Telecoms brand and Wembley Stadium sponsor EE has brought back its ‘Wembley Cup’ tournament for a fourth season and added some new features to freshen up the format.
This year’s competition sees will see international footballers compete alongside YouTube stars, while other innovations include a new ‘draft’ stage as well as ‘fast and furious’ 30-minute matches.
The brand-owned gaming soccer event, which will reach a climax with a live final at Wembley Stadium on 25 November, will feature former professional players (such as Robert Pires, David Trezeguet, Cafu and Michael Essien) lining up alongside four teams of social influencer gamers (including Spencer Owen of Hashtag United, F2Freestylers of F2 FC, Calfreezy for Rebel FC and WillNE and Stephen Tries for XO.
The new features – from the US style draft, to faster, shorter games, plus sin bins and ‘man down time’ have been added after EE carried our a research projects into which football innovations are most and least popular with fans.
The campaign, created by Poke, opened with a launch event, PR work and a hero trailer film,
supported by a set of digital and social content pieces amplified across EE’s channels – including Instagram
and Twitter.
EE is also rolling out an online series to accompany the tournament: with the debut episode launching live on YouTube on Spencer FC’s channel.
The launch campaign’s creative assets all also aim not just to generate buzz and boost viewer numbers, but also to drive viewers to the digital ticket purchasing platform at https://wembley.ee.co.uk/wembleycup/.
“The EE Wembley Cup is ripping up the rule book for 2018 with some innovative twists and a brand new tournament format,” said EE director brand marketing Pete Jeavons.
“Allowing teams to bolster their squads with World Cup winners and global legends is really going to raise the stakes for 2018. With the addition of these world-class players to the stellar line-up of football YouTubers, this year’s EE Wembley Cup is going to be one to remember.”
Comment:
The launch campaign and the tournament tweaks build on previous iterations of this successful brand owned tournament (see our 2016 case study).
EE’s Wembley Cup initiative runs in parallel to the brand’s other activations around its ongoing stadium sponsorship
A groundbreaking six-year partnership, penned back in 2014, between Wembley National Stadium Ltd (WNSL) and EE that was launched with a now familiar composite logo and which included a multi-million pound investment in the stadium’s state-of-the-art technology and communications systems (including 4G, Wi-Fi and mobile payment), a bespoke Wembley app, launches today as part of the partnership
Links:
EE Wembley Cup
https://wembley.ee.co.uk/wembleycup/
EE:
https://www.youtube.com/user/EEUK
The FA’s Wembley Stadium Web:
http://www.wembleystadium.com/
Poke
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