Days before we were due to film our new YouTube series with Major League Baseball (MLB), designed to excite and educate European fans about baseball, the world came to a halt with live sports and events cancelled due to Covid-19.

In lieu of indefinitely postponing our campaign until the season could safely begin, we quickly adapted our strategy to produce and release the series entirely during lockdown, using the time to educate our target audience of 18 to 34 year olds - the next generation of untapped fans - and get them excited about baseball, even without players allowed on the field.

Our goal was to grow awareness of baseball amongst European sports fans by creating a personality-led series that showcased the incredible culture that exists within baseball whilst also teaching the new fanbase the basics of the game, delivering a taste of what the MLB experience is all about.

Growing the MLB fan base in Europe while live sports were cancelled and the world was in lockdown was not going to be an easy feat. But we pivoted. Fast.

Across 10 episodes on MLB’s YouTube channel, we challenged sports journalist Max Whittle and influencer Jemel One Five to recruit a roster of celebrity influencers to form their own baseball team, without leaving their homes.

Each weekly episode explored an element of baseball, like batting, pitching or ballpark food, and featured appearances from MLB superstars, celebrities and influencers, including six-time baseball All-Star Chase Utley, former World’s Strongest Man Eddie Hall and competitive ‘super eater’ Leah Shutkever, who resonated with our target audience and amplified the series to new audiences.

As the world came to a stop due to Covid-19, including the postponement of the 2020 MLB season, we had to quickly adapt our strategy to produce and film the ‘Bases Covered’ series entirely during a nationwide lockdown.

As an alternative to showcasing weekly highlights from the MLB season, we adapted our creative to act as the ultimate pre-season companion, a weekly personality-led series that would ensure fans kept baseball top of mind and were excited for the season to restart. The series would teach the new fanbase the basics of the game and bring the excitement of the MLB experience to their screens.

This new strategy presented us with new challenges. We had to plan and execute the campaign entirely remotely with the presenters, celebrity guests, directors, producers and editors all living in locations with some form of lockdown restrictions. The series had to be filmed without the use of a production studio and our producers and directors worked closely with the talent to virtually guide them in filming their interviews and challenges.

In spite of the restrictions, we produced and released 10 weekly episodes on MLB’s YouTube channel, and for the series finale (with lockdown restrictions lifted) the newly formed ‘Bases Covered All Stars’ assembled to play the London Mets, in MLB’s only live London event of 2020.

The campaign achieved over 3.2 million views, with an incredible 32,000+ hours watched across the series, delivering 7.2 million impressions and over 641,000 unique viewers in total. The episodes commanded an average watch time of over 4 minutes, with the longer watch times proving the audience’s investment in the content.

We successfully introduced baseball to a new audience in Europe within our target demographic, with 55% of the total Europe views came from viewers aged 18 to 34, who watched nearly 19,000 hours across the 10 episodes.

The game between the ‘Bases Covered All Stars’ and the London Mets was featured on CBS Sports thanks to BBC Sport commentator Micah Richards achieving an epic home run for the celebrity team, and the success of the first series led us to partner with MLB for two additional seasons of ‘Bases Covered’.