Last year everything came to a halt. In the early days of COVID, in a world where sports events were cancelled and everyone was stuck at home, fans were desperately missing the excitement of live sport. Live sport brought thrills and skills, debate and discussion, heightened emotions and glorious magic into lives. Now all of this was gone.

Our lifestyle changed drastically, the way we eat, shop, work and have fun changed almost overnight. Many businesses including sports wear, live sports and entertainment negatively impacted. Losing football dispirited us even more during these unpleasant times. Being an iconic brand, adidas needed to do something about this. Something bold and inspiring to boost the morale of a weary and dispirited Turkish people - and also something relevant to tap into younger sports and style audiences, connecting with them during this period.

As Turkish people, our passion for football is limitless but after the outbreak Turkish Super League and UEFA Euro 2020 tournament were postponed immediately. Losing football disprited us even more during these unpleasant times. Adidas with the brand belief that through sports we have the power to change lives, needed to do something about this. Something bold and inspiring to boost morale of outbreak weary Turkish people and also something relevant to tap into younger sports & style audience and have a revitalized connection with them during times of crises. Turkish audience wanted fresh sports content during the draught of live events and what other sports brand could provide something bold and exciting with the incoporation of technology, gaming and celebrities, than adidas?

Our idea was to create, organize and live-broadcast an e-sports event exactly like a real-life sports event - to give people the ‘football experience’ that they were missing so much.

Rather than a standard e-gaming competition, we went beyond and incorporated elements of real football viewing experience such as live broadcasts, live game commentaries, and of course the tactical debates and discussions by pundits after the matches.

To make the tournament more popular we partnered with the right name in Turkish entertainment industry; Acun Ilicali who has his own TVchannel and broadcasts (and mostly hosts) Turkish versions of highly popular shows such as Masterchef, Survivor and Got Talent. Most importantly he is an avid football fan and has an entourage of famous football players and celebrities.

Along with a roster of football players and celebrities, Acun himself competed in Uncancelled Cup and this further maximized the popularity of the tournament.

We created a sports tournament in PlayStation that echoed real life tournaments – live commentaries, multi-camera work, pundits debating, ex-players offering their views. A new algorithm, created special for Uncancelled Cup, gave us opportunity to stream different Internet connections under the same standard protocol. From Dominican Island to different cities of Turkey. We brought a standardized new unified connection and streamed from different platforms like Instagram, Facebook. We created a fully-branded page (banners, logos, all ad spaces owned by adidas) for the tournament. This page was the home base of the whole tournament: 56 matches, with almost 40 hours of viewing. Live broadcast draw for the tournament was watched by 150,000 people. Celebrities shared their teams on their social media and encouraged their followers to watch the events. adidas created an “Uncancelled Cup” page within its e-commerce platform and directed people there via its social media channels.

Downloads of the adidas shopping app doubled. Brand search volume reached over 800,000 – a 22%increase to a level that’s normally their performance on BlackFriday! Conversion rates rose from 0.8% to 1.3% - rate higher than is usually achieved during discounting periods. 23% of new visitors to adidas.com came from UncancelledCup, generating a 35% revenue increase. Apart from the impact on business, we brought back livesports entertainment to masses who desperately wanted it. We’ve reached 30.6 million people. In total, matchs were viewed 1.2 million times. Average total viewing of all matches is 23K (the average attendance of Turkish Super League is about 14K). Our live audiences were significantly higher than the size of a normal Turkish Super League game stadium audience. Just like a normal football tournament, engagement increased as the tournament progressed. Viewers' time spent on a match doubled for the last 16 matches compared to group phase.