Best Brand Activation Involving Football – Premier League & Championship Clubs
AFC Bournemouth & Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority
A challenger club competing in the Premier League, AFC Bournemouth aligns with challenger brands, focusing on creativity and innovation to deliver maximum commercial impact. Its partnership with Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), Official Training Wear Sleeve Partner, was designed to go beyond traditional sponsorship and create experience-led moments.
The Light Up January campaign became the partnership’s most ambitious activation to date. Centred on a limited-edition glow-in-the-dark walkout top that were launched at sunset to symbolise a shift from winter darkness to Las Vegas-inspired energy, the campaign included a Premier League-first matchday drone show and full digital takeover of Vitality Stadium. LVCVA was positioned as Matchday Presenting Partner at AFC Bournemouth’s matches against Tottenham and Liverpool, with the activation optimised for both broadcast and social.
The results were immediate: 1,600 visitors to AFC Bournemouth’s retail site within five minutes of launch, the tops selling out instantly to mostly first-time buyers of club merchandise. The impact on social was impressive too, with 1.7 million impressions, a reach of 770,000 and 33,000 engagements.
The activation set a new benchmark for experiential partnership activation, demonstrating how football’s emotional and destination storytelling can combine to create a signature cultural moment with global impact.
Brentford FC & Visit Tampa Bay
Brentford FC and club partner Visit Tampa Bay collaborated on ‘Art with a Heart’, a unique activation to share the story of Tampa Bay’s vibrant, diverse culture with Brentford’s global audience.
Taking inspiration from Tampa Bay’s world-renowned art scene, Brentford players created their own, one-of-a-kind art pieces with the help of artist Dylan Perry. The three pieces were auctioned to raise money from Heart of West London, Brentford’s campaign to teach life-saving CPR skills in the community and raise money for ground-breaking cardiac research.
The activation reached thousands online, engaged thousands more on during the club’s dedicated Visit Tampa Bay matchday, and raised awareness of the importance of good cardiac health with a meaningful contribution to the Heart of West London story.
Chelsea FC, UEFA & Topps MatchAttax
Topps wanted to hero the new Match Attax collection – a much-loved football trading card game and a major retail driver among football fans and collectors.
With a limited budget, the challenge was to create a brand activation that would build hype and fandom during one of the football calendar’s busiest periods. What better way to do so than by celebrating this year’s most sought-after card – the “Ice Cold” Cole Palmer card – and freezing it into ice at Chelsea’s huge game against Barcelona.
Cue media, influencers, fans and thousands of passers-by flocking to get their selfies with the installation, and a PR moment that re-ignited our target audience’s love of collecting football cards.
Coventry City FC & Monzo Bank
Monzo’s partnership with Coventry City FC transformed a traditional shirt sponsorship into a product-led cultural moment. As the UK’s #1 digital bank, Monzo had grown rapidly with a younger, London-centric audience. To grow, we needed to build trust and emotional proximity with families and regional communities, places where digital-only banks are often seen as “screens” not “supporters.”
Rather than settling for logo exposure, Monzo chose to give something back. The brand launched the “1p Shop” in Coventry. For one day only, fans could buy the official Hot Coral away shirt, inspired by Monzo’s iconic brand colour, for just 1p using their Monzo card.
The idea was rooted in Monzo’s Saving Challenge, which shows how saving one penny more each day can grow into £667.95 over a year. If small change can build serious savings over time, what could a penny unlock today? The answer: a football shirt.
Over 3,000 fans attended, with 1,972 shirts sold. The campaign generated 4.28 million social impressions, drove a near 2x increase in local account sign-ups, and delivered a 50% uplift in positive brand buzz among Midlands family football fans.
Monzo moved from sponsor to supporter, proving small change can make a big difference.
Everton FC & the Hill Dickinson Stadium
When Everton moved from Goodison Park to Hill Dickinson Stadium in 2025, it presented the Club with a blank canvas to brand its new home.
The task of transforming the 52,679-capacity waterfront stadium was focused on representing 133 years of rich history and irrevocable memories.
The ambition behind the brand integration has been to compliment that with an identity that is unmistakably Everton – rooted in the heritage, the city and the stories of supporters – whilst also demonstrating an appetite for growth outside of football into a broader, 365 programme of events.
Over the duration of our inaugural season, the Club therefore set out to deliver a stadium brand activation that would:
• Ensure supporters were emotionally vested in the move and proud to call Hill Dickinson Stadium their new home
• Embed Everton’s identity authentically throughout the stadium
• Strengthen fan belonging, pride and advocacy during a major period of change
• Support long-term commercial objectives, including stadium tours, events and 365 programming
• Create a flexible brand system capable of evolving over future generations
The solution was a fan-rooted activation that uses the stadium as a storytelling environment and physically manifests Everton’s values, history and community DNA.
Fulham FC & Royal Caribbean
Royal Caribbean may be Fulham FC’s Official Cruise Partner. But they are the Club’s Official Family Partner for a reason. For the 2025/26 season, both the Club and Royal Caribbean committed to putting the football fan at the centre of all activations. Informed by fan data and aligned values, we created the unifying activation theme of “It’s Goal Time” brought to life by Royal’s Matchday Takeover activation at Fulham v Chelsea on 7th January 2026.
Leveraging a multi-channel strategy across social, digital and in-stadia activations, Royal Caribbean successfully integrated into the Fulham fan matchday experience, bringing friends and family together to celebrate achievements and make lifelong memories. The “It’s Goal Time” activation has far surpassed Royal Caribbean’s performance metrics for the season. The most difficult thing to measure? The happiness of one generational fan and his mum for winning a 7-day European cruise on the pitch at Craven Cottage in front of a soldout home crowd.
Nottingham Forest FC & Bally’s
In summer 2025, Bally’s launched Bally Bet into the UK online sports betting market, supported by a sponsorship with Nottingham Forest for the 2025/26 season. With football a driver of sportsbook revenue, the partnership was critical to building credibility and establishing Bally Bet in a market dominated by established competitors.
As a new entrant in the UK, Bally Bet’s challenge was trust. The objective in year one was to connect with UK football fans, starting with Nottingham Forest supporters, by behaving differently to traditional betting brands and “speaking the game” in ways that genuinely mattered to fans. Success was measured through a blend of reach (share of voice and PR exposure) and depth of engagement (content interaction rates and fan-led UGC).
To achieve this, Bally Bet created River Roars Red, an activation around Forest’s historic European fixture against Malmö. Using fan-submitted memories and messages, Bally Bet projected a hero film onto the Brian Clough Stand on match night, placing supporters at the heart of the experience.
The campaign delivered 337k impressions, 9.3k engagements, major UK and international media coverage, record social performance, and positive sentiment (17%), helping establish Bally Bet as an authentic voice in UK football culture.
Wrexham AFC & STōK Cold Brew Coffee
Wrexham AFC, STōK Cold Brew Coffee and Maximum Effort partnered to deliver an integrated football-led brand activation, connecting fans, shoppers and retail performance.
Built around limited-edition Wrexham AFC-branded bottles, the campaign aimed to drive awareness of the partnership, encourage product trial and convert engagement into a measurable sales impact. A video featuring Wrexham AFC’s first team with Channing Tatum was screened during the 2025 Super Bowl, achieving massive global reach and strengthening brand recall and cultural relevance. A digital hub combined interactive elements and incentives, with social media amplification through #SToKWrexhamSweepstakes. The activation extended into digital channels, retail and live football environments, with in-store bottle-neck hangers, targeted media, retailer integrations and a high-profile campaign video distributed across social channels, ESPN, and in-stadium during Wrexham AFC’s U.S. Summer Tour.
The results were significant; the activation generated 110k+ sweepstakes entries, 10k social posts and uplifted sales by 1%. The Channing Tatum advert alone earned 1.4B+ media impressions across 55 publications, 26M+ social video views and 830M+ social engagement – demonstrating how activation via brand partnerships can effectively create opportunities for custom content and storytelling, co-branded products, experimental activation and in-stadium advertising – all whilst delivery fan engagement and real business outcomes.
