Andres Iniesta’s retirement from Barcelona after 21 years of success sent shockwaves through the soccer community across the world. News outlets, brands, players and fans all came together on social platforms to thank Andres Iniesta for all the beautiful soccer he gave the world. As the exclusive broadcaster of the Spanish LaLiga where Andres Iniesta made history, beIN SPORTS USA needed to be part of this conversation in a meaningful way that would allow its US fans to engage directly with this moment. Without the large budgets of bigger, brands we needed an activation that engaged US fans directly and was nimble and low cost.

Autographed jerseys are a way in which athletes give fans a memento they can keep and enjoy forever. (Andres Iniesta himself probably signed thousands of these throughout his career.) So beIN SPORTS decided to reverse this dynamic and give fans in the USA the opportunity to sign a Farewell Jersey through Instagram as a parting gift that would be given to Iniesta.

We looked to create a response-driven activation that was less broad and impersonal (i.e. Nike’s Infinite Iniesta) but that gave a smaller, more engaged group of Barcelona fans an active, participative role in the moment. We knew we couldn’t pass around a physical jersey to collect signatures across the US, yet we still wanted as many people as possible to have a chance in creating this memory for Iniesta, and themselves. We knew that our beIN SPORTS audience over-indexes on Instagram use, so we tapped into how fans were already communicating on Instagram Stories and created a totally new way of utilizing the platform to drive the desired response: engage with fans to send us their signature through Instagram for use on the Farewell Jersey.

In a fully organic and response-driven activation, we invited fans in the US to virtually sign the Farewell Jersey through Instagram Stories. Fans would take a screenshot of our story, trace their signature – leveraging a tool they were already familiar with using – and then would DM the signed image back to us. This interaction was not only native to the platform, but natural and seamless for fans. We then cut out the first thousand signatures and printed them on an official Iniesta Barcelona jersey (cost $100) and created the Farewell Jersey. We then profiled the Farewell Jersey on all beIN SPORTS’ owned channels in order to give bragging rights to fans that made it on the jersey and continue the conversation. The activation had a week-long highly active period during Iniesta’s retirement ceremony and another peak months later when Iniesta received the Farewell Jersey.

From the moment we invited fans to sign the Farewell Jersey, to the moment fans saw their signatures on the jersey, all the way to the moment Andres Iniesta received his Jersey, we took our beIN SPORTS fans on a journey that generated over 300,000 direct engagements on our social platforms (a 95% increase from our owned properties benchmark for that amount of time.) One thousand fans participated directly in the creation of the Farewell Jersey, earned bragging rights and got to send a personalized gift to their idol. Hundreds of thousands of Barcelona fans saw the Farewell Jersey showcased in our linear programming and celebrated how beIN SPORTS engaged with the moment in a way that was truly relevant to them. Andres Iniesta received what might be the first commemorative jersey signed by his fans through Instagram.