Agency of the Year
WINNER
LiveWire Sport
If you’re a football fan, it’s likely you’ve engaged with LiveWire Sport content every day for almost a decade, and we’ve let that work do the talking for us. But this year, as we become the first social-first agency to turn ten years old, it’s time to step out of the shadows.
In 2020/21, we entered our tenth year with the Premier League, produced an award-winning FIFA #WorldCupAtHome campaign, launched West Ham United on TikTok, produced over 250 bespoke assets for Inter Milan, and even developed our own charity campaign for Transfer Deadline Day, along with so much more.
In a time of unfathomable tragedy and disruption in the industry, we’ve grown the team by 75%; recorded a ninth straight year of turnover growth; won new business with many of the biggest rights holders in the world; supported the urgently-needed development of unrepresented talent; launched an app to help clients produce high-quality footage during lockdown; raised over £11m for UK charities through pro bono work; invested in a new sister agency, and continued to deliver for an enviable list of clients, all while continuing to develop our culture and nurture the well-being of our brilliantly talented team in challenging times.
SILVER
WePlay
WePlay was founded as the first performance-based sports marketing agency for the digital age. Our approach is entirely focused on delivering outcomes over outputs. That way, our clients can benefit from a world-class agency, without the traditional fixed costs associated with one.
Winner of the Football Business Awards Agency of the Year in 2017 and 2018, we are sports specialists and digital experts, seamlessly blending intelligence, strategy, creative and media for sporting organisations looking to achieve high-growth performance.
Despite the significant disruption to the sports industry in 2020, we focused on finding opportunity within the adversity. The shift towards streaming platforms and other direct-to-consumer revenue streams saw a huge rise in SVOD (subscription video on demand), audience development and digital sponsorship briefs from clients, with major success stories achieved in our work within the football industry.
We concluded the year with a remarkable 100% client retention rate, having generated direct commercial revenue for clients in excess of £200m over the last 4 years. 2020 marked our best year yet on record, with the foundations laid for even further growth in 2021.
BRONZE
Cake
Cake is the sport and entertainment hub of Havas. We create meaningful connections between people and brands through creativity and culture. Our ideas combine bold thinking with brilliant creativity, all underpinned by insight and data.
Our football clients and rights holders are best in class including BT (4 Home Nations Football Associations), EE (Wembley Stadium), PayPal (The FA), UNICEF (FC Barcelona), Carling, AFC
Wimbledon and PUMA.
Despite a year of unprecedented disruption Cake rose to the challenge, helping our clients continue thriving, meeting business, brand and activation objectives and using football partnerships to benefit fans, players, customers and UK society.
We’ve created and delivered leading activation strategies, showcased product benefits and changed perceptions, produced a variety of creative content, demonstrated the value and ROI of partnership activity, engaged and entertained fans remotely, supported communities, grassroots, male, female and Para/Disability football, raised money for charity and a fan-owned club to return home, recruited a new army of football volunteers, helped parents’ home schooling, thanked and rewarded children of key workers.
We’re proud to have delivered for our clients whilst looking after our people, in the most difficult of years – producing results that demonstrate the power of football partnerships in action.
