Which is the most iconic shirt in Belgian football history?
That’s the question Belgian football fans were asked to decide in a fan engagement and coverage promotion from Eleven Sports to highlight its partnership with the Pro League.
The ‘Ultimate Shirt’ campaign, developed by agencies Sportizon and Hincha, was promoted through an integrated campaign – led by a hero spot – with content in both Dutch and French driving fans to the bespoke web hub to vote online.
ELEVEN – Ultimate Shirt campaign 2021 from Sportizon on Vimeo.
The promotion asked fan’s to choose the most beautiful, iconic football shirt ever to grace Belgium’s football pitches. The marketing team collated a collection of shirts from 50 Pro League seasons spanning every club to play in the Jupiler Pro League or the 1B Pro League: in total there were 1,750 home and away shirts from the 1972-73 season to the present to choose from.
The first phase asked supporters to pick their favourite three shirts and then a second phase saw a combined vote of fans and journalists to decide which is the ‘Pro League Ultimate Shirt’.
Fans were asked to vote between 6 December and 31 January at https://ultimateshirt.elevensports.be. and voting was incentivised through a mechanic which entered each participant into a contest to win a signed shirt from his or her favourite club. The website voting system also enables voters to share their own choices socially with their own footballing friends and family members.
“Every football fan has nostalgic memories of the glory days of his or her favorite club, and the iconic shirts that go with it,” explained Eleven Sports Belgium CEO Guillaume Collard. “With these matches we unlock 50 seasons of Belgian top football and together with the fans we go in search of the most iconic shirt in the history of the Pro League.”
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The promotion’s background saw the clubs themselves set their own precedent for favourite team shirts through the Pro League’s latest Panini album which saw each side chose their own favourite most iconic home and away shirt from the past 50 seasons. These were then curated into a collectible Panini sticker album to celebrate the 50th anniversary edition.
This 2021/22 marketing push follows in the footsteps of last season’s Eleven Sports’ Pro League campaign which asked Belgian football fans to put together an ultimate ‘Eleven Dream Team’: an initiative which generated more than 50,000 fans who voted for their all-time favourite team line-up.
The new initiative look set to equal that success as in the first 24 hours following its launch it saw more than 20,000 participants and also:
> Trended on Twitter in Belgium
> Notched up more than 5 minutes for the average time spent on website.
Sports focused media and broadcaster Eleven Sports is a multinational sports and entertainment media group headquartered in the UK and owned by Andrea Radrizzani’s sports and media investment platform Aser Ventures. It’s business model was initially based around the acquisition of international sports rights in smaller countries and the company currently operates a network of linear television and/or digital services, broadcasting a mix of premium, niche-premium, longtail and grassroots sports as well as original programming, and provides SaaS livestreaming services.
The US based global media company Team Whistle is also part of the Eleven group and its recently rolled out a ‘World Trick Shot Day’ initiative with Meta and the Harlem Globe Trotters.
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