everything.”
He also takes pointers from Keith Floyd’s work: “He’s a performer, that’s proper performance stuff”. So you know who to blame when Alex’s questionable dance moves do return to the stage.
But, until they can get back on the road again, Sports Team just want fans to enjoy Deep Down Happy. “I hope when they listen they feel like they know us, I hope our personalities come through. I think they should feel like they’ve lived with us for a week,” Alex says. “And maybe they’ll feel they can start a band as well.”