Challenge

Keep calm and pick a side

Creating history & increasing viewership by 91%

For years, brands have been trying to engage Americans in the English Premier League. Many millions of dollars have been spent trying to gain traction around ‘the beautiful game’. All attempts have failed. So, when NBC Sports Network secured exclusive rights to broadcast Premier League soccer in the US, they turned to Maxus USA for help.

We realised that soccer lovers worldwide become fanatical because they love their team, not just the game. So NBC needed to move the conversation away from the beautiful game and its biggest stars and instead start talking about passionate allegiances.

Solution

We started in the Premier League’s biggest market, New York City. New York is a city of neighbourhoods. Using this as the hook, we carved New York into districts and affiliated them with Premier League teams. The Upper East Side became Manchester United, the Bronx was Aston Villa and so on. Then we focused team messaging within that district. Posters, British taxis (which offered free rides) and subway trains in team colours encouraged residents to pick a side.

We also ran local parties at pubs where fans could initiate their neighbours. On television, we gave people more information on their team, because to know your team is to love them. And we reached out to the rest of America via an online Team Picker, suggesting teams based on people’s Facebook activity. Then we aired “An American in London”, a spoof video starring Jason Sudeikis as a US coach running Tottenham Hotspur.

Results

Once people picked a side (and 400,000 did) they had a reason to follow the Premier League – and they knew NBCSN was the place to do it. “An American in London” quickly went viral, generating 5.4 million views within one month, making it YouTube’s second most watched and third most shared video in August 2013. The season opener was the biggest in US history and NBCSN viewership increased by 91% in the first two weeks of season, overtaking the previous year’s viewership on ESPN, ESPN2 and Fox Soccer combined. Goal!