On 5 December Hincha, the digital division of sport and entertainment agency Sportizon launched a campaign called ‘Pro League Ultimate Goal’ for Eleven Sports Belgium which enables Belgian football fans to vote for ‘the most beautiful goal in Pro League history’.
The initiative – built around thrilling skill, historic wins and fan passion – aims to drives awareness of the Pro League and Eleven Sports partnership and boosts engagement, fan interaction and subscriptions.
Hubbed around a campaign web platform (https://ultimategoal.elevensports.be), the initial phase of the campaign – running from 6 to 31 December – invites supporters of each club in both the Jupiler Pro League and the second tier Challenger Pro League to choose from a selection of five shortlisted goals scored by their club.
This will be followed up by a phase in which a panel of experts select the most beautiful and most important goals in the league’s history from all the nominees.
Then fans will again be invited to select their top three from the favourite goal of all clubs and the goal that receives the most votes will be awarded the ‘Pro League Ultimate Goal’ at the season ending ‘Pro League Awards’.
As well as the core website, the campaign was promote through an integrated set of dual language (Dutch and French) creative assets linked by the #UltimateGoal hashtag spearheaded by a hero spot and backed by print, digital and social ads.
Eleven Sports – Ultimate Goal from Sportizon on Vimeo.
️ | Wij namen een diepe duik in de #JPL-archieven, op zoek naar de mooiste doelpunten! ️
Nu is het aan jullie om te stemmen voor jouw #UltimateGoal: https://t.co/zaPbAdRFmR! pic.twitter.com/SgoWZX31Vm
— Eleven Sports (NL) (@ElevenSportsBEn) December 6, 2022
Additional strands of the campaign included a Panini Album sticker partnership, coverage in Pro League newsletters and a promotional integration of the campaign during live game broadcasts
“At Eleven, the fans are at the heart of what we do. Last season, more than 75,000 football fans cast their vote for the Ultimate Shirt, a great success,” said Eleven Sports Belgium Head of Marketing Jeroen Vermeiren. “Therefore, we are very happy to be able to let fans have their say again this season about what makes their hearts beat faster: the most beautiful goals ever scored in the Pro League”
According to the team at agencies Hincha and Sportizon, the success of such campaigns depends on the support from the Belgian clubs since they are crucial to activating their own fan bases into participating and so in order to help them the marketers provided each club with a set of club-specific assets: including individual campaign visuals, easy access to their own goal database so they can create additional social media campaign content in their own style and tone and a ‘playbook’ containing inspirational content format examples, pre-written copy sets, content calendar examples and campaign guidelines.
To maximise impact and drive interaction and participation the marketing team rolled out an omnichannel communication plan which included:
> A ‘big bang’ launch with each club promoting the campaign
> Physical integration in the Panini album with iconic goal stickers (chosen by each club)
> In-stadium visibility at Eleven’s partner clubs (led by LED boards)
> Visibility in leading Belgium sports media titles (Eg Sport Voetbal Magazine, newspapers, websites and blogs)
> On-air integrations during Eleven Sports Pro League live matches coverage (including specific TV reports about historic goals)
The early campaign results reveal that more than 3,000 participants took part in the initiative in the first four hours after launch: each spending more than four minutes on the platform.
Comment
This is the third consecutive year that Hincha, Eleven Sports and the Pro League have combined for a kit-led campaign and follows on from 2020’s search for the ultimate ‘Eleven Dream Team’ and 2021’s ‘Pro League Ultimate Shirt’ campaign.
The trio will be hoping for similar success for the latest campaign after their first initiative saw 50,000 football fans cast their vote for their favourite team and last year’s campaign generate more than 75,000 fans voted for their favourite shirt – accounting for a total of 9.6 million page views, an average time on the platform of our minutes and seeing 35% of participating fans opt-in to their favourite football club.
This series of campaigns once again demonstrates how football, now more than ever, is a powerful, participatory social bonding tool.
Belgium’s Pro League forms the top two tiers of Belgium professional club football in the form of the Jupiler Pro League and the Challenger Pro League. While media partner Eleven Sports is a multinational sports and entertainment media group founded in 2015 in Belgium and Luxembourg and now headquartered in the UK which focuses on international sports rights in smaller countries and operates a network of linear television and digital services broadcasting a mix of premium, niche and grassroots sports alongside original programming.
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