ASM Heritage

The early days at Alchemy Creations consisted on two desks in the middle of the countryside and working with seven football clubs, along with Matchroom Sport. From there we have had three more offices – each time slightly bigger and better to accommodate a growing company – while desiging for a growing number of sporting clubs and organisations, alongside the addition of a marketing department.

Our first season as Alchemy Creations – the 2008/09 season – we were working with Leyton Orient, Lincoln City, Kidderminster Harriers, Southend United, Colchester United, Oxford United and Wrexham. This was back when we offered just design services. This was alongside producing event material for Matchroom Sport (PDC, Fishomania, Ten Pin bowling, Ping Pong, Snooker), you name it we’ve been involved with it.

As time went by we would pick up the odd job, mainly sponsors or connections with our clubs, but our reputation in the sporting world continued to grow and our friends across the clubs moved on and we went with them. Come the 2009/10 season we started working with Brighton & Hove Albion, their last year at the Withdean Stadium, and with a move to the new Amex coming the following season this was the next step for Alchemy Creations, our first new club since we started, little did we realise where that would take us!

Still the company continued to grow into more diverse industries and pick up work elsewhere. In the sports world we were being approached by a number of football clubs to design and work with them on their matchday programmes – it would seem our reputation as an award winning design agency was getting around.

The 2010/11 season came along, and with it our roster of clubs included Mansfield Town and Crawley Town, although Colchester United and Southend United moved on, but we continued all the good work across our seven clubs, winning more industry awards and adding more clients from across multiple industries to our growing client list.

We retained this set of clubs for a number of seasons, adding Forest Green Rovers for the 2013/14 and 2014/15 seasons, until Charlton Athletic approached us to work with them for the 2016/17 season. Towards the end of 2016 – outside of programme production – we started working with the West Ham United Foundation on all their design and printing needs and began providing a monthly design service for Scunthorpe United – as well as assorted social media assets for Tottenham Hotspur mixed in too. Throw in work for the Middlesex FA and it was a very busy period for the Alchemy team of three!

The start of 2017 continued where 2016 had left off, producing eight club programmes, Matchroom Sport events (particularly the PDC) alongside monthly design and print work for Oxford United, West Ham United Foundation, Scunthorpe United and Tottenham Hotspur. We were now working for the Benchmark Sport Group, this included Sport Industry Awards and their partner companies that run sports events across the globe. The days of two men and some football programmes were long gone…

2018 saw the addition of VSN, a kit manufacturer, to our client list as we assisted them in their marketing and design needs – selling their services to sports club both big and small. Elsewhere the football programme work continued – including producing editions for both Brighton and Oxford’s women’s teams – as we added Watford to the Alchemy roster, while we also worked on Matchroom’s diverse selection of events.

On to 2019 and we began working with England Boxing, the amateur boxing body, helping to give them a more professional look and feel to their literature, along with dipping our toe into the world of eSports with some event branding for the NSE. On top of this we also started our relationship with Harrows, the darts manufacturer, producing design and marketing strategy for what is the biggest manufacturer of darts in the UK. On the football front we added design provision for both Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Europa and Premier League campaigns, branding for Solihull Moors and were also tasked with redesigning the Stevenage FC club badge.

2020 saw us, along with the rest of the world, hit hard by Covid, although the clamour to keep professional sports going meant we were able to help keep the mood of the nation raised as we produced online programmes and other digital graphics to be sent to fans as behind-closed-doors fixtures took place up and down the country.

Mid-2021 saw a gradual return of fans to stadiums and events, as a sense of normality was restored, and we at Alchemy kicked back into top gear. We also helped CP Sport with a rebrand to help get their important work seen by a wider audience. Ipswich Town were the latest football club to employ our programme services as we took on the design for the Tractorboys.

On the marketing side in 2022 we started working with MSG, providing extensive support for their Rugby World Cup 2023 ticketing efforts. This was our first full-service marketing and design client in the sports industry and we were able to show that our work for them increased ticket sales far above and beyond our targets. A great learning and success story for us as a company.

The last two years have seen us continue to work with our portfolio of football clubs, sports bodies and organisations, manufacturers and service providers, providing marketing and design services that we hope – due to our passion and commitment to sports – consistently go above and beyond expectations.

With that pride in our work we decided to have Alchemy Sports Media as a standalone arm of the company, meaning we can provide the dedicated service that will help both our clients and ASM flourish and succeed in the future.