To help fulfil our purpose of bringing a little joy to people, we shared our passion for football by launching Lay’s RePlay. The initiative repurposes empty bags of chips which are turned into football pitches, combining play, sustainability, and some good old fashioned fun!

But what if we went one step further? At a pivotal moment for women’s football, we elevated our commitment to the sport by becoming the official global sponsor of the UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL).

Beyond supporting tomorrow’s Beth Mead, Marta Vieira da Silva, and Megan Rapinoe, the pitches bring communities together and create safer spaces for people of all ages and abilities. And with all eyes on Turin (the location of the UWCL Final), where better to build the next RePlay pitch?

On that note, let’s lace up!

Our first pitstop was to come up with an effective name. RePlay represents the creation of moments of joy through the play and the reinvention of the packs of chips.

Through our passion for togetherness, we partnered with the UEFA Foundation for Children and Common Goal to aid in fulfilling the wants and needs of underserved communities. This led us to Cecchi Point, a small Turin neighborhood that needed educational facilities to empower girls to play the game they love. By working in tandem with UEFA Foundation, we flexed our combined creative muscles to ensure the best outputs for our football stars.

The partnership also served as inspiration for a program we launched dedicated to women’s football in the lead up to the UWCL final game. The program included a tournament, speeches, and skills sessions to amp people up and let them share in their love for the beautiful game.

The initiative’s key message is around the democratization of joy through providing spaces for women to unite, create memorable moments, and develop skills in a safe environment. During our research, we uncovered two major challenges that needed overcoming to achieve our goals.

Firstly, we ensured that the pitches were accessible to everyone - and specifically the female members of the community - regardless of their socio-economic status. For this reason, we used insight from in-depth primary research to guarantee that the pitches were located in safer and more accessible locations.

The second was to secure the provision of a recreational and educational space for the female members of the community. This desperate requirement needed to have a roster of events and support from local organizations, volunteers, ambassadors, and the community itself. The combination of these key events and stakeholders helped in the distribution of assets, key messages, and reach.

The initiative has been successful in all locations since the implementation of the first pitch in South Africa in June 2021 and has monumentally impacted countless community members across three continents by providing safe, inclusive places to play on sustainable, quality infrastructure.

The new Lay’s RePlay pitch was christened when we hosted the first-ever girls only five-a-side tournament alongside Gatorade. The tournament spanned two exciting days and, by leveraging the weight of our brands, was supported by Women’s UEFA head, Nadine Kessler, UEFA legend, Claudio Marchisio, and Lay’s Brand ambassador, Lieke Martens.

The tournament winners were then recognized at the UWCL final and even represented Italy at the global tournament final at the UCL final in Paris.

In total, over a billion global media impressions were garnered and young women across eight cities were engaged in the celebration of community togetherness.

In total, Lay’s RePlay has facilitated just shy of 25,000 uses of pitches, resulting in over 5,000 cumulative session hours. Additionally, almost 3,000 communities are accessing and using the pitches per month, which is 13% over the target and the regular RePlay programs have helped 1,102 people, exceeding the target by 18%.

In Cecchi Point, Turin, the tournament was only the start of our celebration of women’s football! In the first year alone, over 3,000 members of the community will participate in over 800 hours of football programming.

The pitches haven’t just gone on to support women, either, as they have become hubs used to celebrate pivotal cultural moments like Freedom Day (South Africa), to discuss drug misuse, and to highlight LGBTQIAP+ awareness (Brazil).

By the end of 2024, Lay’s will have built eleven pitches in communities just like Cecchi Point across the globe, bridging the gap between fun and education.

That’s the power of Lay’s RePlay - to create a world of joy through football.