Best Brand Activation Involving Football 2018
Leicester City Football Club
Since its introduction in 2015, Leicester City’s live output on a matchday has provided free audio coverage of the Football Club’s top-flight fixtures, including perhaps sport’s greatest ever triumph – winning the 2015/16 Premier League title.
The Foxes are now entering their sixth season in the Premier League, and during that period, have experienced a stunning amount of growth in their following, with social media accounts now boasting over 13 million people, and LCFC.com attracting over 14 million page views in 2018.
Utilising this following, fans from across the world are now able to listen to free commentary of every Premier League match on Matchday Live, whether they are in local Leicester, or listening in on a nine-hour time difference.
In addition to matchday commentary, a further two live shows are broadcast once a week, with Matchday Minus Two providing an extensive preview ahead of the weekend fixture, while Extra-Time analyses City’s latest outing. Fans are able to watch on Twitter, Facebook and LCFC.com, and can often engage with interactive quizzes and discussion points.
Across Leicester City’s 2018/19 season, over 5.7 million people either viewed or listened to the Club’s live output, with broadcast times increasing for the new campaign.
Liverpool Football Club
LFC Media is a department within Liverpool FC that serves the LFC fanbase and wider business. With 75 staff members, it includes journalists, social media specialists, editors, graphic designers, content producers, product and account managers, technical experts, marketeers and more.
The department operates a multi-faceted business with responsibility for content creation, key broadcast relationships, as well as managing and servicing club products such as the club’s 24 hour TV channel, apps, social media platforms and websites.
Working across multiple objectives the department operates as a revenue driving arm of the business as well as facilitating significant audience growth for the business as a whole and servicing other departmental needs.
LFC Media has produced content of a consistently high quality, leading to industry leading engagement numbers across club platforms.
A fantastic level of trust from the footballing side of the business has led to unprecedented access to players and staff, giving fans a view from within the camp never seen before. The engagement of the players with the club’s platforms shows that they are invested in, and see the value of, the output produced.
RamsTV – Derby County Football Club
Fully committed towards Derby County’s club mission statement of ‘creating the most immersive, engaging and inspiring content globally in football,’ RamsTV maintains an ambition to become the best in-house broadcast department at a football club, anywhere within the UK.
Producing the entirety of Derby County’s official video output, RamsTV provides fans with comprehensive coverage of all the club’s sides through unrivalled matchday coverage, behind the scenes access, in-depth features, promotional campaigns and episodical content.
In doing so, RamsTV has not only helped created an additional revenue stream for the club but has also helped boost the club’s digital presence and global profile exponentially.
Soccer Aid for Unicef
Soccer Aid for Unicef is a star-studded football game broadcast live on ITV. Through the medium of football, we aim to entertain the UK public and inspire them to support Unicef UK, so that more children can grow up happy, healthy and able to play – just like children should.
In 2019 we; raised £6.7m, achieved a peak ITV audience of 5 million viewers, set a world first with female players and sold out Stamford Bridge!
Media coverage of the campaign reached 1.3billion people, with an additional 75m impressions on social media. A further 2,860 schools and 5,600 individuals signed up to fundraise for Soccer Aid for Unicef.
76% of viewers said they liked watching the show and 72% said they would like to watch Soccer Aid in the future. This demonstrates the power of football to entertain and how the sport provides an excellent platform to raise awareness and funds for Unicef UK.
The EE Wembley Cup by Cake & Poke
The EE Wembley Cup is a bespoke owned event that is an exclusive right to EE and is essentially a football match between the biggest YouTubes stars and international football legends. In 2018, we took the traditional football rulebook and ripped it up to re-imagine the game for a new generation of fans and engage with them via non-traditional media.
Four teams: Hashtag United, F2 FC, Rebel FC and XO FC played each other in a group stage. The winning team got first pick of footballing legends in an all new EE Wembley Cup Draft. And everything ended with a live semi-final and final both played on the same day at Wembley Stadium. Faster “footy” was in, with 30-minute matches replacing the traditional 90 minutes, yellow cards were swapped for sin bins and penalty shoot outs were ditched for ‘Man Down Time’ where players were removed from the pitch every minute until a team scored.
Influencers, fans and the wider population whole-heartedly embraced 2018’s EE Wembley Cup, with nearly 18,000 tickets being sold for the live final and a further 1.6 million tuning in to watch live on YouTube – a larger audience than any Premier League game that weekend.
