There’s never been an openly gay or bisexual male footballer in England’s Premier League. It’s not that they’re not out there, they just feel they’ll be rejected by teammates and fans if they do so. Unfortunately, this leaves a whole generation of LGBTQ footballers without role models in the world’s most popular sport. Paddy Power has a history of supporting LGBTQ causes in football and wanted to create a campaign to show professional footballers that, despite what many may think, fans are ready for an openly gay or bisexual player. We needed a big idea that would not only resonate within the LGBTQ community, but with football fans everywhere. We chose to enter the UK’s biggest pride parade and use this massive LGBTQ gathering as a platform to highlight the absence of gay professional footballers.

There’s never been an openly gay or bisexual male footballer in England’s Premier League; Something that deprives a whole generation of LGBTQ footballers of important role models in the world’s most popular sport. To highlight this problem and encourage gay players to come out and create a more open league, Paddy Power created the Official Bus for Gay Professional Footballers. As sponsors of the Brighton Pride Festival, we entered our bus in the parade and while the other floats teemed with people, ours stood empty as a symbol for change. We supported the action with executions in print, OOH and digital. An activation that proved to the pros and the world that fans are ready for a footballer to “come out and play”.

Paddy Power has a history of supporting LGBTQ causes in football and wanted to create a campaign to show professional footballers that, despite what many may think, fans are ready for an openly gay or bisexual player. We needed a big idea that would not only resonate within the LGBTQ community, but with football fans everywhere. We chose to enter the UK’s biggest pride parade and use this massive LGBTQ gathering as a platform to highlight the absence of gay professional footballers. We successfully used a humorous tone peppered with football terminology to get our message across to our wide reaching target: The LGBT community, football fans and the professional footballers themselves.

The Official Bus of Gay Professional Footballers ran for a single day (2 1/2 hours) in the Brighton and Hove Pride Parade in Brighton, England on August 4th 2018. The bus itself served as the media, both by its lack of passengers and a full vinyl wrap containing artwork and campaign messaging. In addition to the bus, we ran print ads in national newspapers such as Metro and The Guardian as well as the Brighton's local newspaper, The Argus; OOH and DOOH in London and Brighton; Posters and flyers in Brighton; A stall on the Pride Festival grounds; and several supporting videos uploaded to social media.

We shared a recap video of the activation online on Paddy Power's social channels with no paid media plan.

The campaign was a huge success for the brand and for Brighton and Hove Pride. According to their Head of Partnerships: "Paddy Power's bus generated more press coverage and debate than anything else in the history of the parade." In addition, the campaign received televised news coverage in the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, Holland and France. The brand, which in the past has been viewed as brash and opportunistic, received overwhelmingly positive feedback from audiences in general on social networks and in person at the event, and the LGBT community in particular, with coverage in leading LGBT publications, hundreds of messages of support and even a very touching letter from a mother of two young gay football players telling us how much the campaign meant to them.

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